TopicMaps are pages that contain markup similar to [include] (maybe [refer] or [toc]), but the normal page layout and the print layout differ: expansion of the includes only happens in the print view. The net result is that one can extract nice papers from a Wiki, without breaking its hyper-linked nature.
Nice idea. But i would just make it the normal behavior for external links. That way you don't clutter MoinMoin with too many different features. --MarkoSchulz
I plan to use [ ] with a consistent syntax for such things. How do you mean the external link thing? Including other web pages, or "only" other Wiki pages?
OK, for the simple stuff (i.e. local links), how about this:
[ include:WikiName] always includes the referred page
[ map:WikiName] for print inclusion (better names than map?)
Could you provide a more involved example markup and its corresponding rendering? As far as I understand it, you want to serialize a wiki, correct? You should ask yourself what you want to do with circular references. You could either disallow them or limit the recursion. What does "map" do? See also TransClusion. -- SunirShah
OK, concrete example. Consider this:
Moin Moin Manual
- Wiki Introduction
- Appendix
InterWiki list
This is useable for navigation in the normal view. Now imagine that if this is marked as a TopicMap, the content of the WikiNames that appear is included after this table of contents, in the print view.
Just FYI
The AsTMa= by Robert (\rho) Barta is a Topic Map Notation for Authoring. What is interesting is that it is quite similar to the idea of Wiki. For example,
- linux (os) bn: Linux kernel
is a definition in AsTMa= which can be convert to an xml version of TopicMap.
More information about Topic Maps can be found in the Addison-Wesley book XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web.