On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Michael J. Walsh
<michaelj.walsh(a)oceanfree.net> wrote:
Ok, i have better examples.
In any hierarchical file system there is a certain amount of logic
having the filename, "Part 1" displayed in (slightly) bigger font
than the path, "Principia Mathematica".
Filenames conventionally encode information in a way that section
numbers don't. In MediaWiki itself, Brion reverted a change a while
ago which changed SpecialFoo.php to specials/Foo.php. He changed it
to specials/SpecialFoo.php, putting info in the filename that's
redundant to the path. This is because applications expect the
filename to have meaning on its own, even if you strip the path. Text
editors commonly put the filename on the tab, but not the path.
Other internet directories typically display the last
part in bigger
print. Open directory do this:
http://www.google.com/Top/Regional/Europe/Italy/
But in this case, "Italy" logically implies "Europe" and
"Regional".
The latter two pieces of info are in fact entirely redundant. "Part
1" does not logically imply "Principia Mathematica" at all: in fact,
if you don't already know you're reading Principia Mathematica, "Part
1" is completely useless as an identifier.
It would be like having the <title> for an old version of a page in
MediaWiki be "Revision as of 2008-01-04" instead of "Articlename".
"Articlename - revision as of 2008-01-04" might be better still, but
if you're going to emphasize one piece of information, it should be
which article it is, not which part of the article. Similarly, we put
the site name at the end of the title, not at the beginning, so if you
have many tabs open from the same site, you can easily tell them
apart.
I think it's clear that analogies exist in both directions here. If
this is going to move forward (which looks vaguely unlikely), the
format needs to be considered on its own merits, not by analogy.