Thanks Jeffrey, I didn't know about the "+" = " " thingy - it rather
negates what I have been saying.
I had sought to reserve the "+" for a join, so that you tag your
article
tags:radio astronomy so that it would be found in a list queried on
radio, or astronomy or both radio and astronomy, obviously the last
list
would be shorter and a query on radioastronomy would fail.
Jeffrey Blattman wrote:
> maybe it's because i don't really "get" tagging, but what
confuses me
> is that some tags cannot be represented w/ a single word. for
example,
> i might want to tag something with "radio astronomy". tagging it
with
> "radio" or "astronomy" doesn't capture the intent at all. i would
> naturally want/try to quote the phrase.
>
> p.s., you can use the "+" char to encode a space in a url ... a
little
> nicer than %2 or whatever.
>
> Allen Gilliland wrote:
>> My opinion is that the way it works now is still the best, where
tags
>> have to be a single word and if you want to do phrases then use
>> underscores or dashes.
>>
>> I think the main reason against allowing for tag phrases is
>> complexity. You are increasing the complexity both on the user
input
>> side as well as on the retrieval side and for what I consider a
>> marginal benefit. On the UI side of things I think it's
confusing to
>> many users to allow for quoted phrases. Then on the retrieval side
>> you are also confusing things because how do you get at the url for
>> "modern art"? /tags/modern%2Bart ... that's not something users can
>> type in by hand which is part of what's nice about forcing single
>> word tags.
>>
>> As for Elias' suggestion of allowing phrases and converting the
>> spaces to underscores, I think that's a little dicey. For one, it
>> still leaves the user confusion aspect around using quoted phrases,
>> which I believe most users don't really want. On the technical
side
>> I think you may be playing with fire though because why should the
>> tag "modern art" become modern_art instead of modern-art. And
>> regardless of which you convert to, is that the value stored in the
>> db? That would mean that when the user comes back to that entry
the
>> tags list will show modern_art instead of their original tag phrase
>> which can be confusing for users as well.
>>
>> My belief is that the reason why tagging has been successful at
>> places like del.icio.us and flickr is because the rules are
short and
>> simple. Tags are separated by spaces, period. It's a slight
blow in
>> functionality but keeps the usability as simple and easy as
possible.
>>
>> -- Allen
>>
>>
>> Anil Gangolli wrote:
>>>
>>> Oh. I must have missed the discussion about not supporting spaces
>>> in tags because I would at least have made an attempt to convince
>>> people to support spaces in tags.
>>>
>>> It comes up for tags like "modern art" that are not really
>>> meaningful to separate.
>>>
>>> Regarding Elias's proposal, I initially felt against it,
because I'd
>>> rather use real spaces in the tags. That's still the case, but
less
>>> so, because I did a quick Technorati sampling, and there already
>>> seems to be a sizable rift between the true space users and the
>>> underscore users.
>>>
>>> So for example Technorati lists 494 posts using "modern_art"
>>> compared to 981 using "modern art" and differences in the
thousands
>>> for "george bush" compared to "george_bush", with the latter
tag far
>>> in the lead.
>>>
>>>
>>> --a.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Elias Torres"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>> To: <[email protected]>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 4:09 PM
>>> Subject: Re: Apache Roller 3.1RC1 (incubating) ready for testing
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Allen Gilliland wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Anil Gangolli wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I installed 3.1RC1 on my dev box. Seemed to be clean using a
>>>>>> fresh db
>>>>>> installation and 3.0 required-jars package.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was trying the tag-related functionality out and I see a few
>>>>>> issues:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (1) The tag entry field on the entry edit page uses space
>>>>>> separation
>>>>>> and doesn't seem to accomodate tags that include spaces. I
tried
>>>>>> quoting with double-quotes; that didn't seem to work.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, that is the expected behavior. We talked about this
when we
>>>>> were
>>>>> evaluating the tags proposal and decided that most sites seem
to be
>>>>> using the solution that we have, where tags cannot be multi word
>>>>> phrases.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I now have a requirement at IBM to support spaces with the
following
>>>> caveat. If you enter "elias is cool" it will be stored as
>>>> elias_is_cool.
>>>> In other words, we support it as an input (double quotes) but
we don't
>>>> store it that way. Are you guys cool with it?
>>>>
>>>> -Elias
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (2) The user guide link in the JSP footer seems to point off to
>>>>>> an old
>>>>>> 2.x guide. I was looking for and couldn't find the
documentation in
>>>>>> the 3.1 guides on the various forms of URLs, specifically I was
>>>>>> looking to test the tag-based URLs. I know I've seen it
somewhere,
>>>>>> but I can't remember where.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm. For the user guide I think it would be nice if these
kinds of
>>>>> links pointed to urls within the app, like /roller-ui/docs/*,
for
>>>>> user
>>>>> documentation about the current app version.
>>>>>
>>>>> I may also take this opportunity to throw out an idea I had a
little
>>>>> while ago for documentation that was related to this. It
seems to me
>>>>> that since blogging is supposed to website publishing made easy
>>>>> then one
>>>>> of the key components of a really mature blog system would be
good
>>>>> documentation throughout the application. I haven't been a big
>>>>> documentation contributor in the past, but I think that's more
>>>>> because I
>>>>> felt the app needed more work and less docs at the time. Now
that
>>>>> the
>>>>> app is getting more and more mature it may be time to
consider a nice
>>>>> solution for providing rich documentation.
>>>>>
>>>>> So what I had been thinking about was a way where we could write
>>>>> all of
>>>>> our documentation in small and easily reusable components,
>>>>> possibly in
>>>>> xml, which we could easily use to either 1) provide a full
help guide
>>>>> document (aka user guide) or 2) take bits and pieces of the docs
>>>>> and be
>>>>> able to insert them directly into the appropriate pages.
>>>>>
>>>>> So for example, if a user is on the 'Templates' page and is
>>>>> working on
>>>>> customizing their blog then we could have some documentation
hooks
>>>>> which
>>>>> provide contextual help info like ...
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. what is this page for?
>>>>> 2. what can i do on this page?
>>>>> 3. how do i use this page?
>>>>> 4. what do each of the fields on this page mean?
>>>>> 5. how does this affect my blog?
>>>>>
>>>>> So for the 'Templates' page the top of the page may provide
quick
>>>>> links
>>>>> which give a couple paragraphs of text explaining what the
page is
>>>>> for
>>>>> and what you do on the page. Then you have the large text
area where
>>>>> you can modify your templates which could have a little tool
tip icon
>>>>> next to it which would tell the user what that field is for.
Then
>>>>> possibly at the bottom of the page we include a quick reference
>>>>> sheet of
>>>>> the models and macros to help users while they are authoring
>>>>> templates.
>>>>>
>>>>> One of the things that I think Roller has been hurting on is
>>>>> usability
>>>>> and in my mind of the most important elements of usability
when it
>>>>> comes
>>>>> to web tools is contextual documentation. I think doing
something
>>>>> like
>>>>> this could really help make Roller a more user friendly blogging
>>>>> system.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (3) Tags don't seem to be displayed anywhere in the "basic"
theme at
>>>>>> all. Shouldn't we update this to show tags on entries,
including an
>>>>>> actual rel tag ?
>>>>>
>>>>> I think there may not have been any real consensus about whether
>>>>> or not
>>>>> to promote tags in the themes since in many cases users may
not be
>>>>> using
>>>>> tags.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (4) I couldn't get anything to show up in the "Hot Tags"
area of the
>>>>>> front page. Haven't investigated what is happening yet;
this may be
>>>>>> my own problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dunno about that one.
>>>>>
>>>>> -- Allen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --a.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>>>> To: <[email protected]>
>>>>>> Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 5:57 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Apache Roller 3.1RC1 (incubating) ready for testing
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thank you and yes, I meant 3.1.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> With releasing 3.1, re-releasing 2.3.1 and working on 3.2 I've
>>>>>>> got a
>>>>>>> couple
>>>>>>> too many versions floating around in my head.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - Dave
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 11/20/06, Jeffrey Blattman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>>>>>>>> did you mean 3.1 RC1, or are we skipping 3.1?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Dave wrote:
>>>>>>>> > I've merged all applicable bug fixes from trunk to the
>>>>>>>> roller_3.1
>>>>>>>> > branch and prepared a first release candidate for the 3.1
>>>>>>>> release.
>>>>>>>> You
>>>>>>>> > can find the release files and latest 3.1 docs here:
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > http://people.apache.org/~snoopdave/apache-roller-3.1/
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > Here's the What's New in Roller 3.1 page:
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>>
http://rollerweblogger.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Roller_3.1_WhatsNew
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > Release candidates are for testing purposes only.
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > Please help out. The sooner you download, test and report
>>>>>>>> bugs the
>>>>>>>> > sooner we'll be able to fix them and get the release
out. So
>>>>>>>> please
>>>>>>>> > help out the project and take RC1 for a spin.
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > - Dave
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
--
Dave
*David Levy *
