[thesite] themes milestone plan?

rudy r937 at interlog.com
Mon May 28 18:40:19 CDT 2001


> Again, not trying to be difficult. But, it seems like it would better
> be a M-M or SCHEME---1-M---SCHEME design, no? I mean, if
> we're making it so that a scheme doesn't necessarily relate to a
> single user, why wouldn't it be a M-M. Ok, i'll be quiet now.

no, please don't stop asking questions

remember, there's no such thing as a stupid question (okay, maybe "quick,
what's the number for 911?")

many many times i've seen a flaw in something i desisgned only after
somebody asked me to explain it   ;o)


the many-to-many user scheme design would be fine if we were really
considering *sharing* schemes between users, but we're not, because that
introduces one wee problem -- how do you control who updates a scheme?
yikes

yes, with a one-to-many scheme, there is the potential for joe to have a
scheme that's identical to one of fred's, especially if they both cloned it
off isaac or mccreath...  but that only goes for the process of *creating*
schemes, not *using* them

aside:  database space is not the issue here (consider all the dead
articles if you're worried about space)

ease of use, manageability, and simplicity in coding are higher goals

so let's not say that schemes are not intended to be shared -- far from it,
we expect the good ones to be shared, i.e. used, a great deal (especially
the default ones)

but the mechanism of the sharing will be something like this -- susy user
visits the site, scrolls through the available schemes, picks one she
likes, and badda-bing, the schemeid gets remembered in her cookie, never
mind that she picked one of martin's schemes...

having said all that, i think maybe the null userid is not necessary -- why
not just link them to the original authors?


rudy





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