Wikitech-l July 2004

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

131 participants
196 discussions

Update to 1.3 beta 4 failed
by "Michaël P." 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

Hi, I decompressed the tgz in my installation of the previous version of media wiki (a 1.2.6). The site still works and has the new template. But when I try to login, I get the following error: A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching All4dev), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: SELECT user_name,user_password,user_newpassword,user_email,user_real_name,user_options,user_rights,user_touched FROM user WHERE user_id=2 from within function "User::loadFromDatabase". MySQL returned error "1054: Unknown column 'user_real_name' in 'field list'". Obviously the database didn't update. And I don't know how to update it manually. BTW, the help page about updating is totally useless: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Upgrade_from_1.2_to_1.3 Thanks in advance -- Michaël P. gpg: D4C8 F73D A000 71C7 44EF 27E6 8982 4991 7126 3CE3

2 1

wakkawiki to mediawiki conversion script
by Laurent Pinchart 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

Hi everybody, I've written a small python script to convert a wakkawiki database to mediawiki. The code is far from being perfect (some features are missing, history is not handled for instance) but it can be quite useful. I don't plan to maintain the script (I converted my wiki and I'm happy with it), but if someone is willing to store it somewhere (CVS ?), feel free to do so. The code is in the public domain. Laurent Pinchart

1 0

IEEE and W3C patent policy
by user_Jamesday 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

The IEEE patent policy is available at: http://standards.ieee.org/guides/bylaws/sect6-7.html#6 The policy permits the use of patents with license fees in IEEE standards. I'm not aware of any patents with royalties covering the MIDI format. The W3C patent policy is far more friendly: "In order to promote the widest adoption of Web standards ... W3C will not approve a Recommendation if it is aware that Essential Claims exist which are not available on Royalty-Free terms". But that still allows non-essential itmes to require royalties. The full policy is at: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/ Sadly, the US and Japanese software patent laws are poisoning the creative commons for the rest of the world.

1 0

Where the technical team is from
by user_Jamesday 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

One thing people shouldn't worry about is over-emphasis on the US from the technical team. Of those whose nationality I know or have a good idea of, here's how the regularly active participants are split: de: 4 uk: 1 fr: 2 belgium: 1 baltic states: 1 EUROPE TOTAL: 9 Australia: 2 US: 1 (plus JW and Jason who are around less than most) We should be considerate of clear the US minority on the technical team.:)

1 0

Requests related to sound files
by Mark Pellegrini 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

"What for? MIDI files are nice and compact; OGG would be a lossy conversion that vastly increases storage requirements and download time and makes it more difficult to modify the files." True, but I wasn't sure if Midi was one of the formats that we approve of - I was under the impression that it wasn't. Of course, we should remember that midi sounds different from player to player - what instrument gets mapped to each channel depends on your midi sythesizer. Furthermore, I know of no portable player that supports midi, and converting out of midi format is *HARD* - the software to do it is difficult to come by. --Mark

1 0

Requests related to sound files
by Mark Pellegrini 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

Jimbo wrote: "If it is free software, and not encumbered by patents (why are all the English sites 404) then we can host it. If there are patent issues applicable to the U.S. only, then I'm sure some wikipedian will volunteer a stable place." The program I was talking about, Timidity++ (http://timidity.sourceforge.net/), is GPL, and it converts midi into other formats. We all know ogg is not patent encumbered. As for midi, I went to our article on Midi: The SMF specification was developed by, and is maintained by, the MIDI Manufacturer's Association (MMA) So I went to their website and found: The MMA maintains strategic relationships with other organizations to assist and promote the use of MIDI technology in new areas. These relationships have lead to the inclusion of MIDI in MPEG-4, IEEE-1394 (FireWire), and 3GPP (3rd Generation Mobile Phones) standards. --http://www.midi.org/about-mma/abtmma.shtml If it's part of an IEEE standard, I *highly* doubt it is encumbered by patents - I'm almost certain that you have to surrender IP claims to be included in one. The only thing I added were the patches necessary to make it work on windows (the rar files from http://web.archive.org/web/20030618040819/www.stardate.bc.ca/eawpatches/htm…) All of this leads me to believe that hosting this program won't be a problem. --Mark

1 0

Why OGG
by Gerard.Meijssen 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

When you want to upload on nl:wiktionary, it says that MP3 is not allowed. The reason given: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-July/014202.html It is also suggested to use OGG in stead. I have never bothered with sound files, but it does point that OGG is the way to go. I do not know what policy is current on other wikipedia's. Thanks, GerardM

2 1

List of things that need to be done developer-wise on the Icelandic Wikipedia
by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

Hey guys and first of all thanks for the great work on MediaWiki, i would like to request of you three things that need to be done on the Icelandic wikipedia regarding technical issues to bring it up to par with the larger wikipedias. 1. Insert the LanguageIs.php Thanks a lot for previous help on this file, it's already in CVS and ready to roll;=) 2. Post-LanguageIs.php insertation After namespaces have been translated to Icelandic we'll have a lot of broken wikilinks, [[Category:foo]] instead of [[Flokkur:foo]] and so on, i understand that instead of falling over gracefully the system will break due to this, so it would like to request that a bot be run which replaces English namespace text inn all wikitext to the Icelandic equivalents. Timwi previously pointed out to me that i could use some Perl scripts ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Useless_Perl_Scripts ) to do this myself, however i would prefer not to as i don't have experience with those and it could lead to some undesired consequences. 3. Make Wikilinks work correctly, Currently, if i write wikilinks on is. they will not behave in the correct way, [[a]]b will only make a href="" for a but not b, see http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandkassinn for a demo of this, could all letters listed in the Icelandic alphabet at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_alphabet be put in some sort of list for allowed characters to expand on?

4 7

All Wikis can block logged in users now.
by Ronny Raschkowan 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

Hello! I just have added a line to the CommonSettings.php (and deleted the individual lines at InitialseSettings.php) allowing each wiki to block logged in users. Please note that whilst this feature is technically available, this doesn't mean you necessarily have the right to use it, because there might be policies on your wiki restricting this. You can block a logged in user like you would block an IP, typing in an username instead of an IP. Sincerly yours, Fire

1 0

suggestion from [Wikide-l]
by Tobias Hesse 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

Hello! We have been discussing the following problem on [Wikide-l]: In the German-speaking countries de.wikipedia.org is used quite frequently to do research. More and more we are also linked in online magazines or even referenced in printed publications. Whatismore, many visitors reach us from google (we have got a very good rank for many key words) and then have no idea what the Wikipedia is about. They find useful data at the Wikipedia but often times - not to say most of the time - but don't know that everybody can edit articles. We aren't too concerned about the ones that believe everything even the rare facts that might be incorrect because nobody has revised them but we think that more people would use the opportunity to amend articles than do already today. We therefore would like to introduce a small JavaScript-script into the German wikipedia pages that shows a small text about the wiki principle to everybody reaching with an external referrer. First we thought about making realizing this via a php-Script but this would increase the load the server has to deal with whereas a JavaScript-script that is stored in every file coulod be cached. We know that there are still some browser out there that have problems with the more elaborate JavaScript-scripts but this probably is a problem of the not-so-widely-used, non-MS browsers. But then we figured that most of the time - and we know that this involves a lot of generalizing - those, who know the internet well use alternative browser and that those, who know the internet well, know at least a little about Wikipedia and the wiki principle. Has any of the developers any objections against anything like this? I'll post the script later on as it is still in development. Best regards wotan

5 6

← Newer
1
...
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
...
20
Older →

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

Wikitech-l July 2004