[dokuwiki] Re: Disabling namespaces in DokuWiki?

Just my 2 cents...but I disagree with your example.  In my mind at least, the 
namespace default makes sense as most links on a particular page are meant to 
provide more detailed information that will expand on the page topic.  In this 
case, that would imply a namespace which falls underneath the current one, i.e. 
the root namespace being very high-level information, the next level being more 
detailed, and so forth.

Having a "non-specific" namespace value interpreted as a page off the root 
namespace only shifts the user burden.  I think your point that user's 
shouldn't have to know these details is a good one but implies that users are 
either lazy or stupid.  I would argue that the majority of wiki users in that 
mindset will be simply expanding on the page in question and thus a non-root 
namespace default for links is the correct way to go.  Only the more 
knowledgeable user's that are interlinking seemingly un-related pages would 
need to understand how the namespace hierarchy works.

Ultimately, the only solution to erase user ambiguity in either paradigm would 
be to require full namespace syntax in all cases, be that ":Italy" or 
":vehicles:cars:brands:Italy".  For your case, perhaps altering your dokuwiki 
code to always prepend a ":" to any link that doesn't begin with one would be 
the way to mitigate user confusion.

B


> -----Original Message-----
> From: dokuwiki-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:dokuwiki-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Martin Erlandsson
> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 5:07 AM
> To: dokuwiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [dokuwiki] Re: Disabling namespaces in DokuWiki?
> 
> Thanks for the reply!
> 
> Yes, you are right. And we will stop using namespaces from now on.
> 
> However, we have a whole site with hundreds of pages already using
> namespaces and we do not want that anymore.  Migrating from a
> namespaced wiki to a non-namespaced one will be troublesome because of
> the default rule that a page created within a namespace is assumed to
> belong to that namespace.
> 
> Example:
> 
> If someone edits the page "vehicles:cars:brands:Ferrari" and adds the
> link [[Italy]] (to inform readers about the Ferrari origin), that link
> will point to "vehicles:cars:brands:Italy". This does not make much
> sense.
> Since I know about this problem, I would instead write the link as
> [[:Italy]] and it would end up in the root as desired. But most users
> do not know about this, and they should not need to!
> 
> It would be great if this default link behavior was configurable!
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> /Martin
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Felipe Uderman
> <felipe.uderman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Don´t know if I undertood it correctly, but if you want to disable the
> namespace feature, why don´t you just don´t use the namespaces? I mean,
> just place everything on the root namespace, and the nemespaces are gone.
> >
> > []´s,
> >
> > - Uderman
> > http://www.temadigital.com.br/
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 6:16 AM, Andreas Gohr <andi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Martin Erlandsson
> <marterland@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > Hello again! I'll rephrase the question and hope someone can provide
> a short
> >> > reply:
> >> >
> >> > Is the namespace feature in DokuWiki configurable in any way?
> >>
> >> no
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> splitbrain.org
> >> --
> >> DokuWiki mailing list - more info at
> >> http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:mailinglist
> >
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