Version 6 of Report (Wub)

Updated 2009-02-04 03:05:29 by LV

Wub utility for … reports, presumably.

CMcC no. a general utility for generating HTML tables which happens to be distributed along with Wub - now you can get it directly. Yay.

(The paragraphs CMcC originally posted on the wiki was the same, links and everything, as for color (Wub).)

CMcC That was an oversight.

I moved it back to Report, adding some verbiage as to what the original content described (a tcllib utility) and disambiguating the Wub analogue by using the word also.

FWIW:

• I don't think category suffixes in titles by means of trailing parentheses is good form.
• I also don't think splitting pages so each page can be neatly categorised is necessarily a good thing.

Lars H: OK, then — it seems I'll have to spell this out.

• It is an established practice in this wiki that, when writing about two distinct topics that however happen to share the same name, one creates separate pages and appends some kind of parenthetical remark to disambiguate their names — examples include:
  • ActiveTcl vs. ActiveTcl (Frankinet)
  • Miscellaneous Tcl procs (Dillinger) vs. Miscellaneous Tcl procs (Corey) vs. Miscellaneous Tcl procs (Kirsch)
  • calendar vs. calendar (Nassif)
  • CCI extension (Ball) vs. CCI extension (Newmarch)

(It would perhaps have been slightly more in tradition to use the author's surname than "Wub", but that was the first thing that came to my mind.)

• This practice has nothing to do with categorizing pages — on the contrary, many such pairs of pages belong to the same sets of categories. The reason for having several pages is instead the need to keep the topics apart! Had a single page been used to discuss both mysql binding (Smith) and mysql binding (Klaren) then little but confusion would follow, as they probably weren't interchangable.

Tcllib's report and report (Wub) obviously aren't interchangable, but how would you expect people to keep their respective advices apart if you insist on keeping both on the same page? There's little problem as long as one is just a "there's also" note, but presumably you expect more to follow.

CMcC it seems that you wouldn't have to spell out a truly established practice. It seems that one man's established practice is another man's mono-structual monomania. Don't get me wrong, I think wiki gardening is excellent and useful, but when it leads to camping on well-known and evocative nouns (such as color or report) I think it vivisects the discourse and doesn't foster it.

By insisting that titles unambiguously and uniquely identify their content, you (a) reduce the possibility of productive/creative/accidental linkages, (b) duplicate information which Categories facility is supposed (or should I say alleged) to provide.

I see your subscripted-() examples, I wonder how many of them you are personally responsible for, and I raise you XML. HTML and many other pages which are topics but not yet (and perhaps not ever) categories. It is fitting, in my opinion, that a utility to handle color is on or around the color page, fitting that a utility for web report generation is on the report page. As it would be fitting if report contained something for generating pdf reports, and/or a series of musings on the nature of reports in general.

I propose a distinction between topics and categories and suggest that titles represent topics and not categories.

LV Actually, I expect that I am probably responsible for a number of the pages mentioned.

My opinion on the topic, is that if I were writing about two or more divergent entities today that happen to share the same name, then I would likely start out with a page mentioning each of the meanings, and generate a link to a seperate page for each for specific details. That way, the average user who searches for just the word will find a page that briefly mentions where to find the detail about what s/he is researching, and may provide a serendipous moment of discovery upon reading the other meanings on the same page.

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