Subject:
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Re: Unified UK Lego community idea
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.org.us
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Date:
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Tue, 30 Nov 1999 20:36:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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202 times
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In lugnet.loc.uk, Todd Lehman writes:
> Aw, don't worry -- there's no such thing as imposing data upon LUGNET.
> Its whole purpose in life is to give data good homes -- especially text
> and structured data.
Great! Somehow that doesn't sum it up, but it is quite lovely to read that!
> > What sort of information on shops do you want to store Todd? And when? :)
>
> What: whatever you want to store, as long as it's text-based (not images)
> for now.
Wow, that sounds more than reasonable!
> When: whenever someone steps forward to be a volunteer editor of the /loc/uk/
> area.
I'd be happy to do it - it sounds like fun :) But I don't want to step on
anyones toes, especially as there are undoubtedly people out there with more
talent and time than myself!
> This area (helping LUGs more directly) is going to be a big focus of mine in
> December. I would like to re-use parts of the code I wrote for LUGNET
> memberships in order to help LUGs define and handle their own local
> memberships. So LUGNET would probably still not allow casual users
> (non-members) to input info about themselves in a database, but it would
> allow casual users to join a LUG (i.e., UKLUG or NELUG) and then as a member
> of that (not necessarily a member of LUGNET) then go ahead and input info.
That sounds just about perfect to me.. so while we could go ahead and put
shopping/contact/event reference information in the loc/uk hierarchy, it might
be better to wait until the LUG structure is in place before putting 'people'
into the hierarchy too? Although there'd be no reason not to collate potential
UKLUG member information before then.
> You could pretty easily make links to news articles or other sub-pages right
> from the /loc/uk/ pages... For example, in 30 seconds time I just added the
> following text:
>
> {Hot Topic:} <</loc/uk/?n=1916>>
>
> to the left column of the /loc/uk/ page, and Presto! there's now a link to
> this very thread right from there. Check it out --
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/loc/uk/
Cool stuff!
Going back to the database idea, mainly for curiousity, and also because if you
ever wanted to implement something like the shop information for /loc/us/ then
it could soon become impractical to edit manually. I don't think that there is
*that* much manual editing required for the UK, although we do have 4 levels as
opposed to the 3 in /loc/us/, but mainly because there isn't as much data to be
sourced.
Could you define a database like:
http://www.lugnet.com/loc/uk/?d=shops
Would it be feasible (with editing priviledges), and assuming the data was
sorted alphabetically, to maintain that simple shopping database like:
-=-=-=-
[/loc/uk/sc/lo/edb/?p=happy, "Happy Toys, Morningside"],
[/loc/uk/sc/lo/edb/?p=tru, "Toys R US, Some Retail Park"],
[/loc/uk/sc/sc/gl/?p=beatties, "Beatties, St Enoch"],
[/loc/uk/sc/sc/gl/?p=toystack, "Toystack, St Enoch"],
[/loc/uk/sc/sc/gl/?p=tru1, "Toys R US, Forge Retail Park"],
[/loc/uk/sc/sc/gl/?p=tru2, "Toys R US, Queen Street"],
[...etc...];
-=-=-=-
So that in /loc/uk/, you could have something functionally equivalent to:
{Shops in this Area} <</loc/uk/?d=shops&q=/loc/uk>>
and in /loc/uk/sc/lo/,
{Shops in this Area} <</loc/uk/?d=shops&q=/loc/uk/sc/lo>>
There are a couple (!) of issues with this:
+ An i= parameter would be nice to specify the search index
+ A database management file would probably also be useful, specifying any
template page to put the retrieved information into, index names etc
+ Techically possible to have a database 'file' and 'entry' box in normal
page editing. Allowing you to create a new page whereever and automatically
include it in the database - frilly but non-vital.
+ It would be nice to be able to do something like:
http://www.lugnet.com/loc/uk/sc/lo/?d=/loc/uk/shops&q=/loc/uk/sc/lo
Then be able to edit the /loc/uk/shops database, but only see the relevant
items to the part of the hierarchy that you were in.
So I think a database would be nice, because then you can do searches without
trawling through the entire hierarchy. Oh, and also because things like the
'Local Shops' link could be automated. I'm not going to plague Todd to
implement one though - I'm just throwing ideas around :) But if he'd like a
hand..
Besides, we can do about 90% of the things we've discussed as soon as we get
someone able to edit /loc/uk/!
> Well, you could easily create a sub-page of /loc/uk/ that contained that
> information. If you were an editor, you could pop up this URL, for example:
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/loc/uk/?p=contacts
>
> and instead of seeing a blank page, you'd see a blank page with a button that
> says "Start This". If you click that button, you get an edit area which you
> can type text into. When you save that text, the new web page appears
> instantly.
I'm in danger of sounding sycophantic if I say exactly how cool I think this
whole mechanism sounds!
> In the "true database" sense, yeah, it's in the more distant future.
Ooops, I forgot reading that :) Oh well, there shouldn't be too much harm in
discussing it?
> But if you wanted to create simple pages with a quick & easy editing
> mechanism, you can get 80% of the way there with very little trouble at all.
Yep - it sounds great - Thanks!
Richard
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Unified UK Lego community idea
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| (...) Aw, don't worry -- there's no such thing as imposing data upon LUGNET. Its whole purpose in life is to give data good homes -- especially text and structured data. (...) Yup! -- that's been the idea all along. But it's the discussion groups (...) (25 years ago, 30-Nov-99, to lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.org.us)
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