Alec Flett wrote:
> Andi just checked in the ability to have bidirectional
references
> between ContentItems and InclusionExclusionCollections
- this is
> really great news. This means we can start to ask, what
exactly is a
> "User collection"?
>
> We've been delaying the decision about what a 'user
collection' really
> is, from a technical standpoint... but I think that in
order to figure
> that out, we need to figure out what it means from the
user's
> perspective. We need to handle this because internally
we make ample
> use of Collections for different technical reasons. At
the moment the
> domain model treats them all the same (for instance
they all have a
> 'color' attribute) - and then it makes it really hard
to fill in the
> "Appears In:" line in the detail view. We
have to actually query the
> sidebar to see what "user collections"
exist.. yuck! Further, we want
> bidirectional references between items and their
"user collections" so
> that users and parcel writers can make use of the value
of "Appears
> In" without writing duplicate code.
>
> From a user's perspective, it seems like a User
Collection both:
> 1) appears in the sidebar
I think it might be slightly more accurate to rephrase this
"is
contained in the sidebar collection" In theory any UI
could display the
sidebar collection, however, today only the sidebar block's
contents is
the sidebar collection. We should never access the sidebar
collection by
looking up the sidebar block.
> 2) is listed in the detail view under "Appears
In:"
>
> Now one of the issues is that going forward, its not
clear if both of
> these rules will continue to hold. For instance:
> * if I "tag" something with
"scooby" and later drag the "scooby"
tag
> into the sidebar, should the "Appears In:"
list 'scooby'?
> * Are 'Library' collections included - i.e. is
"Appears In" supposed
> to include "My Items" when appropriate?
What about other "library"
> collections like Trash, Inbox, etc...
> * And what about Spheres? Do they affect this in any
way?
> * What about rule-based collections - do they show up
in "Appears In"?
> * Later, if there is a UI to present a list of
collections to the user
> (i.e. maybe some sharing UI, or a parcel writer wants
to let the user
> choose a collection in a dialog box or something) - how
do they choose
> which collections to display?
>
> Some ideas that have floated around that define a user
collection,
> from a technical perspective:
> a) anything that appears in the sidebar (more or less
what we do today)
> b) anything with some well-known attribute (i.e.
'.isUserCollection'
> or something)
> c) a particular Kind of collection - i.e. our
> InclusionExclusionCollection is pretty
chandler-specific, behaves well
> in the sidebar, and isn't really useful anywhere else.
>
> At the moment, Andi has hooked up the machinery to
IECollection -
> implementing "c" would be as simple as
renaming
> InclusionExclusionCollection to UserCollection. However
this doesn't
> address some of the open issues above.
>
> Thoughts? Other ideas on what defines a user collection
to the user?
>
> Alec
>
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