As I read through my original reply, it sounds a bit soap-boxy now.  I 
apologize if it came across that way - it was getting late.

> My concern with Oliver's patch is that it over complicates the
> model. I'm a little leary of creating a complex inheritance 
> heirarchy for Radiant. 

My thoughts are not so much tied to whether the model should be 
abstracted to the point of "generic HTML element" from which everything 
inherits (though that could prove smart).  Instead, my view is that in a 
content management system, the goal should be to manage content.  This 
means managing pages, but also pictures, video, etc.

> Yes pages and images and redirects have URLs, but beyond that
> they have very little in common. Sometimes things that look similar
> are not similar at all.

A small business user or any user with basic needs still requires 
method(s) to manage all the parts.  It seems counter productive to the 
simplicity of Radiant to say, "We'll help you store and manage your 
pages. Oh, you need pictures too?  Here's an FTP client"  It seems that 
even a no frills CMS tool should address all the content.

This isn't to say it has to be live in v0.6 but is it even a future 
goal?  Having extension developers slog through various ways to 
implement these ideas may be a great development plan but eventually, I 
think that Radiant should own this domain.

Even if it's just to offer a basic storage architecture and give an API 
to developers to customize the UI so that they can match their special 
use cases (like store an image with each page vs. some centralized 
administration UI).

> I'm not ruling out what Oliver is suggesting, but I am having
> difficulty seeing the true value.

Would it not strengthen the platform to tackle the storage and 
management issue for all content?  I think that many of the 
extensions/customizations out there are continually reinventing these 
wheels because it is a core need of any CMS system.

Other values come to play where you can treat these different elements 
commonly:
 * CRUD operations
 * User permissions and levels
 * Caching
 * Rules for handling simultaneous edits

I can give technical arguments like this all day long but, really though 
- when it comes down to it - I keep seeing extensions and developer 
requests for the same recurring needs.  It just smells like there is a 
simpler, more developer friendly, DRY-er solution.  And my mind keeps 
refactoring this problem space back into Radiant.

-- 
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