[pmwiki-devel] idea: categories defining properties

[ben at interdependentweb.com]

I have an idea brewing...

I was thinking about http://freebase.com and what a powerful idea it is,
that any given concept (such as a Wikipedia entry) can belong to one or
more categories, and that belonging to a category gives the concept
certain attributes or properties that can be assigned in a form.  It goes
way beyond the traditional, relational database structure.

And I'm learning Drupal for my new employer, and it has a very similar
structure, where each page is called a "node" and belongs to categories,
and the way the page is displayed depends on the categories it belongs to.

And I was thinking, hey, PmWiki pages can belong to one or more
categories, and they can have page-text variables assigned by a form, and
those properties can be displayed in various templates.  The only thing
that's missing is the mechanism to define the properties of each category,
and to display the proper form inputs when editing a page depending on the
categories it belongs to.

The way I see it, we're already most of the way there... the necessary
elements are

* A user-friendly way to assign pages to categories.  Freebase uses an
AJAX-powered combo box, but we could go lower-tech with a select-multiple
and a text input.

* Conditional markup to test what categories the page currently belongs to
 (Does this already exist?)

* A new recipe to customize EditForm and SiteHeader to display the
appropriate form fields and templates.

Does the idea have merit?  Are we closer than I think, or farther?

Of course, assigning properties to pages is only part of the puzzle; The
real power of Freebase is its query language (MJT).  But one thing at a
time.  --Ben S.