On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Michael J. Walsh michaelj.walsh@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.