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When I'm creating a new deliverable and creating topics at the same time, using multiple existing information sources, I need to specify the new structure, as well as indicate where the existing information is. The URL parameter of the new topic specification does this nicely. However, the length of the URLs can make the content spec hard to read. A new topic directive can look like this: A Simple Messaging Program in C++ [N, Reference, url=http://documentation-stage.bne.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_MRG/2/html-single/Programming_in_Apache_Qpid/index.html] What I am doing at the moment is using a shorthand like this: # Sources # PiAQ=http://documentation-stage.bne.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_MRG/2/html-single/Programming_in_Apache_Qpid/index.html A Simple Messaging Program in C++ [N, Reference, url=@PiAQ] Perhaps the Content Spec Processor could support this, and write the new topic record using the referenced URL? This would make the information available to the topic author in Skynet, while keeping the spec readable.
Actually, I have a workaround for this that might be a good solution. I created a metadata category called "Provenance" in Skynet, then made a tag "PiAQ-2" whose description contains the url. Then I just tag all the topics that come from that book with [PiAQ-2]
This breaks the human readability for the direction we are heading. Currently the idea is to keep everything related about a topic in the one place (or as much as possiible). If we implement this then it makes you have to look around in various different locations of a content specification to find the information required for the topic. This is an issue that was brought up during the review of Skynet and as such won't be implemented at this point in time.