[Pmwiki-users] Hierarchical groups

[Steven Leite]

Hi Patrick,

I guess I didn't explain myself clearly, or maybe you just
mis-understood what I said on a couple of points, so I'll clarify below:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick R. Michaud" <pmichaud at pobox.com>
To: "Steven Leite" <steven_leite at kitimat.net>
Cc: "J. Perkins" <jason at sim8.com>; "Pmwiki-users"
<pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 9:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Pmwiki-users] Hierarchical groups


> On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 08:17:03AM -0700, Steven Leite wrote:

> > [[Teams.WorkingTogether]] would link to
> > [[NFL.Teams.Patriots.Teams.WorkingTogether]]
>
> I'm assuming you meant it would link to
> NFL.Teams.Patriots.Teams.WorkingTogether

Yes, that's what i meant. :)

> > To correctly point it to NFL.Teams.WorkingTogether, you would enter
the
> > link as follows:  [[../WorkingTogether]]

I should have also included the more (obvious) choice, which would be
[[/NFL/Teams/WorkingTogether]].

Note that ALL of my examples assumed that we are:
> currently on a page called "NFL.Teams.Patriots.Playoffs"

> I think that some authors may have trouble with the '..' syntax if
> they aren't used to dealing with pathnames.  I don't know how many
> Windows users ever see '..' used in a path name--it hardly ever shows
up
> in a file path or a url, and in recent versions of Windows it doesn't
> even show up in file dialog boxes--it's now an "Up" button (arrow) in
the
> toolbar.  So there might be some learning curve and need for
documentation
> with this, even though us programmers/powerusers are quite used to it.

That just gave me a great (alternate) idea.  The closest thing to match
an "up" arrow, is the carrot (^) .. so we could use the carrot to
represent ../  .  To represent multiple ../'s, as in ../../../SomeGroup,
we could make it ^^^SomeGroup.  I don't care for this idea much, but I
just thought I'd mention it.


> > [[../../WorkingTogether]] would point to NFL.WorkingTogether, which
> > would be the same as writing [[/WorkingTogether]].
>
> Huh?  I would think that [[/WorkingTogether]] would be WorkingTogether
> at the top level.

Whoops .. you're right.  I goofed.  What I meant to say is, the slash
preceeding the Group name indicates that it's a top-level group.  The
../../WorkingTogether was just an alternate example of how the same
effect could be achieved.


> > [[/WorkingTogether/]] on the other hand, would (should) resolve as
> > WorkingTogether/HomePage (where HomePage is the default page for an
> > arbitrary Group, set in config.php).

The trailing slash indicates that you want to view the default page of
the Group called "WorkingTogether".  A simpler example may be comething
like (again, assuming you are
> currently on a page called "NFL.Teams.Patriots.Playoffs")

[[/Main/]] or [[/Main]].

But I think [[/Main]] would be pointing to a page in the DefaultGroup
with a title of "Main", where-as [[/Main/]] Would be pointing to a Group
called "Main" at the top level.

> And I find this very non-intuitive, why is [[/WorkingTogether]] under
> the NFL group while [[/WorkingTogether/]] is its own group?

Sorry if I implied that /WorkingTogether would be under the NFL group.
That's not what I meant.  [[/WorkingTogether]] would be a page at the
root level called "WorkingTogether", and [[/WorkingTogether/]] would be
a Group called WorkingTogether.

> follow common filepath conventions at all.  Are you saying that the
> *trailing* slash indicates it's at the top level?

Nope.  Sorry if I wasn't clear.  I think the last few paragraphs clarify
what I meant?

> > Additionally, to specify the default page for the Group
> > Patriots/Washington/ you would write [[/Patriots/Washington/]] or
> > [[/Patriots/Washington/HomePage]] (where HomePage is the default
page
> > for an arbitrary Group, set in config.php)
>
> There's that bizarre leading/trailing slash again.  To summarize,
you're
> saying that from NFL.Teams.Patriots.Playoffs,

>    [[Patriots.Washington]] == NFL.Teams.Patriots.Patriots.Washington
yes
>    [[Washington]] == NFL.Teams.Patriots.Washington
yes
>    [[../../Patriots.Washington]] == NFL.Patriots.Washington

no, I guess I goofed again.:)
[[../Patriots.Washington]] would == NFL.Teams.Patriots.Washington]], and
[[../../Patriots.Washington]] would == Patriots.Washington (eg root
level)

>    [[/Patriots/Washington]] == NFL.Patriots.Washington
no, the slash at the beginning would clearly indicate that its a (root)
Group called Patriots, and a page called Washington.

>    [[/Patriots/]] == Patriots.HomePage

Yes, IF we make a presumption that specifying a Group (without
specifying a page) would always result in a page called HomePage
(default page name).

I'm not 100% clear on that because I use the GroupName as my
DefaultPage.  Eg.  Group1 default page title is Group1.  So, specifying
[[Group1/]] would resolve to Group1/Group1.

> But wait, where does [[/Patriots/HomePage]] go?  Does it go to
> NFL.Patriots.HomePage, like [[/Patriots/Washington]] goes to
> NFL.Patriots.Washington?

No, sorry again if I was not clear.  They would go to
oPatriots/HomePage, and Patriots/Washington respectively.  The / in
front would exclude the possiblity for the pages to be in the NFL Group.

> Also, if we went to a filename-path sort of system, I wouldn't think
we'd
> ever need "default pages" in groups such as "HomePage", because every
group
> is already a page.

I don't understand exactly what you mean that "every group is already a
page", unless you are refering to the Default page (eg. HomePage).

You had a few other questions, but they were trying to clarify the
misunderstanding of my syntax, so I won't bother to go in to detail on
those ones.  I hope this clear it up a bit.

=)

Steven