[wikka-community] "Counter" action and pages' metainformation

[Dario Taraborelli]

> Hello all,
> in attempts to customize my Wikka I came across this action:
> http://wikkawiki.org/GmBowenCounter
> --it adds a counter to each wiki page. That code is old and I
> consider it not very optimal, hence the question: it there a better
> version of it?


maybe this can help? http://wikkawiki.org/TRBCounter

> For example: a custom css file for a page, page's parent (in case of  
> hierarchical structure), a date_of_event (in case the article is  
> about a real-life event, that will happen on a given date which  
> differs from edit-date) etc. Also a page counter is such meta- 
> information.
>
> Hence another question: is there a way to add meta-information?
> Perhaps there should be some sort of framework for this developed?

it seems to me you are referring to very different types of metadata  
(which would require different implementations):

- page-dependent CSS doesn't need to be stored as page metadata but  
could be included in the page via an action and processed before the  
output is sent to the browser. This is a general idea we've been  
tinkering with for quite a long time: preprocess the page to change  
the way it is displayed as a function of its content and/or the  
handler that calls it. This requires changing the way XHTML output is  
currently generated.

- event information could be dealt with in the same way and rendered  
via microformats (see http://wush.net/trac/wikka/ticket/515) or  
downloadable  iCalendar data (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar)

- information about hits, edits etc. can be generated on-the-fly from  
the server, provided  the relevant data is available, see for  
instance: http://wikkawiki.org/BarGraph

All these suggestions are interesting and could be implemented via  
plugins, but I don't see how a single framework could cover them,  
unless we modify the page table to encode all possible "meta- 
information" you refer to.

Dario



--
Dario Taraborelli
Wikka Development Team
http://wikkawiki.org