Re: [Slashcode-development] A color for each topic?

[Ralph D. <ra...@ma...>]

>Another question is how many topics you are planning on
>having.

Cliff,

I need around fifty topics in the early stages, I think. Obviously, 
distinguishable colors run out at some point, so there are 
diminishing returns in the purely visual realm. If the number of 
topics grows beyond a hundred or so, the distinguisable colors start 
repeating.

But I would really like to be able to handle even more topics... and 
I must admit I'm unclear how that number could affect the 
performance, given that database access must be nearly constant up to 
a much larger number than that, no? (Obviously I don't know enough to 
know!)

>...I honestly see a real easy way to do what is
>necessary, but I'm not sure how well it would affect performance.

With sections or with topics? To me, topics would be more logical, 
and I also have a very good use for sections that is (as the book 
suggests) orthogonal to the topics.

>If I can code something up that looks like it will work, during my
>spare time, I'll send what I have out to the list.

Thank you. That's very generous, even to consider doing so.

In case you don't get that far, please give me a preview of your 
concept. I'm furiously studying the template documentation, and I 
guess I'll have to bite the bullet and become a real Perl person, 
too. Sigh... But it's all worth it, I think, to be able to use this 
impressive system.

And if I have to (mildly) fork my version by adding a field or 
another table, I'm really not all that concerned right now. Based on 
past experience, I'll probably want to "start over" at some point 
down the road anyway (if this whole thing works out) and at that time 
I could incorporate the latest SlashCode revs.

Regards,

Ralph