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[wiki] Clarification needed on semantics
I’m soon to publish the second article of the two-article series on Textpattern building blocks (the first being here). One of the concepts I’m covering in the second article turns out to be a concept I’ve often wondered about but always forget to follow up with.
When naming custom Sections and Pages, is there a good or bad semantical aspect of giving one of each the same name? For example…
- Section: about
- Page: About
I am actually defining (and will be suggesting) a convention, which will provide new users with a consistent framework by which to name components less confusingly. The above pair doesn’t really relate with my developing convention (which is truly distinctive), but it’s just something I’ve always wondered about. Is it better to not use two identical words, even if one is capitalized?
Any thoughts are welcome.
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Re: [wiki] Clarification needed on semantics
As this would induce a 1 to 1 relationship between sections and pages which is in no way imposed by textpattern I’d rather vote against such a suggestion.
My suggestion for beginners would go just the other way round: Use a single page for all sections as long there are just minor differences between the sections. Add new page templates only for sections which differ to a great amount, stick to conditionals otherwise. Delegate article specifics to forms as much as possible, modularize. Make clever use of CSS selectors by giving each section a unique id or class. It is painful to carry a site makeover layout modification through several page templates.
I’d love to hear about your actual development process, btw…
Last edited by wet (2006-01-12 17:19:05)
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Re: [wiki] Clarification needed on semantics
wet, thanks.
Yeah, you’re right on the money with my position as well, but rather than just push it one way, I’m actually talking about both sides of the coin; one-to-one Vs. one-to-many and where each is strong and weak. I think there is some merit when a site is small enough, and especially for newbs coming to understand TxP initially, to go with the former, at least until there’s better understanding.
As for the naming convention, what I’m calling “building block nomenclature,” you’ll have to wait for the article ;)
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Re: [wiki] Clarification needed on semantics
Hello Dextry,
I thought first that the concept of content was what I needed. At last, a tool that knows a bit about real publishing ! After two days trying to give some sensible structure to my new weblog, I have now a proof that the semantics is mixed up. Here is the proof.
The help says that a section is like a newspaper’s section. It gives sports as an example. (BTW, a section is called a “rubrique” in french, not “section”. Another case of faux-amis.) These are usually called frontpage, local news, classifieds, éditorial (at least in french), opinions, world news, etc. Sometimes they have their own pages and sometimes called “cahiers” in french — I do not know the equivalent in english. So in practice we have section and section of sections, e.g. Culture has Books, Theatre, Movies, etc. I think it is a case of what wet is referring to with his one to many relationship. But let’s drop this distinction.
So I wanted some sections. I thought first of : about, archives, readings, news, opinions, and the like. But how can I have a page for each permalink ? Here is where lies the conceptual difficulty : I was confusing the concept of template with the concept of page. A template can render lots of pages. This is the only way for txp to entertain the 1:N relationship, I guess. I just thought the 1:1 relationship was practically necessary. Maybe too much Movable Type… ;)
A section is designed to hold all the articles that are related to it. If one needs to have some dynamics, e.g. a list of all articles and all articles one an entry per page basis, this needs a lot of conditionals. More importantly, this leads to a complete redesign of the page ! How can we mortals conceive that you can have a page that can look very different according to the way you want to view it ? In fact, as soon as I want to archive my stuff, it seems I have a problem : I cannot have articles that belong to the Archive section !
***
My guess right now is that the way the semantics hinted upon would need to improved. A logical fondation would resolve all basic mereological difficulties : section, category, page, keywords, etc. An improved real-world semantics would certainly help : we need to know that we know what we are talking about.
I am willing to try both to the best of my knowledge. But what I need right now is taking care of some questions. A first would be : am I talking nonsense ? A second : am I forgetting some technical perks that dissolve the point of this post ?
Keep on truckin’,
Frenzyest regards,
B.
PS: wion.com is a simple yet inspiring site !
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Re: [wiki] Clarification needed on semantics
Hi Benoit, and welcome.
First-timers to TxP can get a bit confused by the names of the building blocks (what I call them). It’s not likely that the building block components are going to be renamed, so it’s just a matter of getting used to the labels.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you might check out this article, Understanding Textpattern Building Blocks which maps a few ideas together; however, there’s a part two of that article series coming soon and which will get closer to the mechanics of the building blocks. I’ll even be adding a section that describes how to put a few representative things together that are common with any site — very beginner though. Nevertheless, by the end of it, hopefully, a person will be better positioned to start exploring other areas of creativity, especially with Tags.
Keep on truckin’ indeed!
P.S. thanks for the comp. I don’t know about inspiring, but simplicity is certainly what I’m shooting for.
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