[Pier] Internal Link Problems

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[Pier] Internal Link Problems

Thomas Froeb
Hi,

since the structures have a "name" beside the "title" it's very
difficult to create internal Links when you renamed (rather "retitled")
a structure.
You have to always remember the name you gave the structure first
because if you want to create internal links you have to use now this
name else the link is broken. I don't think thats a good Idea because no
one can guess the hidden "name" of structures....

Regards,
Thomas

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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Dominique Dutoit-2
Hi,

I agree with you about the issue you are raising. In fact, it's the  
only reason why I am holding back my plan to upgrade to the latest  
version of Pier.

We use a slightly customised Pier to manage our intranet and it was  
relatively easy to explain to the users that if they want to create a  
link to a structure, they just have to put the title of the target.

The situation was not that smooth when we were using Plone and custom  
CMS. Even after a while, a large portion of our user base still had  
troubles to make the difference between the name of a structure and  
its title when it came to create links. The consequence was that the  
sites produced during that period contained a lot of endless pages  
and very few links.

So far, we get a better balance between cross-referencing and page  
size, thanks to the sheer simplicity of the way Pier manages its  
links. I fear that we will lose this simplicity if we introduce back  
the same concepts that didn't performed that well during our previous  
attempts.

Regards,
Dominique

Le 08-mars-06 à 15:55, Thomas Froeb a écrit :

> Hi,
>
> since the structures have a "name" beside the "title" it's very
> difficult to create internal Links when you renamed (rather  
> "retitled")
> a structure.
> You have to always remember the name you gave the structure first
> because if you want to create internal links you have to use now this
> name else the link is broken. I don't think thats a good Idea  
> because no
> one can guess the hidden "name" of structures....
>
> Regards,
> Thomas


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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Lukas Renggli-2
Hi Dominique, Hi Thomas,

> since the structures have a "name" beside the "title" it's very
> difficult to create internal Links when you renamed (rather
> "retitled") a structure.

thanks for rising the issue with the 'name' and 'title'. To introduce  
a name was a difficult decision for me, and it is definitely not a  
final decision, I just wanted to give it a try.

The reasons were the following:

1. People want to change the title of pages without that the URL  
changes, so that they don't need to update their bookmarks.

2. People want to use Pier to model existing (static) pages and want  
to model the URL to look the exactly the same.

3. People want use strange characters and very long titles, this  
makes the URL unreadable and difficult to parse and generate.

4. People want use the same title twice within the same context, this  
is impossible if we use the title as an unique key.

> You have to always remember the name you gave the structure first
> because if you want to create internal links you have to use now  
> this name else the link is broken. I don't think thats a good Idea
> because no one can guess the hidden "name" of structures....

It is not so hidden after all, you can just copy the part of the URL  
into your link.

> The situation was not that smooth when we were using Plone and custom
> CMS. Even after a while, a large portion of our user base still had
> troubles to make the difference between the name of a structure and
> its title when it came to create links. The consequence was that the
> sites produced during that period contained a lot of endless pages
> and very few links.

Ok, I see that this can be a problem, but I guess that there also a  
couple of solutions to this problem:

a. Let the user browse a tree navigator to help them writing the links.

b. Display the current name more clearly in the edit page.

> So far, we get a better balance between cross-referencing and page
> size, thanks to the sheer simplicity of the way Pier manages its
> links. I fear that we will lose this simplicity if we introduce back
> the same concepts that didn't performed that well during our previous
> attempts.

The current trial is definitely a loss of simplicity, I agree,  
however I don't know of another simple way to get 1. - 4. working  
only having a title. If there are any ideas how these problems could  
be cleanly solved otherwise, I would be happy to discuss and maybe  
(help to) implement them?

Cheers,
Lukas

--
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http://www.lukas-renggli.ch

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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Damien Cassou-3
I often wanted to change a title of a page without changing links to it
so the difference between title and name is useful I think. However, it
should be clear to the user how to reference a page.

Why not displaying in each page (in view mode) the name of the page ?
Something like 'Link me with "/myName"' would be cool.


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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Thomas Froeb

> I often wanted to change a title of a page without changing links to it
> so the difference between title and name is useful I think. However, it
> should be clear to the user how to reference a page.
>
> Why not displaying in each page (in view mode) the name of the page ?
> Something like 'Link me with "/myName"' would be cool.
>
>  
> 1. People want to change the title of pages without that the URL  
> changes, so that they don't need to update their bookmarks.
>
> 2. People want to use Pier to model existing (static) pages and want  
> to model the URL to look the exactly the same.
>
> 3. People want use strange characters and very long titles, this  
> makes the URL unreadable and difficult to parse and generate.
>
> 4. People want use the same title twice within the same context, this  
> is impossible if we use the title as an unique key.
I think it's a good idea to have a name beside the title. I also
intoduced this in my Smallwiki 1 for my XML persistency to have constant
directeries (references) in the filesystem and I use this in Pier too.
I fixed the problem with the internal links for me by changing the  
PRPathLookup >> visitChildren:  method so that it finds the child also
by the title. It is not very clean but works for my purposes.
Perhaps it is better to change the reference of a link - after editing a
page - to the right path?

Regards, Thomas



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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Lukas Renggli-2
> I fixed the problem with the internal links for me by changing the
> PRPathLookup >> visitChildren:  method so that it finds the child also
> by the title. It is not very clean but works for my purposes.

Yes, that sounds like a simple solution: when parsing a path it first  
tries to look it up by name, if it fails by title; paths are always  
printed by name.

> Perhaps it is better to change the reference of a link - after  
> editing a
> page - to the right path?

I think this happens already. At least the paths should be  
automatically rewritten if you rename the target page.

What do others think about this?

Cheers,
Lukas





>
> Regards, Thomas
>
>
>
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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Lukas Renggli-2
>> I fixed the problem with the internal links for me by changing the
>> PRPathLookup >> visitChildren:  method so that it finds the child  
>> also
>> by the title. It is not very clean but works for my purposes.
>
> Yes, that sounds like a simple solution: when parsing a path it first
> tries to look it up by name, if it fails by title; paths are always
> printed by name.

Pier-All-lr.72 does exactly that. It does not fix the reference  
string automatically thou.

Moreover it tries to be smarter when stripping of the seaside parts  
of the path. This works well for standard applications, if you make  
your application the default one (to be run when accessing /seaside)  
bookmarking won't work at all, due to a limitation in Seaside.

Lukas

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Re: [Pier] Internal Link Problems

Dominique Dutoit-2
In reply to this post by Lukas Renggli-2
Hi Thomas, Hi Lukas,

>> I fixed the problem with the internal links for me by changing the
>> PRPathLookup >> visitChildren:  method so that it finds the child  
>> also by the title. It is not very clean but works for my purposes.
>
> Yes, that sounds like a simple solution: when parsing a path it  
> first tries to look it up by name, if it fails by title; paths are  
> always printed by name.
> ...
> What do others think about this?

It sounds like a good compromise for me. The interim solution (as  
implemented in Pier-All.72) already feels much simpler to deal with.  
Thanks!

Dominique

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