-On [[todo/auto-create_tag_pages_according_to_a_template]], [[chrysn]]
-suggests:
-
-> Instead of creating a file that gets checked in into the RCS, the
-> source files could be left out and the output files be written as
-> long as there is no physical source file (think of a virtual underlay).
-> Something similar would be required to implement alias directive,
-> which couldn't be easily done by writing to the RCS as the page's
-> contents can change depending on which other pages claim it as an alias.
-
-`add_autofile` could be adapted to do this, or a similar API could be
-added.
-
-This would also be useful for autoindex, as suggested on
-[[plugins/autoindex/discussion]]. I'd also like to use it for
-[[plugins/contrib/album]].
-
-One refinement I'd suggest is that if the transient page is edited,
-its transient contents are evaluated and used as the initial
-content for the edit box; after that, it'd become a static page. --[[smcv]]
-
---------------------------
-
-[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/transient author="[[smcv]]"]]
-[[!tag patch]]
-
-I had a look at implementing this. It turns out to be harder than I thought
-to have purely in-memory pages (several plugins want to be able to access the
-source file as a file), but I did get this proof-of-concept branch
-to write tag and autoindex pages into an underlay.
-
-This loses the ability to delete the auto-created pages (although they don't
-clutter up git this way, at least), and a lot of the code in autoindex is
-probably now redundant, so this is probably not quite ready for merge, but
-I'd welcome opinions.
-
-Usage: set `tag_underlay` and/or `autoindex_underlay` to an absolute path,
-which you must create beforehand. I suggest *srcdir* + `/.ikiwiki/transient`.
-
-Refinements that could be made if this approach seems reasonable:
-
-* make these options boolean, and have the path always be `.ikiwiki/transient`
-* improve the `remove` plugin so it also deletes from this special underlay
-
->> Perhaps it should be something more generic, so that other plugins could use it (such as "album" mentioned above).
->> The `.ikiwiki/transient` would suit this, but instead of saying "tag_underlay" or "autoindex_underlay" have "use_transient_underlay" or something like that?
->> Or to make it more flexible, have just one option "transient_underlay" which is set to an absolute path, and if it is set, then one is using a transient-underlay.
->> --[[KathrynAndersen]]
-
->>> What I had in mind was more like `tag_autocreate_transient => 1` or
->>> `autoindex_transient => 1`; you might conceivably want tags to be
->>> checked in but autoindices to be transient, and it's fine for each
->>> plugin to make its own decision. Going from that to one boolean
->>> (or just always-transient if people don't think that's too
->>> astonishing) would be trivial, though.
->>>
->>> I don't think relocating the transient underlay really makes sense,
->>> except for prototyping: you only want one, and `.ikiwiki` is as good
->>> a place as any (ikiwiki already needs to be able to write there).
->>>
->>> For [[plugins/contrib/album]] I think I'd just make the photo viewer
->>> pages always-transient - you can always make a transient page
->>> permanent by editing it, after all.
->>>
->>> Do you think this approach has enough potential that I should
->>> continue to hack on it? Any thoughts on the implementation? --[[smcv]]
-
->>>> Ah, now I understand what you're getting at. Yes, it makes sense to put transient pages under `.ikiwiki`.
->>>> I haven't looked at the code, but I'd be interested in seeing whether it's generic enough to be used by other plugins (such as `album`) without too much fuss.
->>>> The idea of a transient underlay gives us a desirable feature for free: that if someone edits the transient page, it is made permanent and added to the repository.
->>>>
->>>> I think the tricky thing with removing these transient underlay pages is the question of how to prevent whatever auto-generated the pages in the first place from generating them again - or, conversely, how to force whatever auto-generated those pages to regenerate them if you've changed your mind.
->>>> I think you'd need something similar to `will_render` so that transient pages would be automatically removed if whatever auto-generated them is no longer around.
->>>> -- [[KathrynAndersen]]