Feature Proposal: Form fields need a mechanism to rename

Motivation

Singlely named fields such as "Name" presently have no way to be renamed.

WikiWord named fields such as FirstName can presently be renamed but the act of renaming the topic fails if two forms use the same field name.

Description and Documentation

There should be a way to rename a field on a form and have all topics that use just that form be affected by the rename.

DataForms are a pivotal part of what *Wiki offers. This being broken is a hole in its functionality.

Examples

Create a form, ExampleForm. Add field "Name". Create topics based on ExampleForm. Change your mind about the name of the form. Tough luck.

Create a form, ExampleForm2 and ExampleForm3. On each add field "Name". Create a topic based on ExampleForm2 and a topic based on ExampleForm3. Change your mind about the name of the field on ExampleForm2. Tough luck: you cannot rename the field "FirstName" on ExampleForm2 because this will affect Topics based ExampleForm3 as well.

Impact

WhatDoesItAffect:

%WHATDOESITAFFECT%

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Implementation

-- Contributors: MartinCleaver - 18 Nov 2008

Discussion

Have a look here: ExtendedVariableHandling - by adding a mode "rename" you could that with the proposed METAHANDLE. Embedded in a SEARCH you could rename the fields of all topics found at once. Then you would just need to change the field in the form topic.

WikiGuest 25 Apr 2024