Ligulem wrote:
On 19.01.2007 10:27, Andrew Garrett wrote:
If you want something implemented in a pure programming language (PHP is debatable in that regard), speak to developers, we will implement it in PHP as part of MediaWiki. MediaWiki is a piece of software, not an IDE.
Would you move http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_book into MediaWiki then?
Taking this seriously, instead of as bait, if you are serious about this, please post a bugzilla request, instead of hounding individual developers.
That said, I think that a basic parameterised thing like that needn't be reimplemented; although it would be perhaps helpful in performance terms.
Andrew Garrett (Werdna)
On 19.01.2007 11:55, Andrew Garrett wrote:
Taking this seriously, instead of as bait, if you are serious about this, please post a bugzilla request, instead of hounding individual developers.
Hounding?
Thanks a lot for assuming bad faith.
On 1/19/07, Andrew Garrett andrew@epstone.net wrote:
Ligulem wrote:
On 19.01.2007 10:27, Andrew Garrett wrote:
If you want something implemented in a pure programming language (PHP is debatable in that regard), speak to developers, we will implement it in PHP as part of MediaWiki. MediaWiki is a piece of software, not an IDE.
Would you move http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_book into MediaWiki then?
Taking this seriously, instead of as bait, if you are serious about this, please post a bugzilla request, instead of hounding individual developers.
You said "speak to developers", not fill out a bugzilla request. Now, if one of us *does* put in a bugzilla request, will it get done?
Unfortunately, the MediaWiki PHP code isn't as easy to update as templates are. Of course, resolving this without causing major security headaches is/would be an insanely difficult thing to do.
That said, I think that a basic parameterised thing like that needn't be reimplemented; although it would be perhaps helpful in performance terms.
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
Where would we get the data from? Who's going to allow us to query this stuff at the rate we need it? Sure, we can cache it, but it still takes time to build up a good cache of titles.
Coincidentally, I just finished the beta version of an extension, BookInformation, which enhances the output of Special:Booksources with a cute little box containing the title, author and publisher corresponding to the ISBN entered, where it exists. Works with Amazon Web Services right now, but has been coded to allow a number of possible providers to be supported. (Let me take the opportunity to thank the guys who shot in and provided translations for Finnish, Dutch, German and Indonesian within 10 minutes of committing it; if that's not bloody service, I don't know what is!)
There's no reason we couldn't enhance the citation extension with an auto-formatter for book/journal/similar references, *but* consider that to do this, we'd be pulling the format from a message as it is; so there isn't much benefit over using a template as is done at present.
Rob Church
On 1/19/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
. . .
There's no reason we couldn't enhance the citation extension with an auto-formatter for book/journal/similar references, *but* consider that to do this, we'd be pulling the format from a message as it is; so there isn't much benefit over using a template as is done at present.
Current templates require you to specify all the information to be used in the templates. The question related to supplying only the ISBN and having it come up with the rest of the information from its database, as well as formatting it properly.
On 19/01/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
Current templates require you to specify all the information to be used in the templates. The question related to supplying only the ISBN and having it come up with the rest of the information from its database, as well as formatting it properly.
The kickstart for the post was actually reimplementing Template:Cite_book or whatever; the ISBN lookup stuff was added later.
Rob Church
On 1/19/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
The kickstart for the post was actually reimplementing Template:Cite_book or whatever; the ISBN lookup stuff was added later.
But that isn't the post you were responding to, and anyway the poster brings up a good point.
On 19/01/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
But that isn't the post you were responding to, and anyway the poster brings up a good point.
I didn't say he hadn't!
Do *you* have any solutions to the main problem I pointed out?
Rob Church
On 1/19/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
Where would we get the data from? Who's going to allow us to query this stuff at the rate we need it? Sure, we can cache it, but it still takes time to build up a good cache of titles.
How fast of a rate would you need it? I don't know the answer to where the data could be obtained, that's why I asked the initial question about whether or not this would be possible.
Are these databases copyrightable? Can the Library of Congress database be obtained with a Freedom of Information Request?
Anthony
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
How fast of a rate would you need it? I don't know the answer to where the data could be obtained, that's why I asked the initial question about whether or not this would be possible.
It'd need to be available at rendering time; if a cache miss occurred, it would need to be queried there and then. I don't know how fast people would adopt it or how many such tags would be inserted in a short period of time, so estimating the worst case is a bit hard.
I'm not sure how "available" such databases would be.
Rob Church
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Rob Church wrote:
It'd need to be available at rendering time; if a cache miss occurred, it would need to be queried there and then. I don't know how fast people would adopt it or how many such tags would be inserted in a short period of time, so estimating the worst case is a bit hard.
Don't forget that you could also stuff it into the job queue. There would be a loss immediate feedback, but eventually the correct data would be cached and then re-running the parser would make things work out.
On 1/19/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
How fast of a rate would you need it? I don't know the answer to where the data could be obtained, that's why I asked the initial question about whether or not this would be possible.
It'd need to be available at rendering time; if a cache miss occurred, it would need to be queried there and then.
Umm, not if you designed it so the "cache" was big enough. Then you'd only need to perform the lookup once - presumably when the reference is first added.
I don't know how fast people would adopt it or how many such tags would be inserted in a short period of time, so estimating the worst case is a bit hard.
I can't possibly answer your question of "Who's going to allow us to query this stuff at the rate we need it?" then.
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
Umm, not if you designed it so the "cache" was big enough. Then you'd only need to perform the lookup once - presumably when the reference is first added.
I should clarify that by "cache miss", I meant, "the first use, when it won't be in the cache" - of course, we wouldn't arbitrarily discard the cached data; there's no need.
Rob Church
On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 04:52:56PM -0500, Anthony wrote:
Are these databases copyrightable? Can the Library of Congress database be obtained with a Freedom of Information Request?
Databases are inherently not copyrightable (Feist v. Rural).
The LoC is operated for our benefit anyway; I would be very surprised if they didn't already have some fashion by which you could look stuff up over the net.
This may be a good start: http://www.loc.gov/library/
(for anyone who hasn't already seen it...)
Cheers, -- jra
On 1/20/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
Where would we get the data from? Who's going to allow us to query this stuff at the rate we need it? Sure, we can cache it, but it still takes time to build up a good cache of titles.
Try librarything.com - they have an API and were keen recently for people to do mashups. Tell Tim I recommended it (-;
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
Coincidentally, I just finished the beta version of an extension, BookInformation, which enhances the output of Special:Booksources with a cute little box containing the title, author and publisher corresponding to the ISBN entered, where it exists. Works with Amazon Web Services right now, but has been coded to allow a number of possible providers to be supported. (Let me take the opportunity to thank the guys who shot in and provided translations for Finnish, Dutch, German and Indonesian within 10 minutes of committing it; if that's not bloody service, I don't know what is!)
There's no reason we couldn't enhance the citation extension with an auto-formatter for book/journal/similar references, *but* consider that to do this, we'd be pulling the format from a message as it is; so there isn't much benefit over using a template as is done at present.
Rob Church
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 08:00:17PM +0000, Rob Church wrote:
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
Where would we get the data from? Who's going to allow us to query this stuff at the rate we need it? Sure, we can cache it, but it still takes time to build up a good cache of titles.
After some googling, I found
Would this be helpful? They claim to have about 2.5 Million titles. The search found some O'Reilly books that I tried, but failed on some German titles I tried.
Regards,
jens
On 20/01/07, Jens Frank jf@mormo.org wrote:
After some googling, I found
http://isbndb.com/docs/api/Would this be helpful? They claim to have about 2.5 Million titles. The search found some O'Reilly books that I tried, but failed on some German titles I tried.
Good find. It might be advisable for us to compile a list of such providers - if we can establish common data to be obtained for each title, then perhaps we can do some sort of basic round-robin querying, rather than pulling all our information from one provider.
Thanks,
Rob Church
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org