Markus Krötzsch wrote:
> If you still feel that some relevant feature request to the SMW
> *core* is not mentioned here at all (I may have forgotten it), then
> please feel free to say so.

I want to be able to specify the appearance of values using a new 
special [[Property:Has format]].  Here are some wishes and use cases:

* I want numeric IDs to appear without commas!  "Build 4,231" or "Bug 
12,345" isn't right.

* I should be able to make something appear as a link everywhere, e.g..
** I want a bug to appear as 
[http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14426 bug 14426] everywhere.
** I want coordinates to appear as a link to Google Maps everywhere.

* I should be able to "reach in" and adjust the appearance of a 
Type:Page link, e.g. specify |55px for an Image.

* Bring back the date formatting that was in SMW 0.7 (bug 11853)

* Type:Code seems like overkill just to tell MediaWiki to display 
something in <pre> tag.

Currently there are three different ways that you control the appearance 
of values:
* In the original annotation you use alt text, possibly using a template,
* In the factbox and "Pages using the property foo" list you have no 
control! but you can tack on service links
* In inline queries you can use format=template but it's implemented 
differently than service links.

I think a lot of this can be handled by a special property [[Has 
format::]].  You give it a complicated formatting string.  Maybe you 
have to indicate whether the result is HTML or wiki text.  SMW makes 
available to your formatting string all the different values it already 
computes for its datatypes (value, xsd, shortwiki text, etc.), possibly 
similar to the way service links are passed different values.

You would still be able to override the format in queries by specifying 
a different format using the ?Name#Some_format, just as you can 
currently specify the units for a column.

If service links are going to die, then maybe their idea can be 
preserved by supercharging [[Has format]] to let you specify the entire 
"look" for a value, including
* the visible display, including the formatting of numbers and dates
* the hyperlink for the value
* the contents of the hover pop-up (like the one you get over a quantity 
with several units)
* the contents of the service links "(?)" pop-up.

That's a lot of work but it could lead to code simplification because 
instead of all the hardcoding of showing unit conversions and 
coordinates in brown and making special wiki links for Type:email, these 
would be driven by a default Has_format for each datatype, that user 
code could override.

>  I did not see any other major requests in Bugzilla.

I filed enhancement bug 15541 with all the above long-winded text.

BTW, this isn't just armchair theorizing.  To the wiki editors on 
wiki.laptop.org it seems if they start using semantic annotations, they 
"lose" MediaWiki's easy ability to say
   [[the page|exactly what I want to display]]
-- suddenly bug numbers appear with commas and without links, images 
appear with random sizes, etc.  I explain how SMW is re-displaying the 
underlying data values, but to them it isn't "doing what I want" ;-)

Thanks for listening!

--
=S Page

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