Moving categories under alias category

[Pawel]

I tried to organize my people categories into an "inverted tree" - so I placed all the people keywords under @Keywords|People and tried to create a category tree made of alias categories pointing to the @Keywords|People keywords.

I noticed however that I cannot create "New Child" under a category being an alias of another category ("New Child" option is greyed out). I cannot drag and drop categories under an alias category neither. I can however cut a category and paste it as a child of an alias category. The tree seems to work OK, however I am not sure if it is (pasting categories under an alias category) a supported solution?

If yes, can we count on enabling "New Child" and drag and drop functions for an alias categories?

[Mario]

Alias categories allow you to 'mirror' another category elsewhere in your category tree. They are not designed to have children.

[Pawel]

Does it mean I should convert every alias category that I want to have children to formula categories, because - even if the tree works OK now - this configuration can stop working?

[Mario]

I can however cut a category and paste it as a child of an alias category.

This should not work. I need to disable this.

A normal category always shows the files assigned to it, and to all it's children, recursively.

An Alias category does not show its "own" images, but the files from another category, somewhere in your category tree. And thus also the files of all the child categories of the aliased category.

This is why allowing an Alias category to have different children than the aliased category is not useful. If this would be allowed, an Alias category would contain different files than the category it is aliasing! And that's not part of the concept of Alias categories.

[Pawel]

Well, for me there was no confusion at all - I am used to categories showing their own images and images assigned to subcategories (unless specifically instructed to show images without subcategories) so an alias category showing images assigned to the original/aliased category _and_ images of the subcategories seemed something natural - especially that it is a very convenient way to put some people in a context of other people - like family tree, social circles etc. And alias is better than formula category because I can assign images to both the alias and the aliased category and both categories stay in sync.

I didn't know however that the alias category should show content of subcategories of the aliased category - I didn't try that, it seems to me a little counterintuitive (I would think that category alias is one category's alias, not a "category tree reference"). If it works that way than maybe this functionality should be named "tree mirror"? :-)

Anyway, from what you said I gather you'd rather not "loosen" the alias functionality to allow alias categories to have different subcategories than the aliased category - and so I have to adjust my database and convert all the alias categories to formula categories?

[Mario]

I didn't know however that the alias category should show content of subcategories of the aliased category

A parent category always contains the files in all its child categories, recursively. There is no difference for Alias categories.

Anyway, from what you said I gather you'd rather not "loosen" the alias functionality to allow alias categories to have different subcategories than the aliased category

No. I have just disabled pasting categories (or adding categories) under Alias categories.