Cloning

Posted by David Dunham
Nov 30, 2006 at 04:56 AM

I’m starting to investigate what it would take to add cloning to my Opal outliner. Much to my surprise, I discovered that (in MORE and TAO at least), when you create a subtopic to a cloned topic, a subtopic is created both places. I’d sort of been thinking that only the topic data itself was cloned.

I’m also having a hard time figuring out TAO’s rules for when a cloned topic is deleted. It sometimes happens and not others. (It may have to do with the fact that TAO allows you to unclone, and thus a clone’s family may not be identical to its original topic’s family.)

I’m not as familiar with the Windows products. I know Brainstorm has something. And Leo. What products would people suggest as good examples of cloning?

Alternately, how do you think a cloned topic should behave—does just that topic get cloned, or its family? Do all its columns get cloned? (Some do and some don’t in TAO, as near as I can tell.)