[development] node type without a title?

[Jeremy Epstein]

On 9/8/06, Bèr Kessels <ber at webschuur.com> wrote:
> The problem lies deeper. We abuse titles for several things:
> 1 Unique, or semi-unique identifiers in the admin areas (node overviews, etc)
>
> 1 has absolutely nothing to do with the metadata "title", allthough in a lot
> of cases/sites it may be a good idea to use the title for this.

Yep, we do basically use titles as 'unique identifiers' in many
places, and with good reason too: 'title' is the only field, apart
from 'nid', that can even be considered unique! Therefore, it is the
only human-friendly identifier for nodes. I agree that titles, whether
explicitly specifed or whether pattern-generated, should be required
and should be unique.

My importexportapi module, for example, treats the 'title' field as
required and as unique, because it is the only field suitable for
being an 'alternate key' for nid (i.e. a reliable but more
human-friendly identifier, that can be used instead of nid).This is
just one more case where having guaranteed unique titles is very
useful.

Cheers,
Jaza.