What is a TWiki topic logically?

• topic text
  • Always:
    • Text
  • Sometimes:
    • TWiki::TWikiVariables (why are they called variables, anyway?)
    • internal links
    • external links
• meta data
  • Always:
    • TOPICINFO
  • Sometimes:
    • parent
    • Form info
      • Form name
      • Field names and values
    • Stuff stored by plugins
• May be referred to by other topics (backlinks?)
• May refer to other topics (forward links?)

-- MeredithLesly

That's easy; it's a container. Not a simple container, but still a container. A web is another kind of container.

At the simplest level, a topic is a container that has text and a form in it.

At a more sophisticated level, tables, sections, paragraphs etc are themselves all containers within a topic, and a topic is just a container of containers. A link is just a link to another container. So is an INCLUDE.

Because of the way TWiki stores topics as flat text, it has avoided "over-structuring" these containers. All sorts of things (plugins and people) impose their own structural views on the text, without casting their view into stone.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 06 Mar 2006

This is defined in the TWikiGlossary and TWikiTopics.

-- PeterThoeny - 06 Mar 2006