[Slashcode-development] Question about section behavior with regard to Sections

[Shane <sh...@lo...>]

This question is about how our plugins should behave in regard for 
sections.

I'm not sure even what I'm asking, so reading this may be an exercise 
for patience. I'll show what I'm asking about by example, first, then 
try to elaborate a bit more at the end about it.

I have a photogallery plugin. Each user can have up to XX galleries. 
Each gallery can be associated with a section and a topic.

If someone hits the gallery plugin, from 'section==index', as in 
http://www.lottadot.com/galleria.pl , then I have it set so that

a) it shows only galleries marked with section 'index'
b) it shows a pulldown that will let you change the section and topic.

Now, goto a section that's marked as 'contained':

http://shane.lottadot.com/galleria.pl

Since you're hitting a section that's contained, it automatically only 
shows galleries that are section = 'shane'.

Is this the *expected* behavior that plugins should handle data display 
with regard to sections such that if the current hit's section ne 
'index' then limit data to that current_section only?

Now, I updated Slash::Apache::User a bit, adding some /my/ options as 
such:

http://www.lottadot.com/~shane/galleries

lists user "shane"'s galleries that are only in section 'index'.

and http://shane.lottadot.com/~shane/galleries

lists user "shane"'s galleries that are only in section 'shane'.

as well as http://mtb.lottadot.com/~shane/galleries

only lists my galleries in section 'mtb'.

That's supposed to mimick the "standard slash behavior".

Now, given that I've spent a little bit of time toying with the 
Slashcode over the past couple of years, if this is expected behavior, 
I understand it.

However, I wonder if *users* don't?

And if they don't, how are you developing your plugins such that they 
*do* understand the section/topic/relationship.

For the adventurous, if you'd like to comment about what should happen 
when a section is 'a collection of sections', or, possibly, when it's 
'isolated', I'd love to see discussion about that as well.

Thanks,
  Shane