Dynamic unit conversion - Wikitech-l

Petr Bena

17 Jan 17 Jan

10:59 a.m.

there could be even some cool javascript based toolbar that would allow people to switch the unit, or see unit hint when they roll over the text On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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.Hi, There are many articles on wikipedia that contain different units. Some use cm, that are common in europe, other use inches that are more widely used in US, same with other unit types. I think it would be cool if an extension was created which would allow everyone to specify what units they prefer, and the values in articles would be converted automatically based on preference. For example you would say the object has width of {{unit|cm=20}} and people who prefer cm would see 20 cm in article text, but people who prefer inches would see 7.87 inch. This could be even based on geolocation for IP users What do you think?

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Petr Bena

11:39 a.m.

Yes, but what I mean is the user interface for wikipedia readers so that it's easier for them to understand what the value is. I think this issue has 2 parts. One is implementation in user interface for readers (probably some js widget that pop up, when you roll over the unit, allowing you to immediately convert it or change the default preferences) who are reading articles on wikipedia or any other wmf project. The other part is the implementation of this for editors. It could either use wikidata as backend, which probably is a good solution here, or just some magic word like {{DYNAMICUNIT|unit_type=value}} etc etc. I think that best would be combination of both wikidata and magic, because most of wikipedia editors aren't familiar with wikidata at all and may find it complicated to insert the values directly in there. If wikidata was the only option, it would need to be EXTREMELY simple for users to insert the value into article with a 0 need for any knowledge of how wikidata works, otherwise nobody is going to use it. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Hoi, The best place for such an effort would be Wikidata.. There are many units that could do with some TLC. Particularly with the arrival of values in Wikidata it is expedient to do this. One other area where attention would be relevant are dates.. Did you know that some calendars (that are used) have cycles of sixty years ?? Thanks, Gerard On 17 January 2014 09:59, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

there could be even some cool javascript based toolbar that would allow people to switch the unit, or see unit hint when they roll over the text On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

.Hi, There are many articles on wikipedia that contain different units. Some use cm, that are common in europe, other use inches that are more widely used in US, same with other unit types. I think it would be cool if an extension was created which would allow everyone to specify what units they prefer, and the values in articles would be converted automatically based on preference. For example you would say the object has width of {{unit|cm=20}} and people who prefer cm would see 20 cm in article text, but people who prefer inches would see 7.87 inch. This could be even based on geolocation for IP users What do you think?

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Petr Bena

11:43 a.m.

Yes, this is precisely what I mean. It could be some js gadget that does this, just like the google translate gadget makes it easy to translate a word by rolling over the text, this would let users see the value in different units the same way. However this gadget needs to know what is supposed to be converted. So there is also some need to alter the current articles as they are. Maybe it would be possible for it to automagically recognize what is a unit using some regex or something like it, but I am afraid it wouldn't be very reliable if the unit and value wasn't clearly specified in wikitext. There are some special values, for example recently I was reading about hard drives and values like size per square inch (for example Tib/sq. inch) and similar are pretty exotic to be matched easily by some automatic algorithm without explicitly specifying what kind of unit is that. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Antoine Musso <hashar+wmf(a)free.fr> wrote:

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Le 17/01/14 09:58, Petr Bena a écrit :

There are many articles on wikipedia that contain different units. Some use cm, that are common in europe, other use inches that are more widely used in US, same with other unit types. I think it would be cool if an extension was created which would allow everyone to specify what units they prefer, and the values in articles would be converted automatically based on preference. For example you would say the object has width of {{unit|cm=20}} and people who prefer cm would see 20 cm in article text, but people who prefer inches would see 7.87 inch. This could be even based on geolocation for IP users

Hello, I like the idea. One thing to take in account is that the unit conversion should be done on the client side to avoid fragmentation of the parser cache. A possibility would be for the template to output BOTH metrics and imperial units, then use JS/CSS to hide the irrelevant one. Hence {{unit|cm=20}} would generate something like: <span class="mw-unitsystem-imperial">7,874 inches</span> <span class="mw-unitsystem-metric">20 cm</span> Then using user preference to hide one of the class. -- Antoine "hashar" Musso _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Jasper Deng

11:56 a.m.

I would like to ask, how are significant figures going to be dealt with? 300 could mean anything from one to three significant figures, for example. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 1:47 AM, Marc Ordinas i Llopis < marcoil(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

For example you would say the object has width of {{unit|cm=20}} and people who prefer cm would see 20 cm in article text, but people who prefer inches would see 7.87 inch.

This is a great idea! As proposed it'd be very helpful, but maybe it'd be better if it showed the original text and a conversion on mouse-over (maybe with a small icon to indicate it, like external links).

This could be even based on geolocation for IP users

Oh, please, don't use IP geolocation for anything. It's terrible for people travelling, using proxies, living abroad, living in places where more than one languages are commonly spoken, learning new languages… If you want to get an initial default, use Accept-Language (like, inches for en-US and cm for anyone else :) and allow the user to modify it. Thanks, Marc _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Petr Bena

3:19 p.m.

That's why I don't think this is a best job for a template. It definitely should be done by some kind of extension or gadget instead. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Happy Melon <happy.melon.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Enwiki's {{convert}} template is a behemoth of a structure which is intended to do this. I once made an attempt to write a PHP-side extension to do it (look at the revision history of the ParserFunctions extension), but it never took off [1]. I don't think there was ever any enthusiasm to take the ability to "tinker" with the formatting and output ({{convert}} has a million and one different stylistic variations and parameters) away from wiki template editors. --HM [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40039 On 17 January 2014 10:56, Jasper Deng <jasper(a)jasperswebsite.com> wrote:

I would like to ask, how are significant figures going to be dealt with? 300 could mean anything from one to three significant figures, for example. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 1:47 AM, Marc Ordinas i Llopis < marcoil(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

For example you would say the object has width of {{unit|cm=20}} and people who prefer cm would see 20 cm in article text, but people who prefer inches would see 7.87 inch.

This is a great idea! As proposed it'd be very helpful, but maybe it'd be better if it showed the original text and a conversion on mouse-over

(maybe

with a small icon to indicate it, like external links).

This could be even based on geolocation for IP users

Oh, please, don't use IP geolocation for anything. It's terrible for

people

travelling, using proxies, living abroad, living in places where more

than

one languages are commonly spoken, learning new languages… If you want to get an initial default, use Accept-Language (like, inches for en-US and

cm

for anyone else :) and allow the user to modify it. Thanks, Marc _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Tim Landscheidt

8:56 p.m.

Gabriel Wicke <gwicke(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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> I think it would be cool if an extension was created which would allow > everyone to specify what units they prefer, and the values in articles > would be converted automatically based on preference.

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Whatever you do, make it client-side. It would be great to expose type information with an attribute in HTML, so that it can be used for client-side unit conversions. Ideally the typed information comes directly from wikidata (and can be fed to nice table/pie chart/whatever widgets), but it should also not be too hard to mark up data that lives on the wiki the same way.

There's also http://microformats.org/wiki/measure for a more standardized solution that could work on other websites as well. Tim

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Petr Bena

12:13 a.m.

Also this is not anything I am going to do just myself. This is something WE should do. I have like 0 knowledge of this kind of things, I was just thinking it would be a nice thing to have. Some interface developer who is master of JS and such is needed to make this. I can help of course, but basically I am just proposing an idea :-) On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Petr Bena <benapetr(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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it can't be done client side. It must be done on both sides, so that user can save their preference into database without having to set it everytime they get their cookies wiped (which in my case is like 10 times a day just by switching devices and browsers) On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Gabriel Wicke <gwicke(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > On 01/17/2014 12:58 AM, Petr Bena wrote: >> I think it would be cool if an extension was created which would allow >> everyone to specify what units they prefer, and the values in articles >> would be converted automatically based on preference. > > Whatever you do, make it client-side. It would be great to expose type > information with an attribute in HTML, so that it can be used for > client-side unit conversions. Ideally the typed information comes > directly from wikidata (and can be fed to nice table/pie chart/whatever > widgets), but it should also not be too hard to mark up data that lives > on the wiki the same way. > > Gabriel > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Petr Bena

2:02 a.m.

Yes that sounds pretty good to me, I also think it would be much better for this to be handled on client side, I don't really see any problem with caching, but what I am not sure is if this could be implemented without having to update the articles with some magic words etc. But even if we had to, it still would be just a one time update. On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:30 PM, Gabriel Wicke <gwicke(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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On 01/17/2014 02:11 PM, Petr Bena wrote:

it can't be done client side. It must be done on both sides, so that user can save their preference into database without having to set it everytime they get their cookies wiped (which in my case is like 10 times a day just by switching devices and browsers)

Sorry if I wasn't clear; yes, saving the preference is fine. I am mainly concerned about keeping the page content independent of the preference, so that we can serve the same cached content to anonymous and logged-in users. Currently that is not yet possible, but we are working on eliminating the last preference dependencies so that logged-in users can get the same performance as anonymous users. Gabriel _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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