This is another blogging support thing, and it relies on 
[[pagespec_relative_to_a_target]] (but only to figure out whether a given page
has a child). Basically, you give it a page called missingparents.mdwn,
something like this:

<pre>
[[missingparents pages="posts/* and !posts/*/*" generate="""[[template id=year text="$page"]]"""]]
[[missingparents pages="posts/*/* and !posts/*/*/*" generate="""[[template id=month text="$page"]]"""]]
[[missingparents pages="posts/*/*/* and !posts/*/*/*/*" generate="""[[template id=day text="$page"]]"""]]
</pre>

And it scans the whole wiki for pages that match the pagespecs but are missing
parents. If any are found, they are generated automatically using the text in
the "generate" parameter (except $page is substituted for the page title).
*These generated pages aren't kept in version control*, but of course they're
ordinary wiki pages and can be edited by the web form or otherwise added, at 
which point the missingparents plugin lets go of them. (TODO: CGI.pm needs to
know to rcs_add these pages if they are edited, and it doesn't.) If all of the
children of a missingparent page goes away, the missingparent itself is 
unlinked automatically, and all missingparents are deleted on wiki rebuild.

To implement this, I needed to tell ikiwiki that pages were being added and
removed in a non-standard way, and so created functions newpage and delpage
in the IkiWiki namespace to do these things. delpage is modeled on the 
Render.pm code that deletes pages, so I re-used it in Render.pm. I also
needed a way to add files to be deleted on a refresh(), so I added a 
needsdelete hook, parallel in form to needsbuild.

This patch, or one like it, would enable better blogging support, by adding
the ability to hierarchically organize blog posts and automatically generate
structural pages for year, month, or day. Please apply. --Ethan

<pre>
Index: IkiWiki/Render.pm
===================================================================
--- IkiWiki/Render.pm	(revision 3926)
+++ IkiWiki/Render.pm	(working copy)
@@ -322,17 +322,7 @@
 		if (! $exists{$page}) {
 			debug(sprintf(gettext("removing old page %s"), $page));
 			push @del, $pagesources{$page};
-			$links{$page}=[];
-			$renderedfiles{$page}=[];
-			$pagemtime{$page}=0;
-			prune($config{destdir}."/".$_)
-				foreach @{$oldrenderedfiles{$page}};
-			delete $pagesources{$page};
-			foreach (keys %destsources) {
-				if ($destsources{$_} eq $page) {
-					delete $destsources{$_};
-				}
-			}
+			delpage($page);
 		}
 	}
 
@@ -377,6 +367,10 @@
 		}
 	}
 
+	if (@del) {
+		run_hooks(needsdelete => sub { shift->(\@del) });
+	}
+
 	if (%rendered || @del) {
 		# rebuild dependant pages
 		foreach my $f (@files) {
Index: IkiWiki/Plugin/missingparents.pm
===================================================================
--- IkiWiki/Plugin/missingparents.pm	(revision 0)
+++ IkiWiki/Plugin/missingparents.pm	(revision 0)
@@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
+#!/usr/bin/perl
+# missingparents plugin: detect missing parents of pages and create them
+package IkiWiki::Plugin::missingparents;
+
+use warnings;
+use strict;
+use IkiWiki 2.00;
+use IkiWiki::Plugin::relative;
+
+my %ownfiles;
+my @pagespecs;
+
+sub import { #{{{
+	hook(type => "checkconfig", id => "missingparents", call => \&checkconfig);
+	hook(type => "needsdelete", id => "missingparents", call => \&needsdelete);
+	hook(type => "needsbuild", id => "missingparents", call => \&needsbuild);
+	hook(type => "savestate", id => "missingparents", call => \&savestate);
+	hook(type => "preprocess", id => "missingparents", call => \&preprocess_missingparents);
+} # }}}
+
+sub checkconfig () { #{{{
+	IkiWiki::preprocess("missingparents", "missingparents",
+		readfile(srcfile("missingparents.mdwn")));
+	loadstate();
+	if ($config{rebuild}){
+		foreach my $file (keys %ownfiles) {
+			unlink $config{srcdir}.'/'.$file;
+		}
+	}
+} #}}}
+
+sub preprocess_missingparents (@) { #{{{
+	my %params=@_;
+
+	if (! defined $params{pages} || ! defined $params{generate}) {
+		return "[[missingparents ".gettext("missing pages or generate parameter")."]]";
+	}
+
+	push @pagespecs, \%params;
+
+	#translators: This is used to display what missingparents are defined.
+	#translators: First parameter is a pagespec, the second
+	#translators: is text for pages that match that pagespec.
+	return sprintf(gettext("missingparents in %s will be %s"), 
+		       '`'.$params{pages}.'`', '`\\'.$params{generate}.'`');
+} # }}}
+
+my $state_loaded=0;
+sub loadstate() { #{{{
+	my $filename = "$config{wikistatedir}/missingparents";
+	if (-e $filename) {
+		open (IN, $filename) ||
+		      die "$filename: $!";
+		while (<IN>) {
+			chomp;
+			$ownfiles{$_} = 1;
+		}
+
+		close IN;
+
+		$state_loaded=1;
+	}
+} #}}}
+
+sub savestate() { #{{{
+	my $filename = "$config{wikistatedir}/missingparents.new";
+	my $cleanup = sub { unlink ($filename) };
+	open (OUT, ">$filename") || error("open $filename: $!", $cleanup);
+	foreach my $data (keys %ownfiles) {
+		print OUT "$data\n" if $ownfiles{$data};
+	}
+	rename($filename, "$config{wikistatedir}/missingparents") ||
+		error("rename $filename: $!", $cleanup);
+} #}}}
+
+sub needsdelete (@) { #{{{
+	my $files=shift;
+	
+	my @mydel;
+	my $pruned = 1;
+	do {
+		$pruned = 0;
+		foreach my $file (keys %ownfiles) {
+			my $page = pagename($file);
+			if (! IkiWiki::PageSpec::match_has_child($page, "")) {
+				# No children -- get rid of it
+				push @mydel, $page;
+				delete $ownfiles{$file};
+				IkiWiki::delpage($page);
+				unlink $config{srcdir}."/".$file;
+				$pruned = 1;
+			}
+		}
+	} while($pruned);
+	foreach my $page (@mydel){
+		push @{$files}, $page;
+	}
+} #}}}
+
+sub check_matches($) { #{{{
+	my $page = shift;
+	return if $IkiWiki::pagesources{$page};
+
+	foreach my $miss (@pagespecs) {
+		next unless pagespec_match($page, $miss->{pages});
+		my $text = $miss->{generate};
+		$text =~ s/\$page/$page/;
+		my $output = $page.".mdwn";
+		writefile($output, "$config{srcdir}/", $text);
+		IkiWiki::newpage($output, $page);
+		return $output;
+	}
+	return "";
+} #}}}
+
+sub needsbuild ($) { #{{{
+	my $files=shift;
+	my @new;
+
+	foreach my $file (@{$files}) {
+		if ($ownfiles{$file}) {
+			# someone edited our file, making it the
+			# user's problem
+			delete $ownfiles{$file};
+			next;
+		}
+		my $page = pagename $file;
+		my $newfile = "";
+		foreach my $parent (split '/', $page) {
+			$newfile .= $parent;
+			my $output = check_matches($newfile);
+			push @new, $output if $output;
+			$newfile .= "/";
+		}
+	}
+	foreach my $file (@new) {
+		$ownfiles{$file} = 1;
+		push @{$files}, $file;
+	}
+} #}}}
+
+1
Index: IkiWiki.pm
===================================================================
--- IkiWiki.pm	(revision 3926)
+++ IkiWiki.pm	(working copy)
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
 use Exporter q{import};
 our @EXPORT = qw(hook debug error template htmlpage add_depends pagespec_match
                  bestlink htmllink readfile writefile pagetype srcfile pagename
-                 displaytime will_render gettext urlto targetpage
+                 displaytime will_render gettext urlto targetpage newpage delpage
                  %config %links %renderedfiles %pagesources %destsources);
 our $VERSION = 2.00; # plugin interface version, next is ikiwiki version
 our $version='unknown'; # VERSION_AUTOREPLACE done by Makefile, DNE
@@ -330,6 +336,30 @@
 		error("failed renaming $newfile to $destdir/$file: $!", $cleanup);
 } #}}}
 
+sub newpage($$) { #{{{
+	my $file=shift;
+	my $page=shift;
+
+	$pagemtime{$page} = $pagectime{$page} = time;
+	$pagesources{$page} = $file;
+	$pagecase{lc $page} = $page;
+} #}}}
+
+sub delpage($) { #{{{
+	my $page=shift;
+	$links{$page}=[];
+	$renderedfiles{$page}=[];
+	$pagemtime{$page}=0;
+	prune($config{destdir}."/".$_)
+	    foreach @{$oldrenderedfiles{$page}};
+	delete $pagesources{$page};
+	foreach (keys %destsources) {
+		if ($destsources{$_} eq $page) {
+			delete $destsources{$_};
+			}
+		}
+} #}}}
+
 my %cleared;
 sub will_render ($$;$) { #{{{
 	my $page=shift;
</pre>

[[tag patch]]
