Change Projects link to point to projects DB

[ikiwiki.git] / doc / forum / an_alternative_approach_to_structured_data.mdwn

diff --git a/doc/forum/an_alternative_approach_to_structured_data.mdwn b/doc/forum/an_alternative_approach_to_structured_data.mdwn
index eb6ee444593bb34b388b17213ace0136e11208a6..6e6af8adbec413ff9c7405484735cf85520d47bc 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/forum/an_alternative_approach_to_structured_data.mdwn
+++ b/doc/forum/an_alternative_approach_to_structured_data.mdwn
@@ -18,6 +18,12 @@ I think it could be really powerful and useful, especially if it becomes part of
 
 > It looks like an interesting idea.  I don't have time right now to look at it in depth, but it looks interesting. -- [[Will]]
 
+> I agree such a separation makes some sense. But note that the discussion on [[todo/structured_page_data]]
+> talks about associating data types with fields for a good reason: It's hard to later develop a good UI for
+> querying or modifying a page's data if all the data has an implicit type "string". --[[Joey]]
+
+>> I'm not sure that having an implicit type of "string" is really such a bad thing.  After all, Perl itself manages with just string and number, and easily converts from one to the other.  Strong typing is generally used to (a) restrict what can be done with the data and/or (b) restrict how the data is input.  The latter could be done with some sort of validated form, but that, too, could be decoupled from looking up and returning the value of a field. --[[KathrynAndersen]]
+
 ## Second Pass
 
 I have written additional plugins which integrate with the [[plugins/contrib/field]] plugin to both set and get structured page data.
@@ -27,3 +33,31 @@ I have written additional plugins which integrate with the [[plugins/contrib/fie
 * [[plugins/contrib/ymlfront]] - looks for YAML-format data at the front of a page; this is just one possible back-end for the structured data
 
 --[[KathrynAndersen]]
+
+> I'm not an IkiWiki committer ([[Joey]] is the only one I think)
+> but I really like the look of this scheme. In particular,
+> having `getfield` interop with `field` without being *part of*
+> `field` makes me happy, since I'm not very keen on `getfield`'s
+> syntax (i.e. "ugh, yet another mini-markup-language without a
+> proper escaping mechanism"), but this way people can experiment
+> with different syntaxes while keeping `field` for the
+> behind-the-scenes bits.
+>
+>> I've started using `field` on a private site and it's working
+>> well for me; I'll try to do some code review on its
+>> [[plugins/contrib/field/discussion]] page. --s
+>
+> My [[plugins/contrib/album]] plugin could benefit from
+> integration with `field` for photos' captions and so on,
+> probably... I'll try to work on that at some point.
+>
+> [[plugins/contrib/report]] may be doing too much, though:
+> it seems to be an variation on `\[[inline archive="yes"]]`,
+> with an enhanced version of sorting, a mini version of
+> [[todo/wikitrails]], and some other misc. I suspect it could
+> usefully be divided up into discrete features? One good way
+> to do that might be to shuffle bits of its functionality into
+> the IkiWiki distribution and/or separate plugins, until there's
+> nothing left in `report` itself and it can just go away.
+>
+> --[[smcv]]