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

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

Hey guys, I realize everyone's busy and all, but I would appreciate 
some replies on this one.

I *know* I'm not the only one who's in the quagmire of "how should a 
plugin's behavior work". I've had people email me asking the same thing 
a few times.

I'm not trying to be an ass, but for me, it's questions like this that 
make it hard to code for Slash. I would rather code things with 
consistency, so that the plugins work *with* Slash, and it's 
organization and look and feel. And I'd rather code it right the first 
time, then have to go back and re-tool.

We (the confused/misguided/whatever) need some direction here.

  Shane

On Jan 14, 2004, at 7:35 AM, Shane wrote:

> 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
>
>
--
One gadget to catch them all, and in digital darkness bind them.