[development] Book module break out features

Larry Garfield larry at garfieldtech.com
Wed Mar 28 05:04:56 UTC 2007


On Tuesday 27 March 2007 11:26 pm, Steven Peck wrote:
> Jeff Eaton and I had chatted about book module off and on for the last
> month when in Dries 'state of Drupal' presentation he mentioned some of the
> same things as well.  At the code session I hunted several people down and
> tried to come up with a task based list of steps to get book module to the
> 'next' level for Drupal 6.
>
> So here's the break down, if no one has any objections I will file them as
> separate issue's.
>
> Separate outline out of book/book content type and make a legacy content
> type called book for migration purposes.

So this would be a "Value-add" module in the style of OG, Event, etc, so any 
arbitrary node type can be pulled into a book?

> Allow for multiple root books with their own permissions and /menu blocks
> Allow for next/prev automatic links on/off for a given book
>     yes this can be done through the theme but a switch would make it more
> accessible
> Versioned pages for each book which affect the tree - support branches/tags
> to allow for selecting which branch you want to see.

Would this be different than revisions?  Is this to replace the Drupal 
4/5/whatever taxonomy category used on d.o?  If so, how do you handle paging?  
If you're on page a.b.c, in the "Drupal 5 branch", and the next page link is 
to page a.b.c.d, does the branch carry over?  How do you handle the case that 
a.b.c.d has no Drupal 5 branch?  

If you can make it work, awesome, but I am wary of the complexity here.

> User input multiple relationship (on page or displayed separate block)
>
> Menu system allows you to split menu's into multiple navigation blocks.
> Look at integrating book module to register it's menu's with the menu
> module to create per book modules into the menu system. (per Dries)  This
> would also bring it more in line with other core modules.

With menu 6 pushing everything into the database rather than an obscenely 
large array, that should solve most of the performance issues.  However, what 
would the performance penalty be if we were to get up to, say, 50,000 or 
100,000 book pages?  I don't know an answer here; I'm just thinking 
aloud. :-)

> Allow for a given node to be tagged for more than one hierarchy

It would need to have a "primary hierarchy", in case you went to the page 
directly.  You can guess next/prev when paging through a book should follow 
the "active" book, but not if you go to a page directly.

> Use vamcode for the module (per Dries)

Questions aside, I think this is highly cool. :-)

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, 
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession 
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
Jefferson


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