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#1 2004-03-03 17:43:26

jdueck
Plugin Author
From: Minneapolis, MN
Registered: 2004-02-27
Posts: 147
Website

Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

There seem to be a lot of problems arising from people’s confusion over textpattern’s way of doing things. Especially in the area of Categories vs. Sections.

In wrapping my mind around the issue myself, I’ve created a relatively short article below entitled Textpattern Semantics.

http://www.jdueck.net/article/10/textpattern-semantics

The article is still a work in progress, and I would appreciate any feedback and corrections. Mainly it has been an aid to myself, hopefully it will be to others as well. Specifically, if you think any part of it is unclear, incorrect, irrelevant, etc., let me know how I can change it for the better.

It is narrow in scope and does not attempt to delve into specifics of code or design.

This information may be useful in the future as part of a larger set of documentation. However, I suspect that as changes are made in txp’s UI and/or additional help file info is added, at some point the article may be rendered obsolete.

Joel

Last edited by jdueck (2006-03-06 16:11:38)

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#2 2004-03-03 20:44:19

Dean
Founder (Gone, but not forgotten)
From: Languedoc
Registered: 2004-02-14
Posts: 235
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

That’s wonderful Joel, and wonderfully clear. Thank you so much for taking it on.

It’s late and cloudy with server problems here, so I’ll put together more thoughts on this tomorrow, but I encourage everyone to chime in – particularly on the dangers of the Organise tab, which I agree are clear and present.


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#3 2004-03-03 23:20:16

Drew
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From: Red pillar box, Baker St.
Registered: 2004-02-15
Posts: 53
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Nice work, Joel.


drew mclellan

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#4 2004-03-03 23:48:27

Andrew
Plugin Author
Registered: 2004-02-23
Posts: 730

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

If there were a ratings system here for posts that would definitely get a big A+ from me.

Any upcoming plans for a txp wiki?

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#5 2004-03-04 00:16:10

robertbruce
Member
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: 2004-02-24
Posts: 12
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Joel,
Very good. (compooter: the ratings system is a nice idea.)
Below are some things (related to sections and the organize tab) that I have been trying to sort out for myself — the first part is “solved” for me and the second part is not.
Maybe you can distill something worth clarifying from all of this:

Issue: Having different pages for “front page/section page” and a permalink page generated from them respectively.

Under the content>organize>Sections>article
I have the setting:

Section name: article
Uses page: archive
Uses style: default2
Default? yes
On front page? yes

And (as we know) “article” is the default section for the front page (in other words if I don’t assign another section to an entry/article), but my front page uses my default page, not my archive page as I first assumed based on the above setting;
=>it is the article generated with the permalink that uses the archive page.
So the “front page” uses the default page, though all of the (unassigned section) entries on the front page belong to the “article” section and their permalink-generated pages use the archive, as in the setting above.
The “Section name: article” is in fact for individual articles generated by permalink, which explains the singular noun.
Once understood, it… well, can be set up.

But then if I browse to a different section and generate the page for that section, it uses the page as set below:

Section name: Section1
Uses page: default
Uses style: default2
Default? yes
On front page? yes

and also uses that default page for the permalink which is generated. In contrast to what happens in the “front page.”
(Changing “Default?” to yes or no in this case made no difference. And “On front page?”, as Joel explains, can determine whether that section is included on the front page. BUT: this section entry’s permalink then uses, “logically” the “default” page set for it as opposed to the archive page used by the other default “article” entries.)

So: section “Section1” set to “default” uses “default” for both the section page and “default” for permalink page.
And: section “article” set to “archive” uses “default” for the front page and “archive” for permalink page.

At the moment in the section pages (subsection?) other than for the front page I can’t set a separate page for the permalink pages.
Maybe I am missing something — very possible.
If this could be cleared up for me using the textpatterm interface that would be nice.
(Reasons for being able to do this: for example, in the navigation of the permalink/archive pages I would like to have a link to the “front,” but not have it on the “front” page [front of the section meant here].)

***
Also…
Regarding “archives”:
For me the permalinks generate entries from the “archives” on the simplest level. I mean, logically, for me, past entries are in the archives, right?
I realize some people have set up more levels of archives as well.
I mention this because the term “archives” seems to have different meanings — or maybe its just my interpretation — and I would appreciate some clarification on that.

Robert

Last edited by robertbruce (2004-03-04 00:31:13)

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#6 2004-03-04 00:42:38

Tom
New Member
From: London
Registered: 2004-02-23
Posts: 2

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Separating between content and presentation makes a lot of sense, as suggested above.

However, it would also be interesting to look at 3 primary levels:

Organising: file and article management
Presenting: the look and feel
Writing and Editing the contents.

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#7 2004-03-04 01:35:39

nryberg
Member
From: Minneapolis, MN - US
Registered: 2004-02-24
Posts: 20
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Separation of duties is good in a whole bunch of different ways – this is certainly another good example.

I’ve been trying to understand the ‘deeper’ structure of Textpattern, and that tutorial really helped. Thanks!

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#8 2004-03-04 04:38:38

jdueck
Plugin Author
From: Minneapolis, MN
Registered: 2004-02-27
Posts: 147
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Ah geeze, just when I thought I had a pretty good handle on this.. :)

Side note: can we refrain from confusing example names, at least in our examples here? Naming a section “article” is itself terribly confusing. :) For this reason, I have renamed it “article_section” in what follows, both in quotes and in response.

> robertbruce wrote:

<i>Issue: Having different pages for “front page/section page” and a permalink page generated from them respectively.

[…] =>it is the article generated with the permalink that uses the archive page. </i>

Well, not only that. In addition, if you have a section named “article_section” set to use page “archive”, then the url http://www.foo.com/article/ will display all of the articles in that section and it will use your “archive” page. I will make more clear in my article how sections are actually accessed. The “permalink case” was something I had missed actually. If that didn’t make any sense, forget it and keep reading, it gets easier)

<b>&gt; robertbruce wrote:</b>

<i>So: section “Section1” set to “default” uses “default” for both the section page and “default” for permalink page.
And: section “article_section” set to “archive” [for page] uses “default” for the front page and “archive” for permalink page.</i>

At the moment in the section pages (subsection?) other than for the front page I can’t set a separate page for the permalink pages.</i>

OK, after reading and rereading, it seems to finally come down to these lines. I really especially hung up on the first paragraph, until I parsed it like this:

<i>1. <b>Section1</b> blah blah uses Y for <b>section page</b> and Z for <b>permalink page</b>
2. <b>article_section</b> blah blah uses Z for <b>front page</b> and W for <b>permalink</b> pages</i>

You see the confusion?? You seem to be comparing two sections but your descriptions of each switch focus from “section page” to “front page.” I’m not trying to prove anything here, just trying to follow your wacky scenario :)

Here’s what you need to know: Sections do not “use” any page or style for the front page. A section has no control over how content appears on the front page, <i>only whether or not it appears there.</i> ALL content that is set to appear on the front page uses the same page and style.

Articles within a section ALWAYS use that section’s page when: A) You are actually in that section (browser set to www.mrbunny.com/section_name) or B) When you click on the permalink of an article in that section. <i>This is actually a special case of (A), as following a permalink brings your browser inside that section.</i>

I hope that clears things up. Only one question remaining for me, at least: WHAT DOES THEDEFAULTOPTION DO FOR A SECTION? I assumed it just meant that when composing a new article, that section would be selected by default; now I see this is not the case. More than one selection at a time can be set to “default”. My article does not cover this, and now I wonder that perhaps knowing about it would shed some light on some things.

Joel

Last edited by jdueck (2004-03-04 04:44:06)

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#9 2004-03-04 06:23:55

Andrew
Plugin Author
Registered: 2004-02-23
Posts: 730

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

I think I’ll have to read this 14 times to make sense of what was just said. :)

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#10 2004-03-04 06:31:07

robertbruce
Member
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: 2004-02-24
Posts: 12
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Hmmm…
Anyway, after rereading my thing I realize that I was tending towards wanting more than one front page, which doesn’t make sense!
Robert

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#11 2004-03-04 07:36:53

michaeln3
New Member
From: Nashville, TN
Registered: 2004-02-27
Posts: 3
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Might it possibly be a good idea to have some sort of section titled “static” or something that allowed one to set an article to section “static” and it could be accessed from the root directory of textpattern? This would facilitate generating things like About pages for sites that had lots of static content, as well as dynamic content.

I realize that it isn’t ideal, and sort of screws with the model set in place so far. But I think it would be a very good thing to make it easier for people to publish static content. (obviously this would require more sophisticated mod_rewrites) Is there a better way?

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#12 2004-03-04 10:33:48

Dean
Founder (Gone, but not forgotten)
From: Languedoc
Registered: 2004-02-14
Posts: 235
Website

Re: Textpattern Semantics: A General Revelation

Two areas of obvious confusion I’m cleaning up right away:

  1. When clicking on a section name, the yes/no option ‘Default?’ is incredibly misleading – this isn’t an assignment of the section to the site’s ‘default’ (front page). It is rather an option to have this section be automatically selected (in the Section popup) when creating a new article.
  2. The column headers in the Organise tab are also terribly unclear. In g1.15 they read ‘Site Sections’, ‘Article Categories’, ‘Link Categories’ and ‘Image Categories’. The Site Sections column is also positioned separate to the three Category columns:

It’s a start.


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