[support] linking the categories

[Cog Rusty]

On 9/8/07, paola.dimaio at gmail.com <paola.dimaio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, my latest question about to ensure 'uniqueness of values' was unanswered
> This could be because it was (again) an unclear question (apologies if
> thats the case)
> Or because  nobody knows the answer.
> This is a case of having hit a limitation of the current module, or
> simply not knowing how to use it

I believe it was for both reasons. Because of the way you used the
term "category" and because it can't be done in the particular way you
conceived.


> Let me try again. same module (taxonomy)  I need to find out a clever
> way to structure our 'categories' and 'tags' in a way that they can be
> be combined

categories = terms = tags
vocabulary is the containing entity


> I think this can be done by creating a hierarchy of vocabularies/categories
>
> so what I wonder is
> can I make a category become the parent or child of another category?
> at the moment I dont see this option (I can see that I can make a term
> become the child or parent of another term, but what I need is a group
> of terms to be the parent of another group of terms)

The way the system is designed, there is no direct way to create a
hierarchy of vocabularies. You could of course create a
"meta-vocabulary" containing your vocabularies as categories, but that
would be hardly useful. Neither tagging nor listing would be possible
without custom code. Categories are designed for tagging and listing
nodes, and categories are not nodes..

So, I would suggest looking for a solution which does not need a
hierarchy of vocabularies.


> The reason why I need this, its because the drop down menus at the
> moment are toooo long. For each term, I have say 10 child terms, which
> in turn have 10 child terms so its very difficult to select the right
> one(s) cause one gets lost before finding the right category
> Plus I cannot selectively make one term mandatory, say a parent, and
> the children optional (for those who may want to have more granular
> keywords)

You will need to design for effective tagging and user convenience
based on the available methods. For example:

Case 1: A very badly designed vocabulary. Allows errors and is cumbersome.

Tags (vocabulary)
------------------------
Sections
-- Section 1
-- Section 2
Topics
-- Topic 1
-- ...
-- Topic 1000

Applies to all content types.
Mandatory, mutiple select

Case 2: A somehow better design

Sections (vocabulary)
-----------------
Section 1
Section 2

Applies to all content types
Mandatory, single select

Topic 1 (vocabulary)
-------------
-- Subtopic 1
-- ....
-- Subtopic 10

Applies only  to content type "topic1"
Mandatory, single or multiple select

Topic 2 (vocabulary)
-------------
-- Subtopic 1
-- ....
-- Subtopic 10

Applies only  to content type "topic2"
Mandatory, single or multiple select

Now, the user will have 2 manageable category selection lists. The
second one will be shorter and different based on the content type.

Or else, you could create different content types for each section, so
that you can use the taxonomy_defaults module
(http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_defaults) to assign a specified
section category to each so that the user won't see a second selection
list.

Notice that content types are not only for adding different fields.
They are also used for workflow (different publishing options and
different associated vocabularies). So, you can use that to move some
of the users' burden to yourself (having to manage 20 content types
vs. having the users manage 1000 terms in an error-prone way).


> So one way of doing that (perhaps) would be for each parent term have a new
> 'category', so that each parent term can be made mandatory (hence
> creating a superstructure) and then making one or more children
> optional, and then linking a freeflowing tags to that.
> Has someone implemented a nice complex hierarchy using taxonomy module
> and has advice ?
>
> thanks
>
>
>
> --
> Paola Di Maio
> School of IT
> www.mfu.ac.th
> *********************************************
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