Question

I need to create two Sections whose topics mirror one another. A table in the main web contains the following:

Note: you don't need to use double square brackets to create a link unless it is not a WikiWord. -MW

I want TopicOne and TopicTwo to both contain the sub-topics Abstract, Foreward, BookLayout, etc. I've already got TopicOne's sub-topics all created and full of content contributed by users that I don't want to lose. Now I'm ready to create TopicTwo, but it seems that if I create a sub-topic called Abstract for TopicTwo that it will wipe out the Abstract sub-topic from TopicOne. How can I achieve two topics whose sub-topics have the same names but different content?

As you have discovered there can't be two topics in the same web with the same name. Subtopics, in the manner you describe, do not exist in TWiki. You would need to do something like Book.TopicOneAbstract and Book.TopicTwoAbstract -MW

Also, I'm not quite clear on the concept of creating topics and sub-topics. Let's say that the first page I created in my Web is called Book. I created the changed the content of the first page to inlclude the following code:

THe way you have written this example "Book" is not a topic, but a web. -MW

and the text in the table appears without the name of the Web (and this is what I want). However, if I try to create a sub-topic of TopicOne like so:

the actual html displayed in the browser contains the text, 'SectionOne.TopicOne' rather than just, 'TopicOne' and the word SectionOne is an href but the word TopicOne is not. I need the word TopicOne to be an href to the TopicOne page. What am I doing wrong here?

• All topics in a web share one and the same namespace. This is done by design so that WikiWords get linked automatically. In your example you'd write Book.SectionOneTopicOne to get a unique topic name - PTh

Can someone please clarify these situations for me? Thanks!

• TWiki version: 12.01.2001
• Web server: Apache 1.3.26
• Server OS: Debian Linux 3.0
• Web browser: Mozilla 0.9.9
• Client OS: RedHat 7.3

-- BruceSnyder - 12 Sep 2002

Answer

Twiki doesn't support subtopics in the manner you describe. However there is a 'Parent' feature. Go look behind the More menu link. From there you can set the parent of the current topic to be any other topic within that web. Parents can be nested as deep as you like. When a new page is created from following a question mark link the parent is automatically set. E.g. For this topic, if you create the page TopicOneOfSameName it's parent will be SectionsWithTopicsOfSameName (follow it and see).

Also see the NavbarPlugin which might be related to what I think you might be striving for (it adds "Next/Previous/Up To Contents" navigation) and the Codev discussion TWikiForBookAuthoring.

If you must have (sub)topics with the same name (Abstract, Foreword, etc.) you could create a seperate web for each major topic (TopicOne, TopicTwo, etc.).

I think I understand where your confusion stems from. If we dissect the top of this page: (TWiki > Support > SectionsWithTopicsOfSameName) we get:

Though, quite understandably in my opnion, to someone new it looks like this:

-- MattWilkie - 13 Sep 2002