[podwiki] Page rename/move

[David A. B. <Br...@ac...>]

I've been giving page rename/move some thought. I'm not sure how to do it 
yet. A few issues:


- Different formatters make this a potentially a little more difficult, as the 
linking form is different for each one. We probably need an interface in each 
formatter to handle the conversion.

- Direct HTML links (i.e., directly coding a <a href=...>) are probably not 
worth trying to handle.

- It may be desirable to leave a "redirect" page with the old name.

- How do we know which pages have links to the page to be renamed?

One possibility is to keep track of the links that each page has. This would 
be updated on each save of the page and then that could be consulted. I think 
this would require the formatters to return information about links as they 
render the page. The danger here is that this record of links could get out of 
sync; there might need to be a way to force it to be reconstructed. If that is 
the case, should we even bother with it at all? Another question is where 
would this information be kept? Keeping it in a central location might lead to 
locking problems. Keeping it one a page by page basis would alleviate that, 
but, again, where to store it (e.g., a .PageName.links file?).

Another possibility is that we search at the time of rename. This could be 
time consuming, but would eliminate the problem of keeping link lists in sync. 
Since rename is a relatively infrequent operation (I'm making an assumption 
here!), maybe the time penalty is not too serious. Again, this probably 
requires a "rename" interface in the formatters.

With either of these approaches, there is the question of what to do when a 
page that is currently locked has references that need to be renamed.

Just a start on some thoughts here. Let me know if you have any comments or 
other ideas. I'm sure there are things I haven't thought of yet.

Thanks.

-- 
David A. Bright
Br...@ac...
dab...@us...