Infobox templates separated and called by each other... You mean?
[[Template:Foo]] has [[Category:Foo]]
[[Template:Bar]] has [[Category:Bar]]
[[Template:FooBar]] includes both of them.
And [[FooBar]] includes {{FooBar}} and as a result has the categories
Foo and Bar.
Ya, that's all done with templates, it's got nothing to do with a DPL
vs. Semantic MediaWiki difference, so whichever method you use you can
still do that kind of thing.
Actually, SMW is meant to be done using templates, they refer to the
term "Semantic templates" allot because good practice is to put common
attributes into templates to simplify and automate the use of them.
A SMW version of that use would be something like:
[[Template:Foo]] has [[Property::Foo]]
[[Template:Bar]] has [[Property::Bar]]
[[Template:FooBar]] includes both of them.
And [[FooBar]] includes {{FooBar}} and as a result has Foo and Bar in
it's 'Property'.
Actually, Semantic Forms basically covers your entire plan of a
"Front-end". You can create custom forms with special markup and those
forms can be used to edit pages with your infobox templates included in
them. You can even then include those info final articles.
~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of:
-The Gaiapedia (
On 27/02/2008, DanTMan <dan_the_man(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Hmmm... "relationships"
Whether or not you've fixed the problem. Have you taken a look at
Semantic MediaWiki and Semantic Templates? What you're doing seams a lot
more like what SMW is meant to do than what DPL is for.
~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of:
-The Gaiapedia (
http://gaia.wikia.com)
-Wikia ACG on
Wikia.com (
http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
-and
Wiki-Tools.com (
http://wiki-tools.com)
Thanks for the suggestion, Dan.
No, I haven't looked at Semantic MediaWiki in great detail. Setting
up this wiki was one of those proof of concepts projects which turned
into a "we needed this yesterday".
As far as I could see, using dpl has the advantage that the infobox
templates can be put in separate pages, so that they can easily be
replaced, and can also be called from the final article itself.
As I explained, we're starting out with a minimal set of data, because
we're currently more interested in the structure, and the final
customer-service-servers articles where people can add free text
(instructions on how to repair things for starters).
The idea is to later create a new set of infobox templates which will
be pre-loaded with more detailed data from the CMDBs, but for which we
will also write a front-end so that users can only pick predefined
values for certain variables (or 'properties' in semantic speak). If
the variables are embedded in the customer-service-servers articles, I
wouldn't know how to add more variables automatically, other than
starting to manipulate the article data in the database, which I
prefer not to.
But then, there still is a lot I don't know about Mediawiki and its
extensions, so feel free to correct me or point me to better ways of
doing things. Always happy to learn.
Kind regards,
Herta