[pmwiki-users] Motivation for hierachy

[John Rankin]

On Monday, 29 May 2006 1:55 PM, Dr Fred C <drfredc at drfredc.com> wrote:
> There's all sorts of applications where having a deeper than
>two dimensional hierarchy would be very nice. 
>
> For example, I'm managing a fledgling downtown association
>site which is somewhat crippled by two dimensionalism.
>
> HealthCare.Dentistry.DrA, HealthCare.MD.DrA and
>HealthCare.Dentistry.DrB is not possible under PM wiki.   Nor is
> Financial.Banks.WellsFargo, Financial.Insurance.JoesInsurance,
>and Financial.Mortgage.MikesMortgage.  Nor is
> YouthSports.Soccer.Girls.Team94 and
>YouthSports.Soccer.Boys.Team95.  Etc. etc.
>
> Sure, there are (somewhat clumsy) workarounds. 

I'd like to note an additional workaround: subpages.
This has the wholly pragmatic benefit that it can be
added to pmwiki in about 10 lines of php and nothing 
breaks. It defines [[,subpage]] markup.

*It is not a hierarchy, but in some cases it may be 
all that's needed.*

On page LocalElementary.TeacherJones the markup 
[[,StudentBobbySmith]] generates a link to the page
LocalElementary.TeacherJones,StudentBobbySmith

This page becomes a subpage of LocalElementary.TeacherJones

On the subpage, a reference to [[,StudentJaneGrey]]
generates a link to the page
LocalElementary.TeacherJones,StudentJaneGrey

One can of course use (:pagelist:) to generate a list
of all subpages to LocalElementary.TeacherJones

I think it's important to distinguish between use cases
that can be solved with subpages and those that require a
hierarchy. Subpages are widely implementd in other wikis,
so they might be a useful place to start.

Where an application appears to require a hierarchy, it
may be helpful for the administrator to consider whether 
subpages can solve it sufficiently well.
>
> <snip>
>
> Or schools
>
> LocalElementary/TeacherJones/StudentBobbySmith  
>
> Exactly how many more examples do you need? 

Wouldn't subpages help in all the examples given and be
sufficient in 4 of the 5? 

> ---------------
>
>christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com wrote:
>Is there some wiki page that contains user cases that
>illustrates cases where one would like to have some kind of
>hierarchy? If not, I think maybe we should start one.
>
> The long thread on hierarchical groups was interesting, but I
>think I'd like to start with understanding why it is needed.
>(As an aside, I'm all for having some kind of hierarchy, but
>knowing why we want something will help us see what we want).
>
> As for motivation, what I do know is that all the technically
>savvy people I've introduced to pmwiki lately have all assumed
>that some kind of hiearchy was possible. Several of them felt
>that some kind of hierarchy was necessary for technical
>documentation of a stuff like a product structure.
>


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin