| Proposals Table of Contents | Last edited on Jan 20, 2001 4:29 pm |
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Elaboration of this issue was prompted by some thoughts by doug in WikiNGDiscussion. This is not necessarily the final plan, but rather part of the vision at the outset.
*klm 07/30/2000 - The WikiNG through-the-web object management bullet briefly addresses this - coherently incorporating other types of documents is something we see as key to our integration of wiki with larger content management capabilities. We also need to focus on the process of creating a page, which currently establishes the page too early, before content has been committed. Also, i see it as completely consistent for the other types of content - file uploads, discussion objects, etc - to have some features of wiki pages, like backlinks, parents, and even outgoing links and offspring.
Rather than creating an empty object and offering the option to edit it, we should go directly into editing before the object is created - since that's what users do first, the vast majority of the time. The page will not yet exist, however - not until they commit the initial content - and we'll also offer the option for creating a different type of document - file uploads, images, whatever kinds of objects are relevant - on the initial edit page, as well. The immediate edit further streamlines the current procedure for the common case, does not create the page until there is something to hold, and provides for creation of other kinds of content without disrupting the most common case.
(We may want to have some kind of placeholder, to mark the page as "being created", during the initial edit period, to avoid overlap in people clicking that question mark to create the page - which tends to be tempting...)
Note that here is another domain where the lines of the wiki nesting relationships may provides a suitable structure for organizing policy - in this case, policy about the types of objects available to be created in the hierarchy. Subpages may further constrain or, if the user is permitted, enlarge the range of choices available in their offspring. This way, certain areas of the wiki may be set aside for delegating creation of particular kinds of documents - project reports, discussion objects, or whatever.
Oh, and i see no reason why other kinds of content contained in the wiki can't have backlinks - in fact, i think they should be contained like wiki pages, with the wiki footer and header, to be well integrated. Even for references to documents elsewhere, being able to identify the pages that make the reference is useful - it has concept-index significance. We will probably want to offer special slots for relationship metadata for non-StructuredText content, so outgoing and child links can be registered in the wiki organization objects in other ways.
The idea is to integrate the virtues of the wiki way with other kinds of content, where appropriate, in this integration of wiki with Zope's content management framework...
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