On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I am trying to represent table-like data in a structured way by using the templates. The table-like data should both be rendered in Wikipedia (or another wikimedia) as well as setup and extracted easily by a script. I am wondering how this situation is handled the best. I have setup some examples on the following web-page:
How do you want it rendered? If just as a table, then why not just use a table? You can have the column headers as a template. Just have:
{{Talairach start}} | -38 || 2 || 37 |- | 48 || -40 || 9 || anatomy_2=Right temporoparietal junction |- | 51 || 15 || 34 || functional_area_3=[[Supplementary motor area]] |}
There are two issues:
1) A script should be able to easily extract information from the table. I have worked with the "Cite journal" template of Wikipedia (that is not storing a table). It is relatively easy to extract information from this template by simple regular expressions in Perl. If the information is stored "just in a table" I guess it would be more difficult due to table formatting encoding? A template may be better to separate format and content.
2) An instance of the table may have fields that are not defined. In my DTD XML-file defining the table I have presently 33 fields:
<!ELEMENT Loc (activatedSubjects | brainMapExpId | brainMapLocId | brainMapPaperId | brodmann | comment | coord | ... valueStd | volume | volumeStd | woroi | x | xReported | xStdReported | y | yReported | yStdReported | z | zReported | zStdReported | zScore)*>
A field such as 'brodmann' may or may not be defined for an instance of the table. Seldom are more than 5-10 fields/columns defined. The table would be too broad and too empty if all columns/fields are shown.
/Finn Aarup Nielsen