Relying further conversation with TMg on the draft's talk page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikidata/Notes/Inclusion_syntax>:
4 I'm a software developer, I know the dot syntax. However, I'm not sure
if it's appropriate here. Wikitext is no programming language, not even with all
the parser functions we have. It does not even look like JavaScript or C++.
Currently in template parameters like {{{Min.-max. height}}} neither dashes nor
dots nor spaces have a meaning. All I say is: If you choose a character why not
choose the dash? Again, this would be consistent with the HTML5 data-* attributes.
5 I want to translate {{{data.color}}} to {{{Daten.Farbe}}} (or to
{{{Daten-Farbe}}} as argued above). Maybe I'm wrong and this is not important.
The question is: What part of the new syntax will be visible in articles? All
these parts must be translated.
6 OK. Similar to the /doc, /sandbox and /testcases subpages we will
create a lot of /data-template subpages then. I think this is a good idea.
--TMg 15:30, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
4 You asked "If you choose a character why not choose the dash?"
well, dashes and underscores are often used in property identifiers. If we used
them as our structuring element, they can not occur inside either the name of
the parameter that references the item, nor in the name of any property of the
item. So, the item can't have e.g. a pupulation-density parameter and, according
to your original point, shouldn't be using pupulation_density either (well, we
could use dashes as a structuring element and underscores i nthe name of
parameters and properties, but you didn't like that and it's visually far more
confusing than using dots). Anyway, I'm not desperate to use dots. I just think
dashes are worse. We can use slashes, how about it :)
5 Ah, you want to translate the names of the item's properties. We
are considering to make this possible in the property definition in the wikidata
repository. We'll have to think about restrictions for those names (allow
dashes? dots? spaces?), and if and how they can be changed later (changing the
localized name would break a lot of things...).
It may save us a lot of trouble to require the use of unchanging
unique identifiers to the parameters, so nothing breaks when the translation is
changed. We'll have to maintain a localized "visible" name anyway, so we
can
automatically provide labels for properties (oops, forgot to mention that in the
draft).
--Duesentrieb (talk) 15:55, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
--
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