Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Wikitech

References - ugh

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stevage at gmail

Aug 27, 2006, 2:37 AM

Post #1 of 22 (975 views)
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References - ugh

I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:

The name Pluto was first suggested by [[Venetia Burney|Venetia Phair
(née Burney)]], at the time an eleven-year-old girl from [[Oxford,
England|Oxford]], [[England]].<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4596246.stm
|title=The girl who named a planet
|first= Paul
|last= Rincon
|publisher=BBC News
|accessdate=2006-03-05}}</ref> Venetia, who was interested in
[[Classical mythology]] as well as astronomy, suggested the name, the
Roman equivalent of [[Hades]], in a conversation to her grandfather
[[Falconer Madan]], a former [[librarian]] of [[Oxford University]]'s
[[Bodleian Library]].<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR62p030PlanetPluto.shtml
|title=The Planet 'Pluto'
|first= K.M
|last= Claxton
|publisher=Parents' Union School Diamond Jubilee Magazine, 1891-1951
(Ambleside: PUS, 1951), p. 30-32
|accessdate=2006-08-24}}</ref> Madan passed the suggestion to
Professor [[Herbert Hall Turner]], Turner then cabled the suggestion
to colleagues in America. After favourable consideration which was
almost unanimous{{fact}}, the name Pluto was officially adopted and an
announcement made by Slipher on [[1930-05-01]].

---
Can you believe that in that chunk of text, there are actually three
separate pieces of text, with two references between them? It's
totally unmanageable - attempting to actually edit the text that's
buried in there as a cohesive whole is next to impossible. Solutions
desperately wanted.

Steve
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angus at quovadis

Aug 27, 2006, 4:50 AM

Post #2 of 22 (958 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

Steve Bennett wrote:

> I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
>
> The name Pluto was first suggested by [[Venetia Burney|Venetia Phair
> (née Burney)]], at the time an eleven-year-old girl from [[Oxford,
> England|Oxford]], [[England]].<ref>{{cite web
[...]
> announcement made by Slipher on [[1930-05-01]].
>
> ---
> Can you believe that in that chunk of text, there are actually three
> separate pieces of text, with two references between them? It's
> totally unmanageable - attempting to actually edit the text that's
> buried in there as a cohesive whole is next to impossible. Solutions
> desperately wanted.

It would be nice if the extension allowed for references to be declared
after the paragraph that uses them. In the edit window every paragraph
would have their own "footnotes" with the full reference information,
while in the paragraph only <ref name="xzxz"/> would be used. (In the
rendered article, all references would go together, as they do now.)
This way, the text would flow uninterrupted, and the reference
information would keep its proximity with it (except in very long
paragraphs...).

Greetings.
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stevage at gmail

Aug 27, 2006, 4:58 AM

Post #3 of 22 (968 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/27/06, Carlos <angus [at] quovadis> wrote:
> It would be nice if the extension allowed for references to be declared
> after the paragraph that uses them. In the edit window every paragraph
> would have their own "footnotes" with the full reference information,
> while in the paragraph only <ref name="xzxz"/> would be used. (In the
> rendered article, all references would go together, as they do now.)
> This way, the text would flow uninterrupted, and the reference
> information would keep its proximity with it (except in very long
> paragraphs...).

Yeah, I think we've discussed putting them at the end of the article,
but probably the best is just allowing them to be defined *anywhere* -
before, at, or after the time the link to the reference (the [1])
actually appears.

Steve
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maveric149 at yahoo

Aug 27, 2006, 12:03 PM

Post #4 of 22 (968 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

--- Steve Bennett <stevage [at] gmail> wrote:
> I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
> Can you believe that in that chunk of text, there are actually three
> separate pieces of text, with two references between them? It's
> totally unmanageable - attempting to actually edit the text that's
> buried in there as a cohesive whole is next to impossible. Solutions
> desperately wanted.

Yeah, that's bad. The detailed part of the references really should be under a 'Works cited'
subsection of the ==References== section while something like this <ref>bbc.co.uk "The Girl that
named Pluto"</ref> should be inline. The whole point of wiki syntax is to make it possible to
easily read and edit source text (unlike HTML). But having complete reference info directly inline
defeats that.

-- mav

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jra at baylink

Aug 27, 2006, 1:31 PM

Post #5 of 22 (961 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 12:03:15PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Steve Bennett <stevage [at] gmail> wrote:
> > I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
> > Can you believe that in that chunk of text, there are actually three
> > separate pieces of text, with two references between them? It's
> > totally unmanageable - attempting to actually edit the text that's
> > buried in there as a cohesive whole is next to impossible. Solutions
> > desperately wanted.
>
> Yeah, that's bad. The detailed part of the references really should be
> under a 'Works cited' subsection of the ==References== section while
> something like this <ref>bbc.co.uk "The Girl that named Pluto"</ref>
> should be inline. The whole point of wiki syntax is to make it
> possible to easily read and edit source text (unlike HTML). But having
> complete reference info directly inline defeats that.

Yes; that's the argument we were having last week.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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timwi at gmx

Aug 28, 2006, 5:24 AM

Post #6 of 22 (962 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

Carlos wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
>>
> [...]
>
> It would be nice if the extension allowed for references to be declared
> after the paragraph that uses them.

Remind me what was wrong with my suggestion to allow users to declare
the reference anywhere, but move it to the "References" section upon save?

Timwi

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stevage at gmail

Aug 28, 2006, 7:07 AM

Post #7 of 22 (949 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/28/06, Timwi <timwi [at] gmx> wrote:
> Remind me what was wrong with my suggestion to allow users to declare
> the reference anywhere, but move it to the "References" section upon save?

My only concern is that it's slightly disconcerting when stuff moves
after save. It would certainly be better than the current situation
though, and I'd support seeing that change implemented until an even
better solution comes along (if ever).

Steve
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jra at baylink

Aug 28, 2006, 8:36 AM

Post #8 of 22 (961 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 01:24:36PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Carlos wrote:
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> >>I know I've done this once before, but this one's worse:
> >>
> > [...]
> >
> > It would be nice if the extension allowed for references to be declared
> > after the paragraph that uses them.
>
> Remind me what was wrong with my suggestion to allow users to declare
> the reference anywhere, but move it to the "References" section upon save?

The fact that lifting a graf with references and copying it to another
article becomes a major hassle.

The problem as *I* see it is that the whitespace necessary to make the
wikitext readable screws with the article vspace.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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stevage at gmail

Aug 28, 2006, 8:56 AM

Post #9 of 22 (971 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/28/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> The fact that lifting a graf with references and copying it to another
> article becomes a major hassle.
>
> The problem as *I* see it is that the whitespace necessary to make the
> wikitext readable screws with the article vspace.

That's part of the problem, but not all of it.

You know, what would really be ideal (in dreamland) would be a column
of references next to the edit box. You would type <ref name="foo" />
and the instant you'd closed the >, you'd have a new entry in the list
to the right, just begging you to give it some details. The list would
probably be stored at the bottom of the article, but you wouldn't even
care. You'd always edit it directly in that list. And you could do
neat things like collapsing two references together, highlighting any
references which were no longer referred to in the text etc...

Steve
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jra at baylink

Aug 28, 2006, 10:20 AM

Post #10 of 22 (966 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 05:56:42PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/28/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> > The fact that lifting a graf with references and copying it to another
> > article becomes a major hassle.
> >
> > The problem as *I* see it is that the whitespace necessary to make the
> > wikitext readable screws with the article vspace.
>
> That's part of the problem, but not all of it.
>
> You know, what would really be ideal (in dreamland) would be a column
> of references next to the edit box. You would type <ref name="foo" />
> and the instant you'd closed the >, you'd have a new entry in the list
> to the right, just begging you to give it some details. The list would
> probably be stored at the bottom of the article, but you wouldn't even
> care. You'd always edit it directly in that list. And you could do
> neat things like collapsing two references together, highlighting any
> references which were no longer referred to in the text etc...

This just keeps converging on Christiaan(?)'s XML in the DBMS approach
-- once the backend is tractable, editors in front can be as smart as
they like.

It occurs to me that diffing XML wouldn't be pretty.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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stevage at gmail

Aug 28, 2006, 10:44 AM

Post #11 of 22 (952 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/28/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> It occurs to me that diffing XML wouldn't be pretty.

Why ever not?

Steve
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jra at baylink

Aug 28, 2006, 3:37 PM

Post #12 of 22 (958 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 07:44:12PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/28/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> > It occurs to me that diffing XML wouldn't be pretty.
>
> Why ever not?

Because in wikitext, everything is in-band; in XML, the structure is
out-of-band, on purpose. This requires an entirely different, and I
suspect, much more complicated diff algorithm.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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Simetrical+wikitech at gmail

Aug 28, 2006, 7:52 PM

Post #13 of 22 (955 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/28/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> Because in wikitext, everything is in-band; in XML, the structure is
> out-of-band, on purpose. This requires an entirely different, and I
> suspect, much more complicated diff algorithm.

I don't know what "in-band" and "out-of-band" mean ([[Out of band]]
doesn't help either), but if the diff engine parses the XML, it can
look for a) changes in structure/markup and b) changes in content.
Either one should be very easy and fast to diff, given XML-parsing
library functions (for the C++ module used on WMF sites, that is).
Faster than present, I don't know, but the present differ is hardly a
bottleneck.
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krstic at solarsail

Aug 28, 2006, 11:40 PM

Post #14 of 22 (964 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

Simetrical wrote:
> doesn't help either), but if the diff engine parses the XML, it can
> look for a) changes in structure/markup and b) changes in content.
> Either one should be very easy and fast to diff

XML diffs are generally rather non-trivial (see e.g.
http://www.unibw.de/rz/dokumente/getFILE?fid=1076019), though it would
be somewhat easier for MediaWiki to get away with them, as we're talking
about a strongly constrained XML schema.

In any case, I don't see much point in discussing this; it's been made
abundantly clear that even comparatively minor and much saner changes in
the syntax will not happen.

--
Ivan KrstiÄ‡ <krstic [at] solarsail> | GPG: 0x147C722D
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stevage at gmail

Aug 29, 2006, 12:32 AM

Post #15 of 22 (965 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/29/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech [at] gmail> wrote:
> I don't know what "in-band" and "out-of-band" mean ([[Out of band]]
> doesn't help either), but if the diff engine parses the XML, it can
> look for a) changes in structure/markup and b) changes in content.

I think what's meant is that with XML, it's basically trivial to
separate text from markup - depending on how you receive the XML, that
may already have been done for you. The structure and formatting thus
occupies a completely separate "band" to the text being formatted.

Whereas Wikitext is a nightmare to parse :)

Steve
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jra at baylink

Aug 29, 2006, 8:49 AM

Post #16 of 22 (957 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 10:52:42PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/28/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> > Because in wikitext, everything is in-band; in XML, the structure is
> > out-of-band, on purpose. This requires an entirely different, and I
> > suspect, much more complicated diff algorithm.
>
> I don't know what "in-band" and "out-of-band" mean ([[Out of band]]
> doesn't help either),

The current diff engine, with which I'm not familiar intimately (read
that as I haven't looked at the code at all, but I'm assuming it's
somewhat familiar with the Unix diff internals) is working on one big
object of stream text. The structural markup is *part* of that stream
of text, hence, in-band.

> but if the diff engine parses the XML, it can
> look for a) changes in structure/markup and b) changes in content.

Yep, and those will interact in ways different from the ways that they
do now: the current diff engine need not "trip over" the edges of
objects in the way that an XML parser will have to.

> Either one should be very easy and fast to diff, given XML-parsing
> library functions (for the C++ module used on WMF sites, that is).
> Faster than present, I don't know, but the present differ is hardly a
> bottleneck.

Certainly. I wasn't suggesting that it was; rather, the opposite.

Anyone got any implementation experience with diffing XML trees?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
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jra at baylink

Aug 29, 2006, 8:50 AM

Post #17 of 22 (949 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 09:32:48AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech [at] gmail> wrote:
> > I don't know what "in-band" and "out-of-band" mean ([[Out of band]]
> > doesn't help either), but if the diff engine parses the XML, it can
> > look for a) changes in structure/markup and b) changes in content.
>
> I think what's meant is that with XML, it's basically trivial to
> separate text from markup - depending on how you receive the XML, that
> may already have been done for you. The structure and formatting thus
> occupies a completely separate "band" to the text being formatted.
>
> Whereas Wikitext is a nightmare to parse :)

My point was that it's a bastard to parse, but it seems intuitively
that it would be *easier* to diff.

And as to "it's never going to happen"...

Never's a *long* time; if we wish to engage in gedankenexperiments
about how to do an implementation that's "never going to happen"...

who cares?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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krstic at solarsail

Aug 29, 2006, 9:06 AM

Post #18 of 22 (940 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Anyone got any implementation experience with diffing XML trees?

I haven't done it personally, but the paper I linked to earlier looked
at a bunch of implementations.

--
Ivan KrstiÄ‡ <krstic [at] solarsail> | GPG: 0x147C722D
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stevage at gmail

Aug 29, 2006, 9:42 AM

Post #19 of 22 (949 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/29/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> Anyone got any implementation experience with diffing XML trees?

No, but I'm wondering what happens if you simply flatten it down to
text then diff. What's the worst that could happen?

Steve
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Simetrical+wikitech at gmail

Aug 29, 2006, 9:59 AM

Post #20 of 22 (948 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On 8/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevage [at] gmail> wrote:
> No, but I'm wondering what happens if you simply flatten it down to
> text then diff. What's the worst that could happen?

The worst that could happen is it's all on one line and your diff
engine says "line 1 was changed, here are the lines side-by-side".
No, that wouldn't work too well: instead, how about you

1) Compress all whitespace in each document per XML specs,
2) Replace all /(<.*?>)/ with /\n$1\n/ in each document,
3) Run a normal line-based diff, such as the one we use now.

Each tag will then be on one line, and so will the contents of each
tag. Perfect? Ideal? No, but definitely usable.
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jra at baylink

Aug 29, 2006, 10:50 AM

Post #21 of 22 (948 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 12:06:42PM -0400, Ivan Krsti?? wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Anyone got any implementation experience with diffing XML trees?
>
> I haven't done it personally, but the paper I linked to earlier looked
> at a bunch of implementations.

I'll check it out and see if it agrees with my prejudices.
--
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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jra at baylink

Aug 29, 2006, 10:50 AM

Post #22 of 22 (956 views)
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Re: References - ugh [In reply to]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 06:42:38PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/29/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra [at] baylink> wrote:
> > Anyone got any implementation experience with diffing XML trees?
>
> No, but I'm wondering what happens if you simply flatten it down to
> text then diff. What's the worst that could happen?

Well, that would likely make the job back into what we have now, yes.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra [at] baylink
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
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