On Dienstag, 6. November 2007, cnit wrote:
> > The other issue that I'm having is {{#ask}} parser function - not
> > having it stops almost all of my development. It's probably the most
> > anticipated feature right now. Do you have any timeline or at least
> > defined approach to it?
>
> I guess that "RC" thing means - "The development of major features is
> temporarily frozen. Only small bugfixes are accepted". That approach
> is used to make the code more stable.
No, not quite. Two more features are scheduled for SMW1.0 final: one (as you
know) is {{#ask}}, and the other is the listing of subproperties on property
pages. We know that traditionally one would do RCs together with a feature
freeze, but in a wiki one can certainly have optional features released also
if they are less well-tested.
The reasons why we have started releasing RCs are:
* Some people started asking us whether the project was still alive ;-)
* The developers of the Halo extension asked for an early release, so that
they could release some code compatible with a fixed version of SMW.
* More testing cannot hurt.
The RC-process does not slow down our work on the aforementioned features --
it would have been slow anyway.
>
> I am myself missing parser function badly, but I guess that
> complaining too often won't speed up the development, rather bore the
> developers..
Well, you can always add some further pressure, but our development activity
still is subject to various constraints that are outside our control (jobs,
lives, ...) ;-)
But maybe, since we are over it, we can start some design discussions about
{{#ask...}}. In particular, parser functions have a slightly different style
of parameters than parser hooks (<ask>). Our current <ask> has three parts:
(1) the query conditions,
(2) multiple print statements,
(3) a variable set of parameters.
Currently (1) and (2) can be mixed, although the position of print statements
relative to the query conditions has no effect. Moving to a parser function
seems to be a good opportunity to revise some of this design, e.g. by simply
making the print statements a separate parameter. In {{#ask..}}, everything
must be passed as a parameter anyway, so separating (1) and (2) is no
complication. How should an example query look like? Her is a suggested
example transformation:
<ask format="table" limit="12">
[[Category:Person]] [[lives in::Europe]]
[[lives in::*]]
[[birthday::*|day of birth]]
[[height::*m²|size]]
</ask>
becomes
{{#ask|
format=table|
limit = 12|
?lives in|
?birthday = day of birth|
?height#m² = size|
[[Category:Person]] [[lives in::Europe]]
}}
Basic points:
* The query is always the last parameter.
* No | appear unless they are used as separators between parameters.
* Printouts start with "?"
* All the known printout modifications somehow work, but in different syntax.
* We implicitly block "=" in property names (should we care?)
Some of this syntax is not essential, but one must be careful not to collide
with MediaWiki syntax. <ask> would of course continue to work in any case,
but {{#ask}} would become the suggested method in the future.
I guess the main point of discussion would be the printout-parameters. Many
variations are possible, and comments are welcome.
>
> I am investigating my own upgrade, too. My temporarily solution for
> dynanical queries will be small patch I plan to make unpublished -
> just simply %FUNCTION_NAME% inside query param will be replaced
> with result of the call to according PHP function, instead of template.
> Should be easy to implement (with some security restrictions, of course
> - though my wiki is not public).
>
> When the function will be available, I'll switch to these.
Yes, that would be a very versatile mechanism indeed.
Cheers,
Markus
> Dmitriy
>
>
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--
Markus Krötzsch
Institut AIFB, Universät Karlsruhe (TH), 76128 Karlsruhe
phone +49 (0)721 608 7362 fax +49 (0)721 608 5998
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www http://korrekt.org
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