I would like to recap the need for importing or synchronizing outline depth. It was covered in the old forums, but I would like to summarize here in the new forums and also push for my lighter approach listed below be in 0.9.25 (rather than 0.9.26 as currently planned). For reference, also see http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/257 for some discussion on importing/exporting depth.

Import (and sync which uses the same underlying mapping approach) is quite powerful in IQ, but its missing one key piece of information - the items depth in the outline. There are three ways of indicating depth that could be used. I will use the following simple outline in my examples:
A
  AA
    AAA
  AB
B
  BA

tabs - this is used by some outline programs. the number of tabs is the actual depth.
A
<tab>AA
<tab><tab>AAA
<tab>AB
B
<tab>BA
the problem is that tab is also often used as a delimiter which confuses things and also is not visible.

XML nesting - Using an actual XML representation like OPML that shows the nesting.
<A>
  <AA>
    <AAA/>
  </AA>
  <AB/>
</A>
<B>
  <BA/>
</B>
This is the growing standard and IO think clearly a long term functionality goal for IQ. However, IQ doesn't really think in XML, it thinks in tables and its a fair amount of work to add XML support. there also is the need for the depth to be available when working with non-XML sources (ODBC). This is in Mantis as item 9 - http://mantis.sqlnotes.net/view.php?id=9.

integer value -  Use an integer value that indicates the items depth.
Name,ItemDepth
A   ,0
AA  ,1
AAA ,2
AB  ,1
B   ,0
BA  ,1
This is nice because it maps easily when importing, exporting, and synchronizing. It also seems to be something that Pierre could add rather easily. I will also sweeten the deal by offering to write XSL that will convert OPML to and from this format giving us the ability to immediately import/export with a wide variety of outliners by using two steps (XSL then regular IQ import).

Pierre, As I mentioned above, I am guessing that this would be straightforward to add. Can we add import/export outline depth field as a new mantis requirement and perhaps add it to 0.9.25. Pretty please? It plus named filters is what I have been waiting for to truly start using IQ (even though I donated already due to its potential).

Thanks,
d