From a149d54fbf110000b3980bba87cac0e86dd03e07 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "http://eric.shared.dre.am/" Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 19:17:14 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] --- ...k_target_search_all_paths_as_fallback.mdwn | 27 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+) create mode 100644 doc/todo/make_link_target_search_all_paths_as_fallback.mdwn diff --git a/doc/todo/make_link_target_search_all_paths_as_fallback.mdwn b/doc/todo/make_link_target_search_all_paths_as_fallback.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 000000000..f971fd8e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/todo/make_link_target_search_all_paths_as_fallback.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +[[!tag wishlist]] + +## Idea + +After searching from the most local to the root for a wikilinkable page, descend into the tree of pages looking for a matching page. + +For example, if I link to \[\[Pastrami\]\] from /users/eric, the current behavior is to look for + + * /users/eric/pastrami + * /users/pastrami + * /users/eric/pastrami + +I'd like it to find /sandwiches/pastrami. + +## Issues + +I know this is a tougher problem, especially to scale efficiently. There is also not a clear ordering unless it is the recursive dictionary ordering (ie the order of a breadth-first search with natural ordering). It would probably require some sort of static lookup table keyed by pagename and yielding a path. This could be generated initially by a breadth-first search and then updated incrementally when pages are added/removed/renamed. In some ways a global might not be ideal, since one might argue that the link above should match /users/eric/sandwiches/pastrami before /sandwiches/pastrami. I guess you could put all matching paths in the lookup table and then evaluate the ordering at parse-time. + +## Motivation + +Since I often access my documents using a text editor, I find it useful to keep them ordered in a heirarchy, about 3 levels deep with a branching factor of perhaps 10. When linking though, I'd like the wiki to find the document for me, since I am lazy. + +Also, many of my wiki pages comprise the canonical local representation of some unique entity, for example I might have /software/ikiwiki. The nesting, however, is only to aid navigation, and shouldn't be considered as part of resource's name. + +## Alternatives + +If an alias could be specified in the page body (for example, /ikiwiki for /software/ikiwiki) which would then stand in for a regular page when searching, then the navigational convenience of folders could be preserved while selectively flattening the search namespace.