Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Content WG: Templating, Page Components editing
Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Templates,_Page_Components_and_editing On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 8:36 AM, Bryan Davis bd...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Gabriel Wicke gwi...@wikimedia.org wrote: TL;DR: Join us to discuss Templates, Page Components editing on Thu, 13 August, 12:45 – 14:00 PDT [0]. Please join us at: Thu, 13 August, 12:45 – 14:00 PDT [0] by joining the BlueJeans conference call [1], on IRC, in #wikimedia-meeting, or in Room 37 in the WMF office. [1]: https://bluejeans.com/2061103652, via phone +14087407256, meeting id To access the conference without installing the BlueJeans browser plugin, join using the open WebRTC protocol [2] via the URL https://bluejeans.com/2061103652/webrtc. [2]: http://www.webrtc.org/ Bryan -- Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundationbd...@wikimedia.org [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] Sr Software EngineerBoise, ID USA irc: bd808v:415.839.6885 x6855 -- Gabriel Wicke Principal Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Content WG: Templating, Page Components editing
On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjor...@wikimedia.org wrote: including a talk by C.Scott at Wikimania [4] Looking at the slide deck, it's not terribly clear to me what's going on through much of it. Yes, I was assuming that Wikimania would be recorded, and didn't prepare slides that are meant to be read alone. I apologize. I'll be happy to re-present my talk via hangout or some such (maybe even recorded, hey) and then we can have a reasonable discussion about it afterwards. But at the moment I'm feeling a bit defensive and any conversation is likely to get off on the wrong foot. --scott -- (http://cscott.net) ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Content WG: Templating, Page Components editing
On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Gabriel Wicke gwi...@wikimedia.org wrote:
TL;DR: Join us to discuss Templates, Page Components editing on Thu, 13
August, 12:45 – 14:00 PDT [0].
I can't, so I'll just comment here.
including a talk by C.Scott at Wikimania [4]
Looking at the slide deck, it's not terribly clear to me what's going on
through much of it. If you're only referring to the alternatives to
templates section (slides 39-50) it's good, but much of the rest isn't so
much.
The first part repeatedly harps on T14974 being stupid. Which I don't think
anyone disagrees with, but hysterical raisins mean it's not simple to just
revert anymore. We need to at least identify what now is depending on that
behavior (xkcd 1172 https://xkcd.com/1172/).
Then complains about the fact thatthere isn't any general-purpose escape
template argument mechanism. True, although overdone in the slide deck.
And then gets into weird attempted abuse of some {{echo}} template in the
context of tables. WAT?
Then it goes back to the escaping issue by proposing a heredoc syntax for
template arguments. Although that as a general concept has its advantages,
it also has disadvantages. Enwiki even has some templates like this, see
{{archive top}}/{{archive bottom}} for just one example.
And then it non-sequiturs into a screenshot of JavaScript code. WAT? Maybe
it's trying to propose a version of Scribunto-with-JS over
Scribunto-with-Lua, ignoring the reasons JS was rejected in favor of Lua
during Scribunto's planning and development.
Then it proposes looping and StringFunctions-like parserfunctions that were
rejected years ago to avoid wikitext becoming even more confusing. WAT?
And JSON blobs embedded in page wikitext are presented as a good idea. WAT?
Also, slides 60-62 seem wrong. The first was probably trying to get at the
fact that {{#tag:ref|barrefbat/ref}} puts the bat reference before
bar instead of after, but it misses and the next few go off in some
completely other direction.
- Can we find satisfactory general abstractions for page components
(well-formed content blocks)?
Page components with structure defined by editors and layout controlled
by the skin would let Mobile get rid of a some of the stupid stuff it does
now to try to work around the existing implementations.
But what do you mean by general?
- A page component for infoboxes, and one for navboxes, and so on? Sure.
- A generic page component thing that can be used for infoboxes,
navboxes, and so on? Probably not well, although I'd be happy to be proven
wrong. You'd probably wind up with effectively templates + per-template
styling + someone actually writing good @media blocks for mobile vs desktop.
- What are the requirements for editing, RL module / metadata
aggregation, dependency tracking?
I don't think anyone will forget it, but keeping the links tables (dependency
tracking) up to date is important. Flow did forget, for a historical
example, and the current implementation still leaves a bit to be desired.
Flow's watchlist and history mechanisms (e.g.
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Web_APIs_hubaction=history
and how it shows on my watchlist) are rather lacking, too.
When discussing editing: A good WYSIWYG experience is essential, but a
fully-featured markup editor (that ideally doesn't require directly writing
JSON blobs or complex RDF structures) would also be very useful for many
editors.
- Should we evolve wikitext templates into well-formed page components?
Probably not. While templates are used to implement well-formed page
components as it seems to be defined here, they're also used for many
other things.
--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Senior Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Content WG: Templating, Page Components editing
On 08/12/2015 09:33 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) wrote: On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Gabriel Wicke gwi...@wikimedia.org mailto:gwi...@wikimedia.org wrote: TL;DR: Join us to discuss Templates, Page Components editing on Thu, 13 August, 12:45 – 14:00 PDT [0]. I can't, so I'll just comment here. including a talk by C.Scott at Wikimania [4] Looking at the slide deck, it's not terribly clear to me what's going on through much of it. If you're only referring to the alternatives to templates section (slides 39-50) it's good, but much of the rest isn't so much. If you are able to look past the WATs (a lot of language implementations have those .. and in a few years, maybe someone will make a Parsoid WAT talk .. all par for the course), I think it was meant to present some of the known problems with wikitext (which you seemed to agree with) and use that as a jumping off point to talk about solutions to that mostly as a survey of all the ideas that have been floating around, not so much as: this is how we should do things. So, yes, some will prove to be unviable, etc. But, it is meant as a conversation starter where we have all the pieces in one place rather than going hunting around 10 different wiki pages, phab tasks, email threads, whatever. * What are the requirements for editing, RL module / metadata aggregation, dependency tracking? I don't think anyone will forget it, but keeping the links tables (dependency tracking) up to date is important. Flow did forget, for a historical example, and the current implementation still leaves a bit to be desired. Flow's watchlist and history mechanisms (e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Web_APIs_hubaction=history and how it shows on my watchlist) are rather lacking, too. When discussing editing: A good WYSIWYG experience is essential, but a fully-featured markup editor (that ideally doesn't require directly writing JSON blobs or complex RDF structures) would also be very useful for many editors. I agree that the requirement for a good markup editor is not going away. So, yes, that is part of the discussion, but this is mostly to highlight that markup editing is not the only editing mode that needs support and we need to think about what needs fixing so WYSIWYG experience is not hobbled. * Should we evolve wikitext templates into well-formed page components? Probably not. While templates are used to implement well-formed page components as it seems to be defined here, they're also used for many other things. I think the answer is probably more complex than that. A lot of template are already, today, behave like well-formed page components. However, the parsers don't know that. They have to treat all templates with the same conservative brush. Even if we start coming up with ways of identifying such templates and enforcing their well-formedness, we will have made a fair amount of progress. There are various ways to go about that, and those details are something worth talking about. As for the others, I think the page components for infoboxes, navboxes, wikidata-widgets, etc. will have taken a big bite out of other kinds of templates. And, for the rest, we can talk about leaving current default behavior as is and the implications, or talk about other solutions to deal with those. So, maybe a rephrasing of that question would be: What mechanisms can we evolve for using wikitext templates as well-formed page components? which can be a good stepping stone forward without having to solve everything at once. Subbu. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] [Engineering] Content WG: Templating, Page Components editing
On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Gabriel Wicke gwi...@wikimedia.org wrote: TL;DR: Join us to discuss Templates, Page Components editing on Thu, 13 August, 12:45 – 14:00 PDT [0]. Please join us at: Thu, 13 August, 12:45 – 14:00 PDT [0] by joining the BlueJeans conference call [1], on IRC, in #wikimedia-meeting, or in Room 37 in the WMF office. [1]: https://bluejeans.com/2061103652, via phone +14087407256, meeting id To access the conference without installing the BlueJeans browser plugin, join using the open WebRTC protocol [2] via the URL https://bluejeans.com/2061103652/webrtc. [2]: http://www.webrtc.org/ Bryan -- Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundationbd...@wikimedia.org [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] Sr Software EngineerBoise, ID USA irc: bd808v:415.839.6885 x6855 ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
