1 A couple of suggestions for improving the usefulness of pagespecs:
3 * @ to match [^/]* (i.e. all pages exactly one level below this one)
4 * initial ./ to mean "from the page the pagespec is running from".
5 This would require some architectural changes and a change to the
6 interface for pagespec_match. What do you think? I have
7 lots of pages a/b/c.mdwn that inline "a/b/c/*".
11 > I want this too, so that the [[examples]] can use pagespecs that don't
12 > have to be changed when the pages are moved around. I don't know how I
13 > feel about the "@" thing, but "./" seems good. I take it you've looked at
14 > how to implement it?
16 > It's worth mentioning that there's a bit of an inconsistency; wikilinks
17 > match relative by default and absolute if prefixed with a "/", while
18 > pagespecs match absolute by default. It would be nice to clear up that
19 > inconsistency somehow, it's on my little list of things in ikiwiki that
20 > arn't ideal. :-) --[[Joey]]
22 I've looked at how to implement "./", yes, and I was a little hesitant
23 to disturb the elegant implementation of pagespecs as it is now. That's
24 why I wrote this todo item rather than just a patch. :) As I see it,
25 the simplest thing to do is check globs when building the pagespec
26 expression and translate "./foo" to "$from.'/foo'" in the resulting
27 expression, and then add the $from paramater to pagespec_match. This does
28 require an API change for all plugins which use pagespecs but hopefully
29 it should be minor. I will work on a patch tomorrow.
31 My use case for "@" (which is kind of a crummy symbol, but whatever) is
32 my [projects page](http://www.betacantrips.com/projects/). I want to inline
33 "summary" or "introduction" pages that are exactly one level below the
34 inlining page, but not tarballs or other junk that might be in
35 subdirectories. (The issue is confounded here because of my index.mdwn
36 patch, but the principle is the same.) I chose "@" because it's similar in
37 physical shape to "*" but enclosed, suggesting limitations. I also thought
38 it would be useful in simplifying hacks like in [[plugins/map]] but I see
39 now that I was mistaken.. "four or fewer levels deep" would be
40 "@ or @/@ or @/@/@ or @/@/@/@". Well, I think it has a certain appeal but
41 I can see why it might not be much of an improvement. :) --Ethan
43 > Seems to me that ".." would be the natural thing to use, not "@". --[[Joey]]
45 >> I don't understand.. "a/b/.." matches a/b/c but not a/b/c/d ? That doesn't
46 >> seem natural to me at all. --Ethan
48 >>> Ah.. in that case, why not use "a/b/* and !a/b/*/*" ? No need for a new
49 >>> symbol. --[[Joey]]
51 >>>> I know it's not necessary, but it would be helpful. --Ethan
53 OK, I took a shot at implementing the changes. I was thinking about making
54 pagespecs relative by default but I couldn't decide whether page
55 `foo/bar` inlining `*` should match `foo/bar/*` or `foo/*`.
56 So I punted and left things as absolute, with `./*` matching
57 `foo/bar/*`, which I think is pretty clear.
58 The patch is at [ikidev](http://ikidev.betacantrips.com/patches/pagespec_enhancements.patch)
59 and you can see it work at
60 [this page](http://ikidev.betacantrips.com/one/two/three/index.html) or
61 [this page](http://ikidev.betacantrips.com/one/two/three/princess.html) --Ethan
63 > Nice patch, though I see the following problems with it:
64 > * The sole pagespec_match in IkiWiki::Render probably should have `$p`
65 > as its third parameter. This will allow add_depends to add a
66 > dependency on a pagespec that matches relative to the page. I made this
67 > changes and it seems to work, new pages are noticed in updates.
71 > * `! $from` fails to match pages named "0" :-)
73 >> I don't understand. How did you even get $from into the
74 >> translated pagespec?
76 > * '/./ matches any letter, not just "." :-) :-)
78 >> Oof, thanks for catching that.
80 > * One other major problem. If you look at the doc/examples/blog/index.mdwn
81 > I changed it to use relative globs like "./posts/*", but they didn't work,
82 > because it looked for examples/blog/indexposts/* instead of
83 > examples/blog/index/posts/*. And, of course, what I really expected it to
84 > look for was examples/blog/posts/*. I think you may have made the wrong
85 > choice about that, so I changed it to go the other way. What do you think?
87 >> I could have sworn I made a change like that -- I was gonna make a call to
88 >> basename() or something .. wait, I might have decided not to, because it
89 >> would interfere with my index patch. Yeah, I guess my code was wrong.
90 >> Don't "nice patches" usually work? :) My test cases were mostly "./*",
91 >> so it slipped under the radar.
93 >> As for what it should have done, that's much harder! My gut feeling is that
94 >> "a/b/c.mdwn" inlining `./*` wants `a/b/c/*` and not `a/b/*`, and this is
95 >> what I programmed for. I also feel that "a/b/c" inlining `./d/*` could go
96 >> either way. Ideally we'd check for both, maybe using bestlink?
98 >> The issue might be confounded some by your use of an index page, and
99 >> ikiwiki doesn't have good support for those yet :) .
100 >> I think ideally your index page would be treated as inlining from
101 >> examples/blog/. To resolve this issue we should consider, for example:
102 >> clothes/pants inlines `./jeans/*` -- probably means clothes/pants/jeans
103 >> vacation/bermuda/blog inlines `./pics/*` -- probably vacation/bermuda/pics
105 >>> What strikes me about your examples is that the "right thing" is
106 >>> utterly contect dependent. Unfortunatly, I don't think that using
107 >>> bestlink inside pagespec is possible. bestlinks change as pages are
108 >>> added/removed, and dealing with the matches of a pagespec changing when
109 >>> some page that is added or removed seems Hard.
111 >>> Since it seems we have to arbitrarily pick one of the two behaviors, I
112 >>> prefer the one I picked for two reasons:
113 >>> 1. The other behavior can be obtained easily from it, for example,
114 >>> use ./c/* to limit the matches to that subdir.
115 >>> 2. The common case is a bunch of pages in a single directory, not lots
116 >>> of deeply nested subdirs.
119 >>>> Context-dependence was my conclusion too. My feeling is that inlining
120 >>>> in a subdirectory of the current page is more common, but I don't
121 >>>> really know. However, I think the changes as written should work OK
122 >>>> with my index patch and allowing inlining from a/b/c/, so I'm
123 >>>> satisfied. --Ethan
125 > I've committed support for ./ to ikiwiki now, based on your patch.
128 >> Cool! I haven't played with it yet, but looking over the patch, I see that
129 >> you added another parameter to match_glob, which is an approach that didn't
130 >> occur to me. I like it, it's more flexible. --Ethan
projects / ikiwiki / blob