Ajax is already being used to play with drag-and-drop functionality in the tasklist macro...seems like a logical extension for moving content around.

Regards,
-Daniel

Just so we're clear here... are you looking to control the order of pages in a space, or in the PDF export? Ordering pages in a space doesn't really make sense, as we provide alphabetical view, recently updated and a page tree. From what I've gathered with the comments, most people are referring to PDF export.

What sort of ordering would be necessary?

Alphabetical (within hierarchy)
Modification Date
Creation Date

Any others?

{scrollbar}, {pagetree}. We use the {pagetree} macro to add navigation on the left side. However, we cannot control the order of the navigation items (unless you do ugly prefixing, which as explained previously has serious drawbacks). If you use {scrollbar} for a tutorial, you want to make sure that the order of your pages is correct, again avoiding the prefix hack.

I believe the fix should be generic enough so that it applies to both PDF, spaces and html export.

I'm also missing some options that could be toggled for PDF export like:

• Show last change
• Show "Document created" info
• Number headings and documents

And probably heaps of other stuff I havn't thought of yet.

For example, using pagetree in a left navigation bar, but with section in the order as per client's desire.
Besides the numeric prefix hack listed above, another workaround is to use pagetree sorted by modified date.

This is useful when migrating content manually in order.

The sequence specified should applicable to child, pagetree, and exported pdfs.

The following Use Cases assume that the relationship between pages is heirarchical,
in that each page has only one parent. It is assumed that a sequence number, starting
from 1, is stored against each child page (whether implemented in the parent or child).
I haven't looked at the internals of implementation.

Use Cases

• Adding a page
  A new page is added as the child of a parent.
  If the parent has no other children, it is given the sequence number 1.
  If the parent has other children, it is listed at the end of child pages,
  it is given the sequence number equal to the highest sequence number + 1.

• Removing a page
  A page is moved to the trash.
  Other children of the parent page with a higher sequence number,
  have their sequence number reduced by 1.
  The pages sequence number is forgotten.

• Restoring a page
  A page is restored from the trash. (which is not an undo operation)
  Same as for Adding a page.

• Moving a page to another parent
  This is similar to a combination of the steps for removing and adding a page.
  Other children of the losing parent page with a higher sequence number,
  have their sequence number reduced by 1.
  If the gaining parent has no other children, it is given the sequence number 1.
  If the gaining parent has other children, it is listed at the end of child pages,
  it is given the sequence number equal to the highest sequence number + 1.

• Reordering a page
  A page with an old sequence number,
  is given a new sequence number between 1 and the count of its parent's child pages.

If the old sequence number is less than the new sequence number,
pages with a sequence number higher than the old sequence number
and equal to the new sequence number are are decreased by 1.

If the new sequence number is less than the old sequence number,
pages with a sequence number higher than this new sequence number
and equal to the new sequence number are are increased by 1.

! Other Advantages
If stored against each page, this sequence number could be exposed,
allowing plug ins to optionally show this number, which would be useful
in circumstances where you want to show the sequence number of the current page,
and perhaps even the sequence number of the parent page. Examples are,
printed matter, on line tutorials and guides.

Hope this helps !

For those wanting to use Confluence primarily as a documentation tool, i.e. to build a structured documentation system, manual, electronic book, or similar, this requirement is a must-have. It simply must be possible to define the order of the "chapters" arbitrarily, whilst retaining automatic generation of table of contents, and without having to resort to manually defined chapter or section numbers.

Anthony Dyson

PS Hey site administrators, how about removing the mail cascade currently occupying most of this comments block?!

It would be a good thing to have it assigned and scheduled.

Ville Valtasaari

Bump. bump. bump.

Hey Atlassian, with other words, this feature will be paid at least partially since you gain a new customer

Milt, there is a {toc} (table of content) macro (at least as a plugin) available plus another which lists a child-document-tree. So TOC should not be a problem.

We generally don't comment on our feature schedule beyond the next few releases because historically our roadmap has been so volatile, we'd annoy far more people by promising one thing and delivering another than we do right now by not promising anything. There's a reasonably accurate screed about how we choose what to implement, and how to influence the process here:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Implementation+of+New+Features+and+Improvements

Ordering pages is a reasonably non-trivial feature. Between the issues of interaction with exporting, various macros, and having a user interface for re-ordering pages that isn't painful to use, there's a fair chunk of work involved. As such, the feature has to compete with a lot of other frequently requested but non-trivial features for developer time.

All I can say now is that we're currently focusing development on highly voted-for features.