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The system is spoiled by confusion between division into 10 and division into 100. This creates extra levels so that the implementation does not live up to its "two clicks away" promise.

For instance, in the site's own structure, we have

  11-core/11.01-introduction
But that would leave two digit categories at the top level. The top level is organized by groups of ten and so we need

  10-19-concepts/11-core/11.01-introduction
One question is what if 10/11 gets more than ten items, so there is an 10/11/11, 10/11/12?

Isn't there a division into ten needed there?

If the bottom level never goes beyond 00-09, the zero is redundant. It's actually a three level system with a branching factor of 10, and you might as well just have

  10-concepts/11-core/1-introduction
I would just have

  10/11/1
and have symlinks

  concepts -> 10

  10/core -> 11

  10/11/introduction -> 1
Using the numbers as prefixes for the symbolic names means that someone who remembers the symbolic name but not the number cannot use tab completion nicely. They have to use tab completion to scan the entire directory level, then type the number, then tab complete again.

Symlinks going from symbolic to numeric is probably the right direction. The OS symlink resolution then teaches the users what the categories are:

  $ realpath --relative-to=. concepts/core/introduction
  10/11/01
There could be accelerator symlinks at the top level:

  11.1 -> 10/11/1
Now you get the full benefit. If you remember that introduction is 11.1, you actually have that as an instantly navigable identifier in the system.


> One question is what if 10/11 gets more than ten items, so there is an 10/11/11, 10/11/12?

I’m not following this (and thus, I think, your entire point). I think you might be slightly misunderstanding something, the files inside a category(11-core in the example) would never have a prefix other than the category - 10/11/11 is the only option - 10/11/12 would be breaking the system.

Once you’re inside a category, there is no division into 10 anymore. The 11 category would allow documents from 11.01 to 11.99. And as I believe is mentioned in the spec, if you need more than .99 you likely have too broad of a category or area.

For what it’s worth, I’ve used this system at work and in my own notes for around 2 years and haven’t run into this problem (yet).


OK. So if the 11 category can go to 99, why can't the top level just go from 00 to 99 as well without being broken into batches of 10 requiring another level.


Because most of the time the 11.99 is in a date series. So, the 11.01 item is probably not referred to much, and it's easy to zip down to stuff you're doing now. But 100 subfolders are too much to actually go looking through, especially if you're trying to `ls` the folders.




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