Deriving wiki structure from titles (long)

[Scott_Sauyet]

Thank you very much for your considered response. This is all great feedback.

@tomzheng

• This macro is suitable for structures like xxx(a)(1) or “a.1 title” or “1.1.1 title”.

That’s the main reason I’m asking the question about a more generic version. Are there other use-cases with similar title-derivable hierarchies? And if so, is there a not-too-complex set of tools we could write to treat these uniformly?

Also note, thiis is not a single macro, procedure, function, or template. This is a large collection of them working in tandem. If I do make this more generic, it would be more like an edition.

@tomzheng

• Use the “structure” field instead of <<sections outline>>. This is because tiddlers can be generated using spreadsheets? Can they be conveniently edited in spreadsheets?

No, there is no thought of using spreadsheets for this. This is an attempt to replicate an existing collection of PDFs in a more useful format.

@tomzheng

Otherwise, <<sections outline>> seems more conventional.

The original version was like that, and I am not at all committed to this change. I switched because there can logically only be a single such call per tiddler. It’s a marker for “Put my main content here, please,” for any tiddler that has children. As noted, I can’t just infer this, because there may well be some prefatory or following text that logically belongs with the children. So I have to be explicit about it. But as this describes the structure of the tiddler and not specifically the structure of the inclusion, it seemed to make more sense as tiddler metadata.

It also has one additional advantage: If necessary, I can now easily use that structure field to selectively apply templates to different styles of blocks.

@tomzheng

• Placing this numbering within headings is suitable for migrating PDFs.

For my use-case, it’s not just a matter of migrating. These documents cannot be casually changed. All but the most trivial changes are reviewed or suggested by the Board of Education’s lawyer. The school superintendent reviews them and submits them to the Board’s Policy Committee, who can accept, reject, or alter them. If that committee approves, they get brought before the whole Board for a first reading, and then at a subsequent meeting, they may be approved, rejected, or sent back for changes.

So the goal here is to update only the format of the documents. There should be no structural changes at all.

@tomzheng

However, when creating new documents rather than migrating existing ones, it leads to significant re-numbering workload after inserting content during editing.

Absolutely. I will be looking at tools to make this easier. I would like to create a procedure that allows an insert, but with a warning like

Are you sure you want to insert a new section, E, here? That will involve moving the current E, F, and G to F, G, and H, as well as similar changes for any of their children. Proceed? (y/n)"

@tomzheng

Therefore, omitting numbering and using simple {{xxx}} is a simpler approach. Using spreadsheets as the editing tool can resolve this automatic numbering issue.

I am curious how you would use spreadsheets for this. I can’t think of a workflow where that would be easier than using the built-in TW tools… and I’m one who does a lot of bulk tiddler manipulation in Node.

@tomzheng

• The format “1.1.1 title” can be used to remove the caption field.

I could. It would make all the code that’s generating the hierarchy from the titles still more complex. But it’s certainly doable.

However, I’ve long had a strong preference for simple and readable URLs.. I would much rather point people to https://crosseye.github.io/rham-policy/#Policy1410(C)(3) than to (the imaginary) https://crosseye.github.io/rham-policy/0.5.0/#Policy1410.C.3%20Refreshment%20restriction. Keeping simple URLs is definitely one of the goals of this project.

@tomzheng

• TiddlyWiki’s list field automatically assigns sequential numbering. Therefore, generating content based on tags and list fields requires less workload. You can customize the numbering scheme in macro parameters—choosing between 1, 2, 3 or a, b, c.

This was the main alternative I considered to the current approach. It would allow dragging and dropping titles/captions for rearrangement, which would be much easier than writing custom tools.

But it would make linkability much more difficult. And it would make it awfully easy to restructure these legal documents without the legal review process. The main reasons I chose for not going this route were to have reasonable permalinks and to retain the structure of the source documents.

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Again, thank you for your response. You’ve given me lots to think about!