Importing Contexts

How about we add to the meta information for a page that we want to import all definitions from another web. We could make it work the same way as namespaces in programming languages.

In the meta area for a topic:

• everything from your own web (.*) +
• all words in a wildcard included web (OtherWeb2.*)
• all words specifically imported from other web (OtherWeb.OtherWord1, OtherWeb.OtherWord2,...) +

In the text:

• specific words mentioned in the text (as is currently done)

Furthermore, when importing, it would be good to be able to alias a WikiWord mentioned in another web to a new name in this page.

Eg.:

   =import OtherWeb.ThreeLetterAcronym => TLA=

Then in the text:

   Blah blah blah TLA blah blah.

This import syntax then suggests another way to implement SingleWikiWords:

   =highlight Oracle=

Makes the word Oracle a wikiword for the scope of this Topic. Similarily the word could be highlighted for an entire Web.

Whether we need both highlight and import needs to be debated.

-- MartinCleaver - 12 Apr 2001

See also: GenericMetaDataStoreForTopics

-- MartinCleaver - 12 Apr 2001

I'm not clear what the above is trying to achieve, but I think it's saying put the namespace of another Web into current topic (or possibly Web). So you can write TopicX, rather than OtherWeb.TopicX. Is this correct?

-- JohnTalintyre - 12 Apr 2001

That's exactly what I mean.

Currently in the text we show a word defined in a different context and imported into this but we don't show it as such. So Support.SingleWordForWikiWord shows as just SingleWordForWikiWord.

What I am suggesting this either gets shown in the text explicitly or the relationship is shown in a separate table that shows what has been imported from other contexts. That table could be hidden from view by default.

-- MartinCleaver - 13 Apr 2001

Continued from GroupingUsersByWeb - See TopicNotFoundInThisWeb for an example of groups of people who work together might share a set of webs.

-- MartinCleaver - 19 Jun 2001