Now that version 2.0 is seriously underway, maybe it's a good time to revisit the issue of links between Midgard records. This subject was last aired on the list in December 1999 (search the MACRO archives for 'symlinks'). Experience with Midgard since then has reinforced my own opinion that links are probably one of the most important features that could be added to future versions of Midgard. In the absence of an effective method of linking one record to another, implementing simple things like cross-referencing articles in different topics leads you pretty directly into unpleasant kludges such as the abuse of article extra fields and the ad hoc creation of custom record types. The previous discussions did a fair job of fleshing out the problem, but at the end of the day we seemed to be groping for a good solution. A filesystem-style implementation of symbolic links that is independent of the content of the records is a possibility, but the problem with this approach is that the separation of presentation and content isn't really complete in Midgard - for example, since the score field in article records is used to sort articles for display, if you create a linked article under another topic you may well want to make the value of score in the linked article different from the score of the source article. This information needs to be either in the linked record (so it's no longer a true copy of the original) or in the link itself. So some kind of content expression within links seems inevitable. I think there are a few different ways this might be approached, but before we get into it again, I'd be curious to hear from other users of Midgard if an ability to link records would make it easier to solve problems they might have encountered. Paul N. http://www.commentext.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
