We would very much like some way of building true "indexes" to our MW site. In particular, we'd like to be able to do something like this (only at the "top level" of a page is needed, not enclosed in other markup):
[[Index:Civil War]]
This would automatically create a "Civil War" entry in the index table (if one did not already exist), and would create a link back to not just the page containing the index markup, but also to the position on the page where the 'Index' statement occurred. (A different syntax might be preferable, but that's a minor point :-) ).
This is much easier than creating each category page manually, and is (I think) much more useful for finding particular pieces on info within large pages. It really fulfills a different function that do categories.
Any suggestions appreciated, Ken
How about just putting [[Category:Index]] on all your pages. You'd then have a category which was basically an index to every page.
Hugh
"Ken McDonald" ken@pixologic.com wrote in message news:44970688.2010600@pixologic.com...
We would very much like some way of building true "indexes" to our MW site. In particular, we'd like to be able to do something like this (only at the "top level" of a page is needed, not enclosed in other markup):
[[Index:Civil War]]
This would automatically create a "Civil War" entry in the index table (if one did not already exist), and would create a link back to not just the page containing the index markup, but also to the position on the page where the 'Index' statement occurred. (A different syntax might be preferable, but that's a minor point :-) ).
This is much easier than creating each category page manually, and is (I think) much more useful for finding particular pieces on info within large pages. It really fulfills a different function that do categories.
Any suggestions appreciated, Ken
On 6/21/06, Hugh Prior mediawiki@localpin.com wrote:
How about just putting [[Category:Index]] on all your pages. You'd then have a category which was basically an index to every page.
That doesn't seem to be what he's looking for. If I'm understanding correctly he want's the equivalent of marking index entries in a word processor.
This is sort of a more static form of searching, but he also wants to have the index entries point back to anchors within the article instead of just to the article as a whole.
Rick DeNatale wrote:
On 6/21/06, Hugh Prior mediawiki@localpin.com wrote:
How about just putting [[Category:Index]] on all your pages. You'd then have a category which was basically an index to every page.
That doesn't seem to be what he's looking for. If I'm understanding correctly he want's the equivalent of marking index entries in a word processor.
This is sort of a more static form of searching, but he also wants to have the index entries point back to anchors within the article instead of just to the article as a whole.
Yes, I'm afraid that's correct. The problem with Catgories is that they are "coarse-grained"--it takes some effort to set up a category, so people don't want to create to many of them, plus there is no such thing as "subcategories", plus categories cannot point "within" a page, which is quite problematic for long pages.
As an example of just how nice and precise true indices can be, here is just _part_ of a _single_ index entry in my copy of "SQL in a Nutshell":
--------- indexes ascending creating (PostgeSQL), 59 vs. descending (Oracle), 57 BITMAP (Oracle), 57 ...and so on... ---------
Of course, whether or not such entries are useful depends on the judgment of the person making them. But they certainly can be very useful.
Cheers, Ken
On 6/21/06, Ken McDonald ken@pixologic.com wrote:
The problem with Catgories is that they are "coarse-grained"--it takes some effort to set up a category, so people don't want to create to many of them,
I'm not sure how much easier marking up index entries is. Sure categories take a bit of effort, but anything worthwhile does.
plus there is no such thing as "subcategories",
Well, in fact there are. a category can be in one or more categories. Some find the UI for this a bit subtle, I know I did when I first started using mediawiki. For example, let's say you have categories like Chemistry and Biology. If you put [[Category:Science]] on those category pages they become subcategories of science. Likewise, Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry etc. can be subcategories of chemistry in a similar fashion.
So the category machinery in mediawiki isn't as simplistic as it first appears. Wikipedia makes use of it in various ways, the policies for that use have gotten worked out by various Wikipedians who supply the labor to fashion and evolve the various approaches to categorization used there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_categorization
plus categories cannot point "within" a page, which is quite problematic for long pages.
As an example of just how nice and precise true indices can be, here is just _part_ of a _single_ index entry in my copy of "SQL in a Nutshell":
indexes ascending creating (PostgeSQL), 59 vs. descending (Oracle), 57 BITMAP (Oracle), 57 ...and so on...
Of course, whether or not such entries are useful depends on the judgment of the person making them. But they certainly can be very useful.
I'm not saying that such an idea MIGHT be useful for mediawiki, but there are alternatives such as the search features of mediawiki to find articles followed by the 'find in page' function found in most browsers. In some ways these can be more useful since they allow a user to approach finding information on his own terms rather than relying on the indexing choices made by an author or editor, this from someone who is often frustrated when a book's index fails to index the terms I'm looking for and I find myself scratching my head for alternatives which might be there.
As an aside, I find myself wondering how one would handle the case of an index term occuring multiple times within a long article. This seems like a case where using the browser's 'find in page' function would be much more natural than hyperlinking back and forth between the index and the article to find all of the occurences.
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