I am not sure I like the Category module. The more I get into it, the less I like it. Here are my primary concerns:
First, the Category module is not true metadata. It makes you throw a lot of content into category nodes. That’s even how the Category module’s own documentation is set up: http://drupal.org/node/90308#comment-164955. This seems kludgy; shouldn’t categories be strictly metadata? Are we reducing the agility of our CMS by merging metadata with so much core content?
Second, why containers? Why not let categories just contain other categories and dispense with the container concept?
Third, why the complexity? Theoretically, a content categorization system should be a piece of cake to understand and start using, like a tagging system on a blog. Why, therefore, do you need to read lengthy documentation and tutorials just to “get it”? It’s revealing that http://category.greenash.net.au/node/98 has 7 paragraphs and 34 sentences just to explain how to set up a basic container.
Fourth, why can’t I assign categories to any node type upon creation? When I create a new node, regardless of type, shouldn’t I be able to click on, say, a Category section at the bottom and select that node’s categories? Right now, I have a container with three categories, but if I create a new page, I am never given the option of adding any categories. No such option shows up when I edit the page, and no such option shows up once I save the page.
I don’t mean to be hyper-critical of the Category module/project. I think it’s a good thought. However, some suggest it should be part of the Drupal core. If that happens, I think Drupal will frustrate new users. This module needs to be vastly simpler and approachable before it should be considered for inclusion in the core.
Comments
I feel your pain. It is hard
I feel your pain. It is hard to set up an advanced tax especially on a new site when you don't know where it is going. Anymore I just go with freetagging.
Stick to taxonomy
I used category for testing purposes to see if it can solve my needs, and it was a pain to maintain it.
My biggest frustration was freetagging. I dont know if the new category module fully supports it now.
Just stick to old, core taxonomy. I am.
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What are Taxonomy's problems, anyway?
What are Taxonomy's problems that Category supposedly solves? I am not aware of any.
This is not a problem, but a
This is not a problem, but a nice feature. When creating a vocabulary, there's an option of entering text/image/whatever at the top of the vocabulary. For example, i could enter ads. Taxonomy does not have this feature, however, i believe it can be accomplish it in the template.tpl, but being a newbie, i am scare to change put/change anything that mite bring my entire site down.
Category can be associated with any page type. Now, taxonomy supports it, i guess it was copied from the category module.
This were some of the issues in D4.7. I dont know how the category module works now. Taxonomy has improved.
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I started using Drupal with
I started using Drupal with version 5.0, so I am not experienced with taxonomy limitations with 4.x. I trust the wider discussion of the Category module will be on its improvements over the current release, not 4.x.
As far as I can tell, in
As far as I can tell, in making a category an actual node it allows a category to have content of its own.
This is pretty important, as you often want a taxonomy list to not just show a dumb list of node teasers, but also some sort of introduction.
This *can* be done with Views, but it's a bit of a sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut situation.
Alternatively, on my site I did it with a sticky node in that taxonomy term and some theming to hide its title -- this is a bit of a kludge too, as it removes part of the functionality of sticky nodes, requires theming, and educating site editors that to edit the header of the topic they've got to click on a hidden link.
Categories as nodes is a cool concept, but I agree with you that the implementation all seems way too complicated. I found the documentation pretty hard to take in when I investigated the module, and baulked at having to use 'fake' wrapper modules to allow normal functioning of modules that depend on taxonomy such as forum.
Not even supported
I found something interesting suggesting that the Category module isn't even supported. Look at the number of open vs. fixed issues at http://drupal.org/project/issues/views, and compare that to http://drupal.org/project/issues/category. The support is night and day different.
I hate to say it, but I think the category guys got in over their heads on this. I think their idea was noble, but I still question the very idea of elevating metadata to node status, and their implementation feels like a kludge.
Hmm...
You may or not may not like the logic behind the module or the level of support but it isn't fair to just come in and rubbish the efforts of developers without taking the time and effort to study things in detail. That's what you have done here, in effect.
There are at least 20 different ways in which I feel category is better than the core taxonomy module. May be your post will finally make me document those points.
Free tagging works perfectly with category, by the way.
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Previously user Ramdak.
I look forward to your 20
I look forward to your 20 reasons. Please let me know when they come out. I'd love to say my criticism was all a misunderstanding.
All I ask is you limit your 20 reasons to stuff contained in the actual, released module or things that are being worked on in HEAD. I want to know why this specific module is better than taxonomy, not see a list of improvement proposals that category may or may not fix.
I also am only interested in improvements over Drupal 5.0's taxonomy features, so please clarify if the improvement only applies to 4.x.
BTW, free tagging is already available in Drupal 5.0.
And I disagree with your interpretation of supported. Category has issues going back almost a whole year (!!) that haven't even been assigned: http://drupal.org/project/issues/category?page=10. I wouldn't dare put it in production with that many outstanding bugs.
And I disagree with your
Well, it is the prerogative of the module maintainer to release a module for production or not. Category was in beta for a very long time before being released and it is no more buggy than many other drupal modules that are in use. The high level of activity on the issue queue is in itself an indication of how many people are interested in what category offers.
Agreed, there are bugs and the documentation is a bit convoluted at times, but neither situation is for want of trying. I wonder if there is any other drupal contributed module for which the developer has provided so much documentation, both in terms of the logic behind the module and how it works. Until bdragon came along, there was virtually no one else who grokked the code (or if they did, they were busy with other stuff to contribute actively) and Jaza was shouldering the responsibility single handedly and doing his best. bdragon is continuing to do the same after he took over.
We can do a lot of hair splitting over semantics, but I am sure neither of us is interested in that. I just want to ensure that people reading this forum post don't go away with wrong impressions about category module.
For the logic behind the module, pl see Jaza's original proposal at http://drupal.org/node/23730. The original category module tar ball also came with ppt slides that explained the module's logic further. This might still be there.
Edit: Also see http://www.nicklewis.org/node/851
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Previously user Ramdak.
Category is a bad idea
With regard to http://drupal.org/node/23730:
"One of Drupal's biggest wekanesses…is its lack of support for a basic hierarchical site structure." Is this not fixed in 5.0 with hierarchy in the taxonomies?
"But [Book and Taxonomy modules] are totally separate." Metadata is generally and appropriately separate from the information it describes.
"This means that you cannot create content for a particular term, to use as its description (unless you use taxonomy context), and it means that you cannot perform other operations on a taxonomy term, such as commenting, versioning, workflow, input filtering, etc (unless you use taxonomy associations)." He just identified solutions to both problems.
It seems the "Example scenario" is easily accomplished with CCK and Views on 5.0?
You know, part of what I am seeing is like the traditional email client paradigm vs. the Gmail paradigm. With the traditional paradigm, you have a rigid hierarchy of folders, and mail goes into those folders. With Gmail, everything goes in your inbox and you separate things with tags. Gmail takes some getting used to (I admittedly don’t use it yet), but with the proper tools, it is far more powerful than a folder hierarchy. I see category as going backwards: going from a simple, tagged, metadata setup to a less agile, hierarchical, "the node is the metadata" setup.
OK, now I see the "Possible criticisms" section, where he tries to address this. I strongly disagree with his response to the criticisms.
"Even as a node type, a term can still be nothing more than a tag that you apply to other nodes. So you will still be able to use taxonomy in the same way using this new system." So wouldn't the best solution be to leave Drupal's taxonomy system alone?
"And, should you ever decide that you need to give your terms a description (and the raw text description offered by taxonomy context is insufficient), and that you want them to form the structure of your site, you will be able to do so with incredible ease." Not sure I understand how a rational solution to this minor problem would require such a complicated new module.
Sorry, now that I see this document, I even more fervently believe Category is misguided. It may address a couple of gripes of limited scope. Those gripes should be fixed as separate modules. I still don't see justification to rip out the entire taxonomy system and replace it.
You are entitled to your own
You are entitled to your own opinion, of course. It's just that there is no point pulling down an author or a module because one doesn't like it or its logic. You're always free not to use it, after all.
It's a pity jaza isn't around to answer your questions.
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Previously user Ramdak.
That 20 things list...
If you come up with the 20 ways that the current Category module improves the Drupal 5.x taxonomy system, I'd really like to see it.
Still waiting
Hey, I'm still waiting for the 20 ways that Category module improves on Drupal 5.x.
I know I have been remiss on
I know I have been remiss on this one, as I have been on a couple of to-do's I had promised myself for drupal.org documentation- just put it down to the hard reality of earning a living as a non-profit consultant without a regular 9-5 job. But it's still on my mind.
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Previously user Ramdak.
Still waiting on your 20
Still waiting on your 20 reasons. :-)
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http://drupal.org/node/23730
Not 20 reasons but the developers original proposal and outline is here, which states what he/she saw as a limitation to the taxonomy.module that category.module fixed for him/her
more relevant information can be found here: http://category.greenash.net.au/
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I have more or less given up
I have more or less given up on drupal temporarily because of other, personal issues. I did start writing those differences but couldn't complete it.
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Previously user Ramdak.
You're also factually
You're also factually incorrect when you say, 'Not even supported'. It is. bdragon is the maintainer now in Jaza's absence. Please avoid making such sweeping statements.
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Previously user Ramdak.
I gave it the ol' college try....
...and either it's entirely too convoluted, or I'm just too much of a n00b. I suspect both.
After feeling my way through the at-times lacking documentation, and learning about Containers and such via the "bang your head up against a wall" method -- I sorta/kinda ended up with what I wanted.
"But, hmmm, what's this? The result (to the end user) looks and feels very much like I what I had with boring, old fashioned Taxonomies? Now, tell me, after all of the late nights digging through Forum posts and out-dated docs, what did I end up improving?"
The AJAX-driven Activeselect + Category trick (ref: http://drupal.org/node/74747) made for some cool looking drop-down menus. And some of the back-end bells & whistles were interesting.
But otherwise, the module gave me nothing but headaches, and not a few Fatal Errors (Category + Views, for example).
As a new Drupal 5.x user, I never dealt with the headache of 4.6/4.7-era Taxonomy that Category set out to rectify. So maybe there was a major night&day difference back then.
But nowadays, IMO, it all seems to be trying too hard to reinvent the wheel....
//TB
Taxonomy changes
I'm not up to date with Category myself (I prefer plain ol Taxonomy) it's been quite a while since I last tested it...
Not really, there seems to be some misconceptions in this thread about pre Drupal 5 taxonomy. About the only real changes to the core taxonomy features that I've noticed is that 4.7 added freetagging. Drupal 5 doesn't really add anything new as far as I can tell. And my vague memories of what was in 4.4 and 4.5 are pretty much the same as what was in 4.6. The core Taxonomy module has had single and multiple term hierarchies for a long time.
What Category aimed to do was make the Categories and Containers into actual content (ie nodes). Making them content allows their names and descriptions to appear in search results, presumably it allowed comments on them, it allows other modules to transparently extend them with all the flexibility Drupal gives to nodes etc. Category wasn't trying to rectify headaches as take the whole system in a different (ambitious) direction. The core Taxonomy module is just metadata for tagging nodes (and also includes some basic listing functionality that can be replaced or extended), whereas Category combines content, metadata, site structure, listings etc into one.
Nodes are powerful heavyweight things in Drupal and there are other contrib modules that try to bring that power to users/user profiles and comments etc. Category does that for Taxonomy (and optionally menus/books too). Generally though most sites are better off using the lighter standard core implementations for these things IMO.
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Agreed with styro
Yes, applause to styro...
On our site, we are finally using both Category and Taxonomy:
--- Category system is very good as the basic "navigation-skeleton" through our content (Taxonomy is pretty ugly for this purpose on 4.7.3 with its simple node-lists, and we never got it really working with the views, where the "Node:distinct" filter lets us only choose whether the summary should be broken, or multiple occurences of the same node should be seen). Category is, we feel, solving some part of the Drupal's collisions with users' preferences on structure and navigation of a good website. Having Book, Taxonomy and menus (i.e. breadcrumbs) separate things, that's quite a disaster.
--- Taxonomy offers additional content tagging along different aspects, therefore just providing alternative search-options (views) without duplicite categories appearing in the navigation scheme. But still, to be honest - the original biggest reason for using Taxonomy as well was just the showing of terms at the node-pages.
--- Very powerful concept is embedding views into category-pages, although it's a bit buggy (speaking of 4.7.3 - I posted my solutions here: http://drupal.org/node/69861#comment-238417 )
I think Styro sums it up
I think Styro sums it up pretty well. If you are new to drupal, you're better off using taxonomy.
But, I am always surprised when people say the documentation is hard to understand. With the exception of the Views module, category is possibly the best documented drupal contrib module. I can't think of any other developer who has put in so much effort to make people understand a module. Perhaps what people really mean is that the module's concept is complicated and that is probably true.
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Previously user Ramdak.
Constructive criticism on
Constructive criticism on the documentation: it's really wordy. That makes it very difficult to decipher. I had to make several passes of the docs just to separate the verbal wheat from the chaff. It would be nice if a lingual reductionist could make a few passes at it.
Constructive criticism on
Yes, that's true. I had the same feeling when I read the tutorial on converting a CCK node into a container/category.
Jeremy once gave me edit permission on his site. If that's still available, I might turn out to be that linguistic reductionist :-)
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Previously user Ramdak.
Abandoned
The category module may be abandoned soon per #140911: Will this project be continued to Drupal 7?.