A few minutes ago i've submitted a first approach to connect the data with the Registry.
In that way, let's think that you need multiple Categories for your News articles:
you can register a 'Main' Property for the 'News' module, in its stories 'table';
also you need a 'Type of article' property, so you register it in the same way;
and possibly a third, .... category to your News articles...
in general, all your items can have multiple categories (Pages, FAQs, Quotes...).
Then, after register that, you go to the create/edit form, and there will appear 'automatically' the drop-down lists of the Properties registered to categorize your items...
Let's hope that this change will be accepted by the core-devs. 
OK, maybe I am looking at this like the "defrosted caveman lawyer, who knows little of your modern world," overly simplistic, but optimistic in my point of view. This is a similar issue that has been faced in the past when it came to categories. Then it was how do Sections (Now Pages) and the News (Stories,Topics,Categories) complement one another, simplify workflow, and just exist with one another. I think there was even some ranker. But I would like to stay away from that past.
I don't know how the developers have discussed this, since I don't write the code I kinda stay out of the way there. In practice of using the old and the new modules I really like the coherency of the new system. There is a vestige or legacy of thought that remains, a complication of applying the results of the coding labors. In the past Sections had no flexible categories or relationship to the Topics and their sub-categories, that is now changed in the Pages module, great! But that is just the most obvious example of historic segregation. disjointed inflexibility.
The practical application of the different modules still seems to keep Created Assets separated in the fixed stream of association to the modules that create them. The new tract in .8 is far more liberating bringing the modules together at least on a category tree. I look forward to the changes this brings. However in thinking about Created Assets and having taken a look at Guite's ModuleStudio and it's fantastic potential for easily featurizing, and customizing NN.8 as is reaches greater distribution, I am stuck in the practical application as an administrator of Asset Management.
The Flexible Tree of the Categories Module, shared, between modules, is not the first layer of categorization in Asset creation. I realize that NewName is not a
CMS, but a web app framework. Content modules are just a practical example inside the abstraction of a 'Framework." It is overly simplistic, but all posts put content into a container under a title; simplified, that is an Asset Footprint. Placing that asset into a category or multiple categories would be easier if the asset had a liberator from the bonds of the module that created it.
Other frameworks, management systems, are really no better off either. Even adding the additional abstraction of tagging is no real help. I have only seen one instance of of the level of practicality in another system, a photo/gallery management module that makes itself available the the post editing form. It is a Hooked function making its assets available to a post/page/product/poll, it didn't matter. I am not complaining, that system doesn't have the versatility or power of Postnuke/NewName. :)
Categories are a fixed limit. An asset management function would sit on categories too, starting with the modules. News module like a blogging module presents articles against the category of a time line, (though it has a fixed "page" address as well.) Pages present the same/static information at the same page address under the section heading. The ultimate goal of managing the asset footprints, is to redisplay/present them how we want to, and while short-URLs are human readable, often times they can end up just as buried in a site, and difficult to reference in a new or Meta Asset. In adding multiple category trees to an asset we might as well just have visible tagging.
Limits are limits, and not a bad thing or necessarily a hindrance. We wouldn't necessarily want to change the category/author of some content, or original creation time, but we might want to change the content display times(like in the News module), or who now manages the FAQs on a site sine AuthorX wrote an answer to some question,(like a forum mod.) Right now the functions of the News module, allows articles to appear on a site in the time line, the archive of the time line, through the author's profile, in the category and in a search of the site. We define categories/paths to help grab the data/asset on the visitor presentation level as a navigational aid in the cloud of data. We don't necessarily need to have multiple external paths on the visitor level Or the content creator level, what we need is to have the asset available on an administrative/editorial level in a way that doesn't require jumping in and out of modules.
Jørn Wildt's New Content module is a great step in the direction of Asset Management, however it is only pulling in external content at this point. I have not mastered it's usage by any stretch of the imagination, and I would encourage folks to check it out. It would be great if it pulled in reviews, products, relay, downloads, etc. Right now common Categories are a great step forward and I am digging into the new system slowly but surely. I have not had the opportunity yet to play with user created categories to see how they work/impact yet since the base of that tree is/could be/might be different from the Global tree.
My digression into asset management might be off topic a bit in this thread or in response to Mateo, however I see it as connected because as an administrator I could end up with completely different productivity in the way site categories get laid out. I could prune the tree one way and it will grow/live and bare more fruit (assets), and pruned another way the tree will live but no longer bare fruit (because a user is disconnected from a site categories,) and yet another way maybe killing the whole tree. Thankfully, it is hard to kill my test site. I suppose to really simplify, I can live with the monolithic, single, category/subcategory limits, multiple categories being left to a tagging field maybe, but I am really looking forward to more hooks between modules. Two separate branches connect to the trunk but they will always be two separate branches.
... Not to mention user defined categories can spell chaos for a site in new ways with each new category.
--
Paul
____________________________________________________
"...Humor, ITs just a state of mind"
TakeIT2.CoM :: Open Destination
...my site is a perfect example of why doctors do not operate on them self :)
Posted: Feb 09, 2008 - 08:07 AM
, and i guess that the customized attributes gives the flexibility that you want, i don't know if you need something that can't be accomplished using the attributes.
