Have I been missing something obvious for the last few years of work with Drupal, or do taxonomy synonyms just go into the database and never come back out again?
apparently so
Scanning core code, I never see them doing anything but hang around like male nipples.
Nowhere in the entire API is taxonomy_get_synonyms() even called (apart from when editing a term again).
Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what I even expect synonyms to do within Drupal. Possibly get inserted as search terms to tagged nodes when indexing? Hmm, good idea.
But really, WTF? Why does this functionality even exist in core? Is it legacy? Was it put in with the expectation that it made sense and we'd find out how to use it later? -OK, but, "no".
.dan.
(please don't read this post with a harsh tone - try 'flabbergasted' and not 'rant' mode)
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hehe
It's one of those "exists behind the scenes" features, that is there for a contrib module to put a UI of some sort on.
A bit like how per node access control doesn't have a UI in core (yet).
That you aren't quite sure how it should work makes it an ideal candidate for competing contrib modules to figure that one out :)
--
Anton
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As for contrib...
I've developed additions for taxonomy_xml - import/export now also via CSV and RDF - working towards a "taxonomy server" hub for sharing useful common restricted vocabularies. Fun stuff.
I have been honoring synonyms etc - because it's the right thing to have in a taxonomy.
But as it stands .. I couldn't see "what is the point?"!
Like I say - I'm not sure even what to expect from a UI. But thinking about it, adding a search hook would be a golden bonus.
.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
synonyms may be useful to consolodate freetagging
I notice it doesn't even flatten them when synonyms are entered via in freetagging.
That is certainly one intuative feature add. I reckon.
I guess I'll stick that on the wishlist
.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
1 cent
remember the lullabots discussed synonyms briefly in their taxonomy podcast.
i actually have an intranet site where synonyms are to be used; something about "common usage" and "local slang" that will never appear in a dictionary or thesaurus (it is an hr department; they talk funny). using the synonyms contrib module to help the search part, which kinda works. maintenance is a pain, though; the maintainer needs administer taxonomy permissions to update and cross-post them, but only after someone mentions it first. only useful in search, so far; can't seem to do anything else with them (maybe related terms?). how to manage them...?
please keep wishing! and thanks for your postings and replies; learn a lot just reading them.
Tis the season
This is Christmas, so we do have a working wishlist!
I posted this to the GHOP Queue
... and I didn't know about the synonyms.module at all, and I thought I did a good search!
An additional user interface to 'suggest synonym' may be in order for your needs. Makes sense, although that would certainly be a contrib add on. Just making synonyms do ANYTHING useful seems like a core function to me tho!
.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
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I, too, am 'flabbergasted' -- been using Drupal since 4.7, never seen a use for Synonyms without writing custom code. I wonder how many people actually enter values in that field before they figure out that more work is required in order to make use of them... :D