[Trac] Trac tags users?

[Muness Alrubaie]

On 8/25/05, Christian Boos <cboos at neuf.fr> wrote:
> Muness Alrubaie wrote:
> 
> >Christian,
> >
> >I like the idea of semantic relationships, but frankly, think it's
> >overkill.
> >
> Well, if for no other use, it can at least be used to re-implement the
> TagIt feature.
> As you mention on your site, using a macro for that is troublesome
> (e.g. the preview problem).
> 
> So instead of writing [[TagIt(idea)]] in order to tag a page,
> one could simply write: <<tag idea>>.
> 
> The alternative UI you demonstrate on your site (an additional input
> text field
> for entering the list of tags) is very much similar to the way the
> <<depends-on>>
> or <<duplicate-of>> relationships will be specified in the Ticket UI,
> so I see here another benefit for using the same approach.

I am all for that.

> 
> >BackLinks on the other hand, are just not explicit and
> >hence can be misleading.  Tags are simple enough, but have enough
> >discrimination to be far more useful than BackLinks.
> >
> Indeed, [[BackLinks]] should just show the implicit links, those with no
> specific semantic attached to them.
> Another macro should be create (e.g. [[Relations]]) for listing the objects
> having an explicit relation set with the current one.

Makes sense.

> 
> >(...)
> >Tagging some content as COMP313/Week10 seems ok to me, whereas
> >introducing a link back to COMP313/Week10, does not.  The latter seems
> >to pollute content with - transient - metadata.
> >
> >
> Indeed.
>  * [[BackLinks(COMP313/Week10)]] would show all the implicit references
> to that page.
>     Useful for refactoring, as you said.
>  * [[Relations(<<tag COMP313/Week10>>)]] would show all the objects tagged
>     with COMP313/Week10.
>  * [[Relations(<<tag COMP313%>>)]] would show all the objects tagged
>     with a tag whose name starts with COMP313...
> 
> Of course, the [[TagLists]] macro can be kept around for compatibility
> (btw. wouldn't [[TaggedWith]] be a better name when using arguments?)

That is a better name.  The names evolved a lot within a few days, but
then I wanted to leave them alone to encourage people to use it. 
Using TaggedWith should be a matter of renaming the macro (or just
copying it).

> 
> >Again, I think that this clean separation of content from relationship
> >information is yet another reason to use del.icio.us as a repo to
> >extract tag information from, rather than to do everything inside
> >Trac.
> >
> >
> You mean, a tag should point to the tag description at del.icio.us,
>  instead of being a Trac Wiki page itself?

Not at all.  What I am contemplating is that the tags for a page are
in del.icio.us, instead of being in a table (and the macros within the
content).

The "description" of the tag is actually just the wiki page which can
perhaps be linked to or even inlined using greasemonkey scripts or a
customized version of del.icio.us director.

Does that clarify things?  I am wondering if I should just put
together a prototype to make the ideas more concrete - for me and
others.

Muness