Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Sat, 19 Jul 2003
Hitting the categorization wall
I really like the simplicity of *blosxom based weblog systems, but there's one major drawback. Categories are assigned based on which directories an entry lives in. This means that you are limited to a single category. Even worse, if you use the category and filename/entry name as the permalink, you cannot move or recategorize entries. Since my weblog is part of my personal information space, this is a problem for me. Today I posted a bunch of stuff that really belongs in a "microcontent" category. I could make one and shove the new stuff in there, but that leaves a discontinuity with all the other stuff that I've posted that also seems to be about microcontent. The only problem with multiple categorization is that I can't figure out a nice way to do it that doesn't involve a database. And no, hard linking / symlinking the files doesn't count.
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[computers/internet/weblogs/pyblosxom] |
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3 Comments |
What you can do is store meta variables in your entries. For example, a simple:
#category foo
below the title, and you'd get a $category that you can use. You can store that value (and the rest of the blog, or just the filename) in some sort of a simple DB, and use that information in any way that you wish. When you happen to delete that DB, you can just recreate it again.
Some work involved, but it's not impossible.
Posted by wari at Sun Jul 20 08:29:44 2003
#category foo
below the title, and you'd get a $category that you can use. You can store that value (and the rest of the blog, or just the filename) in some sort of a simple DB, and use that information in any way that you wish. When you happen to delete that DB, you can just recreate it again.
Some work involved, but it's not impossible.
Posted by wari at Sun Jul 20 08:29:44 2003
Perhaps what you need is a <a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix03/tech/padioleau.html" >categorical file system</a>. If your files magically showed up in multiple places in the file system, then you wouldn't need to symlink or hardlink anything.
Of course I'm suggesting this mostly in jest, but still it seems like the idea of multiple categorization (a.k.a. faceted search, a.k.a. guided navigation) is a meme that's starting to become popular. I keep noticing people wishing that their tools could handle multiple, overlapping hierarchies -- whether it's email, file systems, websites, or whatever else.
(In the interest of full disclosure, the company I work for, Endeca, tries to solve exactly this problem. See, I didn't link them, because I'm not trying to post an ad...)
Posted by Kimberley Burchett at Thu Jul 24 10:17:47 2003
Of course I'm suggesting this mostly in jest, but still it seems like the idea of multiple categorization (a.k.a. faceted search, a.k.a. guided navigation) is a meme that's starting to become popular. I keep noticing people wishing that their tools could handle multiple, overlapping hierarchies -- whether it's email, file systems, websites, or whatever else.
(In the interest of full disclosure, the company I work for, Endeca, tries to solve exactly this problem. See, I didn't link them, because I'm not trying to post an ad...)
Posted by Kimberley Burchett at Thu Jul 24 10:17:47 2003
You make it sound as if there are only two choices:
file system categorization (like bloxsom)
or database driven site.
There is another way that i explored in microBlog.
i have only one XHTML file where i keep whole blog
and then use servlet for dynamic content rendering
or file generator to create static XHTML pages.
if blog entry is in multiple categories simply
many pages are created. it is simple and works.
I have implemented variation #category foo in my
handcrafted microBlog - i use XHTML to write
blog entry and in this case to describe post
categories i can write:
<p class="entry_category">Category: ws xml java</p>
Posted by Alek at Sun Jul 27 21:59:39 2003
file system categorization (like bloxsom)
or database driven site.
There is another way that i explored in microBlog.
i have only one XHTML file where i keep whole blog
and then use servlet for dynamic content rendering
or file generator to create static XHTML pages.
if blog entry is in multiple categories simply
many pages are created. it is simple and works.
I have implemented variation #category foo in my
handcrafted microBlog - i use XHTML to write
blog entry and in this case to describe post
categories i can write:
<p class="entry_category">Category: ws xml java</p>
Posted by Alek at Sun Jul 27 21:59:39 2003
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