[ZDP] Keywords and Categories: Discussion based on Use Cases

[Jim Washington]

Perhaps this is just a bit off-topic, but

Sometimes the answer you are looking for is not in any topic you might
think of when you have the question.

As an example, I see often that people want to know if a thing is of a
particular type:

Q.  How do I know if a thing is a list so I can work around the "Strings
are not allowed as input to the in tag" error?

Ordinarily, if one has not read the list archives, the answer is a bit
of an epiphany:

A.  You don't.  Make sure it is a list by using <select multiple
name="myselect:list">.

One would not ordinarily look in "Zope HTML extensions" to find this bit
of wisdom, because the context is "handling variables returned from a
form".  

Two things:

1.  Assure that sibling ideas like the above are accessible one from the
other; use hypertext for what is is really good for.  (And let the book
publisher figure out how to put it in print)

2.  I prefer Tables of Contents that relate to what I am trying to do. 
I would like to see: "Using select lists", which would walk me through
creating the list to displaying it to doing something with its output,
showing the special pitfalls of multiple selects.  I would not like to
see a TOC with "Zope in HTML Forms" and "<dtml-in>" and "Python lists",
because I would have to somehow zen that these are all related to my
usage of a multiple select.  

Just my two cents.

-- Jim Washington


Rik Hoekstra wrote:
> 
> >[RH]OK. In what form? Just (1)straight keywords/categories or (2)with
> >subcategories? If the first, why not a 'global' registry (please let's keep
> >this simple and pragmatic)
> 
> mmm, I wouldn't use subcategories.... this would make it too difficult...
> Why not let the catagories be on several levels:
> 
> eg. you've the categories DTML, Python, Zope...
> 
> Then this could be
> 
> Zope
>   Python
>   DTML
> 
> But also!
> 
> Python
>   Zope
> 
> Thus categories/subcategories are all the same. How sub they are depends
> only on which level they appear.
> 
> Tom.
> 
> [RH] Agreed for your cases, and perhaps also in the following:
> 
>    Security
>    * roles
>    * permissions
>    * passwords
>    * authenticated_user
> 
> but if you have
> 
>    DTML
>    * syntax
>    * variables
> 
> the same could be repeated for python methods and to an extent also to
> external methods. In these cases syntax and variables only have meaning in a
> specific context. I am not against flattening the category list to
> dtml
> dtmlsyntax
> dtmlvariables
> pythonmethods
> pythonmethodsvariables
> 
> But in these cases you will have to put in more categories (dtml with
> dtmlsyntax etc) or the Catalog won't know it's way around
> 
> Rik
> 
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