[pmwiki-users] Feature request: Action lists in skins

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 12:05:47PM -0400, Neil Herber wrote:
> At 2005-04-05  09:51 AM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
> >Hmmm, this is a pretty good idea.  I can also see how to use this so
> >that we have only authorized actions appear in the header.  So I'll think
> >about this, even though it means adding more pages (and indirection)
> >to the distribution.  However, I'm not sure I like "PageTopMenu"
> >and "PageFootMenu" -- seems like we might want to call them something
> >else.
> 
> Hans and I actually batted about several naming conventions for these 
> entities, none of which were entirely satisfactory. Why not name these 
> things by location? I have always been confused by SideBar, because it 
> doesn't tell me which side it is on, and different skins put the content 
> defined on the SideBar page in different places. 

Well, I chose the name "SideBar" for exactly this reason -- many
sites might prefer to have the sidebar contents appear on the right side 
instead of the left, in which case the name "LeftBar" would be
inappropriate.

> However, for these new "things" I would suggest these names:
> LeftBar
> RightBar
> TopBar
> BottomBar
> 
> The inclusion of the word "action" in the "thing" name is misleading and 
> restrictive. 

What if there are two bars?  See, for example, 
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Zen/TopBar, in which there is a top bar
and a separate area for action links.  If we go with the idea that
action links belong in a wiki page, we need a name other than TopBar.

> The items that appear in the current SideBar are a mix of text 
> headers, page links, and page links with action directives. Let me as admin 
> decide what goes in the top, bottom, and right sides too.

The admin already decides what goes *everywhere* in PmWiki -- PmWiki
itself doesn't enforce a choice.  It only provides one suggestion.

> The Gemini skin also has a fifth "thing" called PageFooter, which appears 
> below all page content and spans the full width of the page. (By contrast, 
> the BottomBar item sits between the LeftBar and RightBar.) I have not found 
> this to be particularly useful, but others might. The four bars, however, 
> are great and deserve to be part of the standard distribution in my opinion.

I think there may need to be five.

Pm