On 19/01/07, Anthony <wikitech(a)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