Topic on Help talk:Subpages/Archive 2

Hi,

I have a template with a very long name and a few subpages, something like Template:Template_with_very_very_very_long_title, Template:Template_with_very_very_very_long_title/sub1 and Template:Template_with_very_very_very_long_title/sub2.

Because of the long title, it gets a little cumbersome to transclude the template and its subpages (it is hard to remember the exact phrasing of the long title, etc), so I would like to abbreviate the template using a redirect. I created the new abbreviated Template:Long with, simply:

#REDIRECT [[Template:Template_with_very_very_very_long_title]]

Transcluding the template is thus much easier, by simply typing {{Long}}.

The problem, however, is that template subpages do not benefit from the abbreviation, so {{Long/sub1}} and {{Long/sub2}} don't work, unless I explicitly create these pages and manually redirect them to the subpages of the original template.

This is a bit odd to me, specially since one could create a Template:Long/sub1 with different content from Template:Template_with_very_very_very_long_title/sub1 .

Is this the expected behaviour of subpages?

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated...

I would expect it. Pagenames are not hierarchical filesystem objects, but are instead independent database records.

The slash / chars only mimics a hierarchical filesystem. We can create subpage a/b/c before we create a/b, and we can back and also create a/b after we create a/b/c.

The tabs on a page or breadcrumbs on a subpage only mimic a software object that is a single internal entity with pointers to all its pages. For example, move a pagename, and the talk page is not moved, but must be moved independently.

The redirect only mimics an alias, and appears to be an internal pointer. In fact the redirect is an independent page, as subpages are, as they all are.