Why a Meta-Index

Why is a Meta-Index even neccessary?

In the beginning, SnipSnap had a flat namespace. This meant that the index was reasonably useful, and topics had to be grouped by clever naming of the snips (for example, Linux Software).

Version 0.5a introduced an implementation of Namespaces, which can be used to group snips with a similar theme or topic together. Naturally, I used it to create some clustering of topics (such as information about how to deal with various pieces of various operating systems) by naming things like Linux/Software.

This worked well, until the release of 0.5.2a. In this version, the index functionality was changed so that only the last element of a namespace tree was displayed in the index (so for the running example, the snip Linux/Software would be listed in the index under S as Software -- something which is less than helpful.) Thus, in reaction to this, I have created this Meta-Index page, which lists all the namespaces created thus far with a link to top-level pages (which themselves pretty much only display {snip-tree:}s as appropriate.

The other thing which is appropriate to note is that this is a separate page (ie not the start page) because once upon a time the start page held a weblog, something which is now hosted elsewhere.