User:Jeblad/Collected workpackages

Collected work packages is an technology whereby smaller work descriptions are collected into larger descriptions, describing a complete path from one state to another. Often this is done to describe a sequence of steps to be done in a construction or repair formula. A simpler description could be that it acts like a dynamic manual or cookbook.

Algorithm
Assume there are a subset of tags, and that each work description has such tags. They are probably best implemented as page properties. For each work description there is a previous tag and a next tag. An upstream work description will have a next tag, and a downstream work description will have a previous tag. If the next and previous tags are the same, then a path exist. A complete collected work package forms a complete path from a start state to a final state, where each is given by a start tag and a final tag.

A more formal description would be that a work package is a sequence of descriptions along the shortest path from a starting node to an end node, where descriptions are attached to the transitions between nodes.

On the surface this is a known problem, with good solutions, although it can be computational intensive to find the solution. At a slightly deeper level there are problems, in particular it must be possible to infer if a particular transition moves closer to a solution. Without some measure of "closeness" the search for solutions will be of O(k)

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