g2:choosing
This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
Back to G2 main
Choosing between glossary.module and g2.module
G2 is not intended as a direct replacement for the glossary module already available with drupal for quite some time now. It is designed for slightly different needs, and this page is here to help you choose which module you should probably be using, or if you should really write your own.
| Feature | Glossary | G2 |
|---|---|---|
| Drupal-related | ||
| Drupal 4.7.x | Yes | Yes |
| Drupal 4.6.x | Yes | No |
| AJAX | No | Entry selector |
| architecture | term-based | node-based |
| Services provided | ||
| multiple glossaries on one site | Yes | No |
| RSS feeds on entries | Yes, Drupal core | No |
| RSS feeds on additional vocabularies | No | Yes, Drupal core |
| classify entries using taxonomy | No | Yes, Drupal core |
| commenting on entries | No | Yes, Drupal core |
| private editorial information | No | Yes |
| feature blocks | No | alphabar latest top random word of the day |
| XML-RPC services provided | No | alphabar latest top random word of the day |
| Security | Drupal core | Drupal core XML-RPC access control XML-RPC throttling |
| alphabar maintenance | automatic | manual |
| content filtering | automatic | dfn elements |
| Performance | ||
| memory needs/number of entries | proportional | constant |
| speed on small glossaries | faster | slower |
| speed on large glossaries | slower with size | remains constant |
| Themeability | search form node overview | Drupal core node themeing Independent themeing for all 5 feature blocks Independent themeing for all parts of a term definition |
Obviously, in all cases, a “No” actually means: “roll your own”, as in all Open Source software.
Rationale for G2 specificities
- Optimization for large glossaries: this is the need expressed by OSInet, which funded development, to support its 5000+ term glossary of computing, for which glossary.module, even when coupled with flexinode to bind blob content to terms, is not really efficient enough.
- Single glossary: multiple glossaries were not necessary to OSInet, which funded development
- Explicit linking to terms with dfn elements:
- limits system workload
- allows invisible marking of entries made of other entries. Think: XML-RPC, points to XML and to RPC with glossary.module and various wiki filters, but can point to 'XML-RPC' with G2. Wrapping XML-RPC in quotes is necessary to allow linking to this entry in glossary, but the quotes remain visible, degrading the UI.
- allows redactor-level choice of
- whether to link to an entry: glossary always links if the term matches, which is not always meaningful (“and” can be present in a glossary and you don't want “and” to be linked from in all nodes on the site).
- where to link to an entry: glossary allows only a predefined set of positions (first, last or all matches)
- nodes vs terms: this is the most salient difference.
- Using custom nodes (g2_entry in g2.module) allows large definitions, with the complete drupal feature set for nodes,
- Using terms (glossary.module) allows definitions to be bound to custom nodes instead of being nodes on their own
- Alphabar maintenance: large glossaries will most of the time use all available initials, so the processing cost of maintaining it is not justifiable
g2/choosing.1198334713.txt.gz · Last modified: 2020/11/23 17:23 (external edit)