One tricky thing: do we track which #categories are included in the post itself vs. in pure metadata?
Assuming all are inline, things are simple: on publish or update, we always parse hashtags in the body. If a tag isn’t there, we delete its association with the post. If it is there, we associate it with the post.
If we also want to have pure-metadata categories, so we don’t have to clutter up a post with visible hashtags, then we need to track which categories are inline vs. metadata-only, so we know which ones to remove on update and which ones to keep. (And now this is getting complicated.)
It’s mostly getting complicated in the UI. Assuming the editor now has a “categories” field, we’ll need to keep it in sync between inline / editor hashtags and metadata-only tags. I mean, it’s unlikely someone would use both; I don’t want to cater to that edge case, but I also don’t want to exclude it if we don’t have to.
We might also follow the pattern we’ve laid out with other add-on post metadata, like #authors. Right now, you can add an author in the Rich Text (RT) editor, but not the Plain Text (PT) editor. In this way, we keep our underlying flexibility, but the client / editing UI guides users toward the correct input method. I think we can assume that the PT editor is for focused writing and inline metadata; the RT editor is for exact control over presentation and metadata. I’m not sure if that’s entirely correct, but I think I have to start there.
Thoughts? Discuss...