[pmwiki-users] Properties

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Wed Dec 14 10:31:01 CST 2005


On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:17:36PM +0100, Dominique Faure wrote:
> [after re-reading of initial post]
> * I agree with your proposal. (selectable page Persistent properties is a plus).
> * Why not {$pagename$variablename} as a property "getter" (to follow
> object-oriented idioms)?

I think that {$Group.PageName$variablename} just looks too "wrong"
in the sense of being confusing.  It's too hard to differentiate the
variables from the pagename -- e.g., is $Group above a variable or
are we talking about a page called "Group.PageName"?

It's also important to remember that not every property is a page
attribute, and vice-versa.  Perhaps they ought to be unified somehow, 
but there's an important distinction in that "properties" aren't always
saved with a page, while "attributes" always are.  And attributes
can come from sources other than the (:property:) markup, so there's
not a perfect correspondence.  (At present it's also possible for a 
page to have both a property and attribute of the same name
but with different values.)

So, since properties aren't always saved, we can't really have a
markup that says "display property XYZ for page ABC" unless we're
willing to process page ABC's markup each time, or always save all
of its properties as something other than attributes.  And if we
define a markup for displaying another page's attributes, it might
need to be visually distinct from the markup that displays the 
current page's properties.

If this sounds a bit confusing -- well, it is, probably because
we haven't hit upon the correct model yet.

Pm




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