Subject:
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Namespace of FAQ-entry filenames
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.faq
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Date:
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Sat, 15 May 1999 00:35:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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1539 times
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In lugnet.faq, jsproat@geocities.com (Sproaticus) writes:
> Todd Lehman wrote:
> > If you make the filenames themselves unique, you'll end up in the long run
> > encoding bastardized forms of the directory names into the filenames in
> > order to keep the namespaces clean. No way to avoid that. :-(
>
> An alternative is to refer to the directory and the file specifically,
> leaving the slurper script to figure out if it should resolve the address or
> not (1).
> 1. That is, if it's a single large document or snippets of the FAQ.
By "resolve the address" do you mean munging the HREF? Can you give an
example?
> The drawback to this is, is that the author who wishes to link to another
> items has two new responsibilities:
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> a) to find out beforehand what the path and filename of the linked-to file
> is (but half of this should be done beforehand, anyway)
Doing that is surely gonna be easier than firstly doing that and secondly
looking up the associated global ID string.
> b) to keep track of linked-to FAQ items which may be moved into another
> directory
In a very large system of ID strings (1000 or more), how many moves are
likely to occur without slight name changes in the ID strings?
Why can't the computer easily point out obsolete/broken "see also"
references if one is accidentally bungled?
> I'm willing to work with either solution; I just feel that not requiring
> unique filenames will make the authors' jobs more complicated.
How often is a FAQ entry really going to refer directly to another FAQ entry
outside of its own local hierarchy? Comparatively, how often is an entry
going to refer instead to a whole category or group?
Requiring unique filenames, to me, seems just like asking for trouble in the
long run. When a flat namespace gets above 100 or so items -- especially if
there are multiple people making contributions -- it's a situation prone to
arguments, accidental collisions, unnecessarily long names, and
uncomfortable workarounds and compromises. When a flat namespace gets above
1000 or so items, it becomes necessary (in the hopes of avoiding the
foregoing inevitable problems) to segregate the namespace into regions
(usually prefixes or suffixes). And at the point that a flat namespace
becomes segregated by prefixes or suffixes, it's no better (actually worse)
than a hierarchy because it's repeating the hierarchy in a bastardized form.
I've seen this happen several times in large programming projects, and the
growing pains are quite painful.
Say, I must've missed the discussion about how filename representations came
up... I had always been thinking of simple integer filenames (1.en.html,
2.en.html, etc.) for the following reasons:
- FAQs tend to be numbered
- Doesn't require external table specifying the ordering of the FAQ entries
- Totally avoids any file naming issues
But the main disadvantage of a purely numeric system is that it's hard to
insert a new entry between two existing entries or to delete an existing
entry. Furthermore, if the name of a file changes during an insertion or
deletion, then everyone's bookmarks and URLs in news articles are no longer
correct.
A more insidious disadvantage of numeric filenames is that when a sub-FAQ
becomes large enough to be worth splitting up into sub-sub-FAQs, it may take
extra time to go through and decide what to name the sub-sub-FAQ categories
because they won't have been partially pre-encoded in the filenames.
Is there a post somewhere giving some theory behind and advantages of using
general character-based file naming scheme for the entries and what
characters would be legal in the names? (Certainly, for example, the names
have to be mutable to newsgroup names and/or URLs for future expansion
possibilities...)
--Todd
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Namespace of FAQ-entry filenames
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| (...) Sure. Example 1: File "twitch.faq" contains the HREF ".../twitch#kneecap". The HREF is pointing to a name within the same file. The script would convert the HREF to "#kneecap". Example 2: File "scarface.faq" contains the HREF ".../boondoggle". (...) (25 years ago, 15-May-99, to lugnet.faq)
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