ikiwiki/doc/todo/feed_enhancements_for_inline_pages.mdwn

[[!template id=gitbranch branch=GiuseppeBilotta/inlinestuff author="Giuseppe Bilotta"]]

I rearranged my patchset once again, to clearly identify the origin and
motivation of each patch, which is explained in the following.

In my ikiwiki-based website I have the following situation:

* `$config{usedirs}` is 1
* there are a number of subdirectories (A/, B/, C/, etc)
  with pages under each of them (A/page1, A/page2, B/page3, etc)
* 'index pages' for each subdirectory: A.mdwn, B.mdwn, C.mdwn;
  these are rather barebone, only contain an inline directive for their
  respective subpages and become A/index.html, etc
* there is also the main index.mdwn, which inlines A.mdwn, B.mdwn, C.mdwn,
  etc (i.e. the top-level index files are also inlined on the homepage)

With the upstream `inline` plugin, the feeds for A, B, C etc are located
in `A/index.atom`, `B/index.atom`, etc; their title is the wiki name and
their main link goes to the wiki homepage rather than to their
respective subdir (e.g. I would expect `A/index.atom` to have a link to
`http://website/A` but it actually points to `http://website/`).

This is due to them being generated from the main index page, and is
fixed by the first patch: ‘inline: base feed urls on included page
name’. As explained in the commit message for the patch itself, this is
a ‘forgotten part’ from a previous page vs destpage fix which has
already been included upstream.

> Applied. --[[Joey]] 

>> Thanks.

The second patch, ‘inline: improve feed title and description
management’, aligns feed title and description management by introducing
a `title` option to complement `description`, and by basing the
description on the page description if the entry is missing. If no
description is provided by either the directive parameter or the page
metadata, we use a user-configurable default based on both the page
title and wiki name rather than hard-coding the wiki name as description.

> Reviewing, this seems ok, but I don't like that 
> `feed_desc_fmt` is "safe => 0". And I question if that needs
> to be configurable at all. I say, drop that configurable, and
> only use the page meta description (or wikiname for index).
> 
> Oh, and could you indent your `elsif` the same as I? --[[Joey]] 

>> I hadn't even realized that I was nesting ifs inside else clauses,
>> sorry. I think you're also right about the safety of the key, after
>> all it only gets interpolated with known, safe strings.

>>> I did not mean to imply that I thought it safe. --[[Joey]] 

>>>> Sorry for assuming you implied that. I do think it is safe, though
>>>> (I defaulted to not safe just to err on the safe side).

>> The question is what to do for pages that do not have a description
>> (and are not the index). With your proposal, the Atom feed subtitle
>> would turn up empty. We could make it conditional in the default
>> template, or we could have `$desc` default to `$title` if nothing
>> else is provided, but at this point I see no reason to _not_ allow
>> the user to choose a way to build a default description.

>>> RSS requires the `<description>` element be present, it can't
>>> be conditionalized away. But I see no reason to add the complexity
>>> of an option to configure a default value for a field that
>>> few RSS consumers likely even use. That's about 3 levels below useful.
>>> --[[Joey]]

>>>> The way I see it, there are three possibilities for non-index pages
>>>> which have no description meta: (1) we leave the
>>>> description/subtitle in feed blank, per your current proposal here
>>>> (2) we hard-code some string to put there and (3) we make the
>>>> string to put there configurable. Honestly, I think option #1 sucks
>>>> aesthetically and option #2 is conceptually wrong (I'm against
>>>> hard-coding stuff in general), which leaves option #3: however
>>>> rarely used it would be, I still think it'd be better than #2 and
>>>> less unaesthetical than #1.

>>>> I'm also not sure what's ‘complex’ about having such an option:
>>>> it's definitely not going to get much use, but does it hurt to have
>>>> it? I could understand not wasting time putting it in, but since
>>>> the code is written already … (but then again I'm known for being a
>>>> guy who loves options).

The third patch, ‘inline: allow assigning an id to postform/feedlink’,
does just that. I don't currently use it, but it can be particularly
useful in the postform case for example for scriptable management of
multiple postforms in the same page.

> Applied. --[[Joey]] 

>> Thanks.

In one of my wiki setups I had a terminating '/' in `$config{url}`. You
mention that it should not be present, but I have not seen this
requirement described anywhere. Rather than restricting the user input,
I propose a patch that prevents double slashes from appearing in links
created by `urlto()` by fixing the routine itself.

> If this is fixed I would rather not put the overhead of fixing it in
> every call to `urlto`. And I'm not sure this is a comprehensive
> fix to every problem a trailing slash in the url could cause. --[[Joey]]

>> Maybe something that sanitizes the config value would be better instead?
>> What is the policy about automatic changing user config?

>>> It's impossible to do for perl-format setup files. --[[Joey]]

>>>> Ok. In that case I think that we should document that it must be
>>>> slash-less. I'll cook up a patch in that sense.

The inline plugin is also updated (in a separate patch) to use `urlto()`
rather than hand-coding the feed urls. You might want to keep this
change even if you discard the urlto patch.

> IIRC, I was missing a proof that this always resulted in identical urls,
> which is necessary to prevent flooding. I need such a proof before I can
> apply that. --[[Joey]] 

>> Well, the URL would obviously change if the `$config{url}` ended in
>> slash and the `urlto` patch (or other equivalent) went into effect.

>> Aside from that, if I read the code correctly, the only other extra
>> thing that `urlto` does is to `beautify_url_path` the `"/".$to` part,
>> and the only way this would cause the url to be altered is if the
>> feed name was "index" (which can easily happen) and
>> `$config{htmlext}` was set to something like `.rss` or
>> `.rss.1`.

>> So there is a remote possibility that a different URL would be
>> produced.