Template talk:Person/archive 1

#Invoke ?

I think this means we need Scribunto installed for the infobox template to work... Robin (talk) 17:38, 22 December 2013 (GMT)

It does. I spent ages trying to get the necessary server dependencies up to the required releases. I guess I'll have another go as and when since there have been lots of OS component u/grades since - but haven't the inclination right now. Same applies to removing all those problem properties. I need to psych myself up for jobs like that first --Peter P (talk) 17:55, 22 December 2013 (GMT)

I've had another look at Scribunto. I'm not confident about getting it working any time soon. I think we would be better developing all new templates with SMW and foregoing the WP compatibility on infoboxes. They are generally vastly over complex for WS purposes anyway IMO. I'm happy to leave pages with the Scributo required 'Cite' templates as they are. If a Scribunto miracle happens they will just start working. Otherwise I don't think its much of a loss as is. I'll try to contribute a bit on the 'person' template if you're happy with this because there are lots of pages where it is needed. I'm also warming to the idea of separate namespaces because I feel that trying to maintain extensive WP compatibility whilst majoring on SMW is so much wasted effort --Peter P (talk) 16:39, 6 January 2014 (GMT)

I've just spent another 3 hours on the Scribunto issue to no avail. It requires pcre >= 8.1. I cannot find a single EPEL repo with a version higher than 7.8 (which is what we currently have). I do have an outstanding help request on the Centos forums but will not hold my breath on a successful answer from there. The problem with installing it from elsewhere is that it has to be compiled into php and, since php is core OS stuff and so central to the functioning of everything, I am not going to attempt a non-standard hack at it. I did so with a few things on the old server and it caused no end of troubles which were never fully resolved. Upshot? We need to forget about being able to run any and all Wikipedia templates simply by importing them. There are quite a few existing pages that use 'cite' and we'll just have to live with that; but this template and other potential site dependent ones need to be developed without Lua or Scribunto - for now anyway --Peter P (talk) 14:45, 24 January 2014 (GMT)

I don't even know what EPEL stands for, am not up to speed at all on this. Are RPM packages any use? Robin (talk) 16:06, 24 January 2014 (GMT)

Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. Installing from an RPM does not integrate the package into php. That requires a separate compile which makes the OS non-standard and risks breaking all sorts of other things. It's certainly possible but the time investment required to keep on top of those sort of issues just isn't worth the candle - in my experience of the previous server anyway. Once bitten, twice shy as they say. --Peter P (talk) 17:44, 24 January 2014 (GMT)

I can understand why you don't want to look into compiling the PHP. Best avoided. What about an RPM for PHP which supports PCRE >=8.1? Do you think this might be worth a look? It doesn't mention the PCRE version, but the PHP version is a good sign and I think it's from December 2013. You know more about this than me, I just changed the version number and googled on it:) (talk) 25 January 2014 (GMT)

Another couple of hours and BINGO!!! - seems to be working OK. I could spend the rest of my life tinkering with bloody technical issues. Anyway, we still have pcre 7.8 but a re-import of the WP infobox template and dependencies plus latest Scribunto extension code from the dev branch of GIT and a tweek to the Lua engine binaries path and web-server write permission and we seem to have a working set of templates. This needs watching though. It's horrendously complex and my guess is all too easily broken. --Peter P (talk) 07:55, 25 January 2014 (GMT)

Also , thanks for that repo link. It's Yum-enabled so should be a doddle to use. I'll do a bit of research before adding it to the regular server repo list though. It's funny how easy it is to miss the obvious in matters like this. Also, I'll warn well before attempting a php upgrade - for obvious reasons; probably leave it for a week or so to see if Scribunto gives any problems first --Peter P (talk) 08:08, 25 January 2014 (GMT)

Good work on the PCRE/Scribunto support, Peter! I've had a go with User:UpdateBot and the date issue is now solved. Robin (talk) 09:15, 25 January 2014 (GMT)

Template development

This template needs lots of development work and I'm inclined to scrap ideas of maintaining compatibility with Wikipedia imports at the same time as overlaying Wikispooks-specific requirements because the WP offering is already horrendously complex. Ideas welcome, otherwise I may pitch in with a machete and have a damn good clear-out before starting on a form. --Peter P (talk) 07:32, 27 January 2014 (GMT)

I say, compatibility is a big bonus. It would allow, for example, the auto-import of a list of people via a script. This could save a lot of ^C^V'ing. This is not to suggest that the Wikispooks template should be identical. That's got a lot of fluff such as "honours" (& probably "weeks at #1", I can't remember)... So I suggest compatibility meaning we accept imports wholesale from WP, then just ignore some the irrelevant parameters, while expanding on use of others (e.g. assigning semantic properties by them). Once we get it set up, it should make for easy authoring/importing. Robin (talk) 12:43, 27 January 2014 (GMT)

OK Robin. That's sound logic, but the template display needs priority attention. I started to tackle it myself, then baulked at the complexity. If you take it up I'll follow the work closely to better familiarise myself with the whole new templating structure. I'm also anxious to start work on Person and Event forms but will hold fire until I see more progress on this. I'm also persuaded that Forms linked to namespaces IS the way to go after all. Template obviously continue to cross namespaces (ie Template:DocType can continue to be used on both Documents and non-image files). I've done a lot of new pages and editing of existing ones with the newly tabbed Form:Document and it really does make life so much easier - a doddle in fact --Peter P (talk) 13:15, 27 January 2014 (GMT)

I don't want to forfeit WP compatibility unnecessarily but, from a WS perspective, there's usually more 'Fluff' than useful information in the WP Person template - others too in fact. We need the person's name, some basic information like birth and death dates, nationality, maybe place born and died and a WP (or other Bio link) for the 'Fluff'; but, most important of all - what makes them of interest to WS. There is no need for WS to aspire to full alternative biographies. 'Has interest' might do since it should link to one or more WS pages. The 'Has interest' name misses the intuitive mark somewhat but that could be explained on the property page - also on the appropriate form. We might also put 'description' in the infobox (without the 'Description' template or using a new purpose-made one) since it looks a bit out of place on regular pages as is anyway. We could use the form to reduce its length (needed?? - maybe not) and still have it assigned to the same property. I've been slowed up considerably on people content over this so far so would like to firm up on a way forward that maintains as much compatibility as possible but which also allows me to spend more time on content --Peter P (talk) 16:36, 12 February 2014 (GMT)

Display problem

I've spent ages on this to little avail. The date was a superfluous pipe character in the template + the template spec on the test page (Craig Murray) said "|Born" instead of "|Birth date". The 'constitutes' failure on the Craig Murray page I can't find. Thought is was capitalisation (DocProc uses capitals, this doesn't) but no. I think it is the interplay between ArrayMapProperty and the arraymap statements in this template but I've had enough for now. Not my most productive area - though it does at least give me a better understanding of how things work.

Also, I'm really nervous about Scribunto. I had to switch it off to complete the SMW_refreshData script because it kept crashing with Lua Engine script errors. There were lots of consecutive ones and my best estimate is that 150 records are involved. It then completed OK with Scribunto disabled, and with just 14 records not rebuilt because the script hung at their respective record ID numbers and I had to keep restarting it at at incrementally higher numbers. I'd rather disable Scribunto until I find out what exactly is causing it - I have posted queries on a couple of related boards. Are you OK with that? --Peter P (talk) 14:20, 11 February 2014 (GMT)

Sure. My strongest feelings about Scribunto are around keeping compatibility with as much of WP on the road as possible. I agree that 100% is not realistic or even desirable, but there are a lot of bits that rely on Scribunto (e.g. "cite"). Temporary outages don't compromise this at all. There's plenty of other stuff to do than Scribunto dependent stuff. Robin (talk) 15:49, 11 February 2014 (GMT)

OK, I'll turn it off for now. Also - a bit of progress made on displaying the infobox data (used Craig Murray existing template infor to test) - presentation/formatting improvements etc to follow --Peter P (talk) 16:15, 11 February 2014 (GMT)

'Infobox Person' and 'Person' templates

The wikipedia-sourced Infobox template set now works fairly well. The core problem was that they rely on .css classes for positioning, borders, colours and much of the layout formatting. There is a lot of superfluous fluff in the templates but it is probably best to use them as the Wikispooks basis for person, event and other infobox page positioning and presentation. I envisage having forms for person and event - and others. The best approach needs deciding. I think we can probably use Wikispooks templates to specify which parameters are appropriate to this site; to assign properties to those needing them; and then to transclude the appropriate Wikipedia-imported template to present the info on the page. Please chip in if you have suggestions --Peter P (talk) 19:10, 16 February 2014 (GMT)