[Pmwiki-users] File upload feature discussion

Davis, James C. jdavis at cob.tamucc.edu
Mon Nov 18 15:22:54 CST 2002


>From my perspective redundancy is an issue, especially if files are attached
to individual pages. Imagine a banner that is included on every page in a
group. If a group has 100 pages in it that's 100 copies of the same file.
It's a waste of disk space in my opinion. Also, I just personally can't
stand data redundancy. I think this was drilled into my head in my DBMS
classes. :)

I actually often wish there was a "list all groups" or "list all pages in a
group" function. For me, searching is not always the primary method of
finding the information I want, and often browsing a list of pages is often
more useful. I guess maybe it's the case when you're not completely sure
what you're looking for. I would think there are others out there that think
this way as well, or maybe I'm just crazy (quite possible).

The problem I see with not associating files with a page is name collisions.
This would undoubtedly cause mass chaos on a large wiki system. Names like
"banner.gif" and "title.jpg" would be very common, and various WikiAuthors
would fight it out over who gets what name (might be an interesting social
experiment though). You could change the name to prevent collisions, but
this is going to confuse the heck out of most people.

RecentChanges is just one way to list all pages. I think there is a need for
alphabetical listing as well as chronological.

Just my tew sens.

James Davis
Network Manager
College of Business
Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi
(361) 825-5926
jdavis at cob.tamucc.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick R. Michaud [mailto:pmichaud at sci.tamucc.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 2:30 PM
To: Davis, James C.
Cc: 'pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com'
Subject: RE: [Pmwiki-users] File upload feature discussion


On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Davis, James C. wrote:

> As I see it, the issues surrounding the file upload are that we don't want
> to have repetitive data (the same file stored many times), but we do want
> the files to be organized in a way that makes it easy for WikiAuthors to
> find them insert them into pages.  [...stuff deleted...]

Actually, the first issue (redundancy) is a non-issue from my perspective.  
The only real issue is the second one--how to have files organized in a 
way that makes it easy for WikiAuthors to upload them, find them, and 
insert them into pages.  Thus it's primarily a user-interface issue
as opposed to an implementation one.

> The files
> could be associated with both WikiPages and WikiGroups so you could get a
> listing of all files for a page, for all pages in the group, or all files
in
> the system (with thumbnails for images?). I would suggest links for "Page
> Files", "Group Files", and "All Files" on each page to see a listing of
all
> associated files. 

This is one of the areas I'm struggling with--how/where to list files?
Or is it even necessary?  Would it be sufficient to have a 
"RecentAttachments" page similar to the "RecentChanges" page to maintain
a list of available attachments?  As it is now, PmWiki doesn't have
a mechanism to "list all pages" or "list all pages in a group" and doesn't
seem to suffer from it--why would we need those features for attachments?

Pm




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