The Great Tree

Durin Mephit · Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:06 pm Post subject:

Man this is ugly Razz

http://rel.to/redir_events2.html
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rel.to | Marten KI: 59474 | Durin M KI: 11883768

Erik · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:01 am Post subject:

Yes, it is... but at least the structure is there. Wink

My promised thoughts are a bit delayed... I had to work on a Physics project that I had almost forgotten about and I didn't have much time to think about rel.to.

I did think about a few things, but I need to transfer those thoughts from my mind to some readable, comprehensable sentences and diagrams. Laughing

Durin Mephit · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:21 am Post subject:

Sounds good.

I keep changing my mind about how relationships should be represented so your delay is good too. Smile

I think I need Tweek's involvement to help me figure out how these entries should look.
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Durin Mephit * Member of Guild of Messengers - Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.
rel.to | Marten KI: 59474 | Durin M KI: 11883768

Erik · Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:39 am Post subject:

Well, Marten, I revised the database lay-out and put together a script that shows how Rel.to could work in combination with the database.

I used your lay-out and added some PHP to load everything from the database.

The script in action: http://uru.thecitadel.nl/reltotest.php

Database lay-out:

(Oops, I see that I left the URL for the DRC website empty. Embarassed

)

Things to pay attention to:

Websites and tags are no longer separated in the database.
GoME has two parents in the database and on the page, it's under news and also under guilds.
There are two "tags" (Official and unofficial guilds) that are added as tags in the database, but that are actually used as headings. The script recognises them as headings, because they don't have anything in the 'tag' field.
When you click on one of the top tags, the script start building the entire tree from that point. It loops until it can't find any more children.

Durin Mephit · Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 11:14 pm Post subject:

Thanks Erik!

I just got back from a mini-vacation, so please don't expect me to look at this right away. I'll get to it as soon as I can though.
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Durin Mephit * Member of Guild of Messengers - Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.
rel.to | Marten KI: 59474 | Durin M KI: 11883768

Erik · Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:

Sure, take your time. Wink

Durin Mephit · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:52 am Post subject:

Alright.... first, I can say that what you've got is "tres nifty", or tossing out that bad Franglais, it's very cool.

I have some refinements to how I want things to be laid out, but I don't think that'll be any problem. The hierarchal layout format will go away.... everything will look more flat. For example, the bottom level of child links would instead be listed as "Related links" in the entry for their parent, rather than shown as another hierarchy in the tree.

But I *think* that will all be layout details and won't change the database format. I'll post an another update soon showing what I'm thinking.
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Durin Mephit * Member of Guild of Messengers - Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.
rel.to | Marten KI: 59474 | Durin M KI: 11883768

Erik · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:10 am Post subject:

Thanks, Marten! Very Happy

Durin Mephit · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject:

OK, I have some layout proposals. There are two here, and I used excel to build the layout so if you want to flip between the examples, use the tabs at the lower left.

http://rel.to/relto_ex.htm

The first example is intended to work with the current scheme (what Erik has coded). The second example makes forum tags different from other tags, so they get treated differently. The most obvious example of where this change will make a difference is in the "official sites" example.

The (*) item is a placeholder for some option, probably indicated with an icon, that the user can click to expand for more information. It appears anywhere "related links" are found. At the very bottom of the example is a demonstration of expanding "dlf", treating it as a top level entry and then listing one level of links beneath it.

The top level categories are treated a little differently from everything else. For example, "guilds" has a special meaning, it's a "zero-th level" in the tree because "official guilds" and "unofficial guilds" are level 1, and the guilds in those categories are on level 2. When expanding an entry such as "dlf" as shown in the final example, "dlf" is both level 0 and level 1.

One more detail: I haven't really put a lot of thought into this, and I'll defer to Erik's judgement... but in my example, "headlines" lists Myst Embassy (a parent) as a related link. You'll see other places like this, like drcforums referring back to drc, and towards the end of the examples, dlf referring to bgsg and bgsg referring to dlf. My thinking here is to not worry about the parent/child relationship when building trees because we're not going to expand beyond a 2nd level. This isn't really supported by Erik's scheme - but I threw it into both examples for discussion. Are there any problems with this idea? One catch: zero-th level entries would not be shown under related links.
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Durin Mephit * Member of Guild of Messengers - Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.
rel.to | Marten KI: 59474 | Durin M KI: 11883768

Moiety Jean · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 12:46 am Post subject:

Somethin's not working for me there, Marten. That link brings me to a blank page.. ::scratchhead::
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Durin Mephit · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:05 am Post subject:

I guess I'll have to see if Erik has trouble with it? It works for me in FireFox 2.0.0.11 and IE 7. I don't think it requires Excel to be installed....
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Durin Mephit * Member of Guild of Messengers - Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.
rel.to | Marten KI: 59474 | Durin M KI: 11883768

janaba1 · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:51 am Post subject:

The link works for me too, Marten and MJ... Very Happy

Erik · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:02 am Post subject:

Working for me, although I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't working in all browsers. Wink

Some comments:

The DRC entry doesn't show any related links and the DRC forums entry show the related DRC entry.
The DLF entry shows the related DLF forums, and the DLF forums entry doesn't have any related links.
That's not really consistent. If the "expand" function can be used with all entries with related links, that would mean that the DRC forums will show the parent site when expanded. The reverse seems more logical to me.

The special treatment for forums can easily be implemented. I'll just add a 'forum_child' field to the database. Each tag will then be able to list a child tag that is a forum.

And I'll add an IC/OOC field. Those properties aren't really a problem, that's just a matter of adding a database field.

I think this will all work out quite well with a few adjustments to the code. I think I will be able to update the script during the weekend. Smile

Durin Mephit · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:14 pm Post subject:

Erik · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject:

Okay, but then, isn't the 'related link' to drc on the entry drcforums superfluous? Since it's obvious that drcforums is related to drc color-wise.