[drupal-devel] separate node views and node types

[Gabor Hojtsy]

>>>> Problem #2: many people use the book.module to create structure.   The
>>>> book.module is a logical choice <strong>if and only if</strong> you
>>>> know Drupal.  If you're new to Drupal, creating structure using the
>>>> book module is not exactly logical.  The underlying problem is that
>>>> people need a way to link pages and to create structure.  Simply
>>>> renaming the book.module to outline.module or structure.module and
>>>> dropping the book node type might come a long way for new users, and
>>>> might help focus development efforts.
>>>
>>> This was suggested before, and it would be a good improvement IMHO.
>>> Outline module is the way to go!
>>
>> There was consensus but the problem was that it requires the book 
>> node type to be dropped.  This breaks some people's workflow / 
>> permission scheme.
> 
> I don't think there's any reason you'd *have* to drop book.module -  it
> could become another "simple node type" - to maintain backwards 
> compatibility (what? what's that?) ... but breaking out an 
> outline.module still makes sense to me (yes, as we discussed i think 
> first in February?).
> 
> The thing is the "online handbook" idea has attracted a lot of drupal 
> users... but a generalized outliner would as well (that would still,  of
> course, be used for book organization).

Well, now there are suggestions to let any node type go into forums, let
any node type go into books (generalize it as an outliner.module without
a node type), the page node is quite irrelevant now, etc. A movement to
have different display modules (outline, taxonomy, forum, archive, etc)
and different node types (story, page, book page, etc) separately is not
new. Since stripping off functionality from book pages and forums, what
is left is basically a story type of node (really just a basic node),
what we need is a simple interface to replicate this node type under any
name desired. I have posted code which does so on a programming level,
and as far as I have seen (although I only took some cursory look at
that), chx was working on some functionality to provide "multiply and
rename story" functionality into Drupal core, which should have an issue
on drupal.org, if I am not mistaken.

Goba