Question

At my site we use Bugzilla extensively for many things. I have copied the contents of a request from one of my users asking to have Persistent Links into the wiki. Many of the developers at my site use the Topics as a place to bring forth many development issues. As the issues are discussed, resolved, etc., the issues are moved from the IssueTopic to a ClosedIssueTopic. In the Bugzilla tickets the user's question (I believe) is how to code a link into the wiki to find an issue regardless of which topic currently houses the issue.

Thoughts?

Wiki: Persistent links into the Wiki (perhaps using WikiWords)

This may be more of a policy issue with the wiki, but here's what I'd like.

I'd like to be able to place a link to the wiki in a Gridzilla bug and know that the link will be there for all of posterity.

This currently won't work for pages like the current design issues (CDI) page since the CDI writers move the closed issues to the closed design issues page, which will break my links.

Since the link is broken, the user is stuck to go fish for the relevant wiki content themselves.

---

Additional Comments From Mike Eggleston 2006-08-15 10:40 -------

Is it sufficient to grab the address like (like below) directly to a Wiki page or do you need/envision something more? If you want to reference a specific version of a page add a '?rev=2' to the end of the like (the second link below).

http://twiki/twikib/bin/view/Systems/NetworkConfiguration http://twiki/twikib/bin/view/Systems/NetworkConfiguration?rev=2

---

Additional Comments From Brendan Dhein 2006-08-15 11:01 -------

This really falls into more of a policy issue than a technical one.

The problem is that the CDI page now is a monolithic page, see here: http://wiki/twikib/bin/view/CodeDesign/CurrentDesignIssues#Make_Closest_Point_the_Default_P

This link will work right now. However, due to the continual refactoring of the CDI page, this content will get moved to the Closed Design Issues Page. Once this happens, all links into the CDI page are useless.

I could link to a specific revision, but then the onus is on the reader to realize that the content could be moved or changed.

My dream would be something where I could either write a static link like http://wiki/MyTopic that would take me to the page.

If that's not practical to do with a static link, perhaps there is a scriptable solution where we could do something like this: http://cgi-bin/myWikiTopicFinder.cgi?tag=MyTopic

The script would look up the topic and return a redirect.

I realize that the crux of my problem is that I'm trying to statically record a dynamic location, but I'd imagine there is some elegant way to do this.

My original thoughts were that we really need to create a WikiWord for each design issue entered into the CDI page. Then we could link to the WikiWord, but I thought that could get burdensome since AFAIK that would require creating a separate wiki page for each CDI.

---

Additional Comments From Mike Eggleston 2006-11-16 11:58 -------

There are 'Tag' and 'TagCloud' plugins available for twiki. A 'Tag' is created for each what I think you are calling a 'MyTopic'. Tags can be searched for across all WikiWord pages and a WikiWord page may have many tags, like the CDI, and a Tag can span many WikiWord pages. A 'TagCloud' is presentation of how many times a Tag is used. The more often a Tag is used, that tag is displayed in larger fonts.

Is this implementation what you are thinking in the description above?

Tag Plugin: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/TagMePlugin TagCloud Plugin: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/TagCloudPlugin TagCloud Example (at the top):http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/PluginPackage

---

Additional Comments From Brendan Dhein 2006-11-21 09:33 -------

I was really hoping for something more automatic, but this would be a start.

What I'm looking for really is the ability to define a WikiWord without a whole Wiki page for the word. This would allow for a static link.

If this isn't possible, I think the tag would be our next best bet.

Environment

-- MikeEggleston - 21 Nov 2006

Answer

I am not sure I understand your question properly, but it looks like you are asking for persistent URL in your TWiki. You get that if you have one topic per design item/bug item in TWiki. Do not move content between topics, e.g. do not move an item from a current design issues item page to a closed design issues page. Rather, create dynamic reports in the current design issues item page and closed design issues page based on a status field in your design item page. Look for example at the support application in this web, there are AskedQuestions, AssignedQuestions, AnsweredQuestions and ClosedUnanswered questions. Reports are based on the SupportStatus form field of each support question.

-- PeterThoeny - 22 Nov 2006

Change status to: AskedQuestions AssignedQuestions AnsweredQuestions ClosedUnanswered