...
...Messy. what would something like this behave?
22003-this-is-first-doc.xml 22003-this-is-second-doc.xml ...
that's what I meant by the system having to ensure the uniqueness of IDs. It is certainly problematic.
Look at Forrest, we have been having super-easy revision for a while now.
howto-multi.xml revision-howto-multi-2003-09-14.xml revision-howto-multi-2003-09-15.xml
Here is how it shows: http://xml.apache.org/forrest/community/howto/multi/howto-multi.html
So you always get the latest version and can also see the revisions.
I agree that a pure ID for naming pieces of content might be better, provided lookup is super-easy and doesn't get in the way of editing, keeping track of changes etc., and the ID's stay readable and "communicable".
I really think that using ids /instead/ of filenames is not a good idea.
URIs are about where to find a certain information, not necessarily with a specific date version.
That's why the Forrest revisions have a defined date (or number) in the name, so that that stays the same.
What I would propose, and that I would like to implement, is an indexing system that scans all source files and associates a number with that file.
This means that a file can have a barcode attached to it, and if we keep a repository of site barcodes, we can have a fully resolvable barcoded page.
Then, when pages are added or changed, the system would index the files again, and add other new pages with incremented numbers.
Note that there is another trick in this: if I also index site.xml, I can get to know the *history* of the site: ids, and can automatically do redirects.
For example, I start with this site.xml.
<site label="My Site"> <mynicepage label="Nico Page" url="nicepage.html"/> </site>
I can refer to that in my docs as:
<link href="site:mynicepage">
(note that site nodes can be hierarchical)
Then one day I change the node to be:
<site label="My Site"> <mynicepage label="Nico Page" url="newnicepage.html"/> </site>
The system would understand that the node leads to another page, and would generate redirects from the previous link to the new one.
Of course, we can do this *if* we don't create different pages at the same old locations, unless we generate URIs following site.xml instead of the file structure (I do not reccomend ATM).
--
Nicola Ken Barozzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- verba volant, scripta manent -
(discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
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