Namespaces

This wiki makes use of namespaces to group and order all of the pages. Mostly, they resolve ambiguities, such as the distinction between Kaldor, the kingdom in the “World” section of the wiki—about which much can be said—and Kingdom of Kaldor in the works: section, the particular article by Columbia Games, Inc. that says much about it.

Namespaces aren't strictly required by dokuwiki, and there are arguments in favor of dispensing with them to make a flatter structure, starting with the fact that pagenames without namespaces are easier to type! However, they do make organizational presentations like tables of contents easier to generate. The nspages plugin can show the whole namespace structure of the wiki with one line of code, and it will always show the current state of play without manual editing.

Two principle sections of the wiki are the so-called “World” namespaces—harn: primarily, but also ivinia:, shorkyne:, trierzon:, and kethira: for everywhere else—and, on the other hand, the works: namespace.

To give a visual cue to which of these the user is currently browsing, the top-level headings are varied per a Works vs. world style guide.

The “World” sections contain information about individual places in Hârn and elsewhere. Of course, the harn: namespace is chief among those. However, at this time, much of it has yet to be built out. It is hoped that the data from all of the tables in the kingdom modules can be used to generate the basic, minimum page content. It's a big project made more complex by overblown ideas of data scraping and organization, and alas, this has been slow coming.

Other pages are envisioned that group these pages in different ways. By map squares, by domains like earldoms and baronies, by judicial divisions like shires and hundreds, and even, eventually, spatially along rivers and roads.

Some pages do exist now and constitute the oldest parts of the wiki. This content will be incorporated into the generated content. It is hoped to grow the wiki from there by continuing to add bits of data like, “So-and-so bailiff of Manor A comes from the clan holding Manor B,” with links all around. The sources of this information would then be cited by linking to the works: page of the document from which it is drawn.

The works: namespace has been the main focus of the wiki's growth up to this point. Its sub-namespaces are shown here. For starters, the present editor was lost in the sheer mass of material available when beginning to acquire these works and found the wiki to be a natural place to look for guidance. It is hoped that discovering relevant works has been made even easier.

No less important than that, a solid basis for citations in the “World” namespaces was needed. With all of the materials being copyrighted, there is only so much that we can show from them here, and due citation is a must. Perhaps, if it is made simple enough for users to find and buy the works they want, we will be allowed to present a bit more of that data.

At this point, all of the current canon materials have works: pages. There is still some fanon yet to do, but the bulk of that has been accounted for as well, at least as far as the present editor knows about it. The internet is a big place, and there may be yet more out there that needs inclusion. A guide for editors adding new works is here.

This, a Census Hârnica, has not yet been created, but it is intended to be an extension of the “World” section that holds pages on the persons and clans named. It is envisioned that page names will go something like census:clanname:firstname. It promises to be a pain, but hopefully that can be minimized.

After those big namespaces, the remainder are small and targeted. There shouldn't be any need to go deeper than the one, top-level namespace in these.

The credits: namespace has a page for every name credited with a role in creating one or more works. Most of those are people, some are organizations, and one, credits:some_person, collects those works with no names given.

The icons: namespace holds all of the specially-bordered icons used to mark works in the works: namespace. It's here and not under wiki: to keep those page names shorter, since they are usually brought into a works: page with the include plugin.

The inclusions: namespace is also at the service of the Include plugin. This is for large page pieces intended to be included elsewhere, like the Atlas Hârnica map used by the Image Map plugin to navigate those pages and appearing on all. It is placed here to avoid cluttering up the namespaces in which they appear with spurious half-pages.

The playground: namespace is provided by DokuWiki by default, and it is a good place for editors to try out how things will look. Page history and metadata are not retained for this namespace, so trial and error does not result in a bloat of unnecessary wiki content.

The wiki: namespace contains pages—like this one—that highlight features of HârnWiki. Some of these, like Tags, may be of interest to wiki users and editors alike. Others, like Plugins, provide more technical information for editors in order to help their efforts.

This is another built-in namespace, having a few pages provided by DokuWiki itself. Certainly, the Formatting Syntax page—also available elsewhere on the web—is of evergreen use to help with common formatting questions.

These namespaces exist at the time of this writing, but there may prove to be no need for them. Then again, the ideas that brought them about may bear out.

If it is decided to use the database2 plugin, then the harndata: namespace is where the database will be. That may not be done, however: after such a database is used for “World” section page creation, it may become a maintenance liability as changes in those sections must then be changed in the database as well.

The RefNotes plugin handles the formatting of citations in the “World” sections, and the refnotes: namespace was created for the simplest implementation of that. However, the data may prove easier to maintain by implementing the plugin differently and folding that data directly into the works: namespace. Experimenting with that is the next item on the agenda.