[Pmwiki-users] Creating Groups

[Ciaran]

Hi Wade, sorry to do this yet again, but I feel you still haven't
quite grasped the problem The following excerpt from your email is
wrong [I believe]

> +++++
> PmWiki has the capability of classifying pages into groups of related
> pages. Creating a new group is as easy as CreatingNewPages; simply edit
> an existing page to include a link to a page in the new group using the
> following format [[Group/SomePage]] or [[Group.SomePage]]. Then click on
> the '?' to edit the page.
> 
I think you''re mixing up the concept of page creation and page
referencing, they just happen to be the same for you currently because
the page being referred to does not currently exist. Reading this
would imply that if a user has already created a page, they can merely
prefix it with a groupname to classify it as belonging to that group,
which in fact is not how it works :(

*Any* WikiPage you create will belong to a group.  If that group is
not specified in the markup then when in the html a user clicks the
'?' symbol a page will be created in the 'current' group i.e. the
group to which the page currently being viewed belongs to.  If however
the group is specified in the markup then the page will be created
within that group.

The algorithm that determines whether a page exists or not is actually
slightly more complex [and configurable of course] than that, as it
can look for the page in the current group, or a series of other
specified groups (I myself have a 'Common' group where I put common
definitions that get used within all the other groups, and have
modified the relevant variable [which escapes me right now!] to
reflect this).

So although you're correct to say you should explicitly give the group
in the sidebar to avoid mis-matches for pages  [imagine two groups
both containing pages with the same page-name, if just page-name was
referenced in the sidebar, different pages would *actually* be being
pointed to.  Which is in fact quite a useful feature, when used
intentionally ;)  ]  it is not correct to imply that by providing this
Groupname you're enabling PmWiki to classify a page as belonging to a
particular group, because that implies that without giving the
groupname it belongs to 'no group' which can't happen.

I hope this is clearer, and I don't mean any of this in a patronising
way at all, it took me ages to get my head around groups (and more
importantly the lack of hierarchical groups but thats another story )
- ciaran