User:Makthorpe/InfoPageDesign

Problems with earlier approaches:

• users of earlier templates were confused where the data was. Instead of noticing the edit tab, they would go to the More Template, get shocked by the code complexity, and either freak out (I heard from those folks) or give up (who knows how many of them there were). The new approach encodes the Info Page first, so the inclination to edit the page will give them what they expect.
• creating the info page was tedious (see quick additions below)

Info pages improvements over More templates

• Displaying various info object attributes should use extremely intuitive or easily discoverable syntax. EG if the info page says an attribute is Synonyms, the display should be something like display | synonyms | {info page name)
• {{:Info:[subject name]}} encoding.
  • implies to the user that the data being transcluded is from the Info:(subject name) page, and will correctly assume that editing that page will change the contents of the transcluded text.
  • Simplifies the encoding- they need not remember what template does the display work (eg- 'More', or 'Endnote' templates
  • Improvement comes at the cost of a slightly more complex first line on the Info Page. I think whether it is long or short doesn't matter to most folks, since most folks' standard procedure seems to be to ignore junk as a black box that they don't understand.
• using parser functions in place of qif and bool templates.
• Better Next/Prev behavior- "Trails"/sequence lists. Next scans ordinal attributes eg eval if PAGENAME eq {{{1}}}, {{{2}}} etc. Until the current page name is found. The function returns the prev and next images (or cats).
  • The ordinals appear as params- this is confusing at first but recall an info page is actually just a collection of parameters passed to another template. So the trail in on the info page. I think the idea was that any arbitrary trail could be created, and that the same string could then be manually pasted.
  • These sequence numbers actually could be used in place of galleries.
  • These trails could be generated by a bot which made a boolean set operation on categories. EG. WWII ships AND Battleships
    • Alternatively, the bot generates the list from the info page boolean, then hardcodes the stuff on each page.
• Point of View behavior, and cat scheme like yahoo. Battleships:1930s:Japan
  • Going up down on say Battleship trasfers you to cat: Cruisers of Japan 1930-1939.
  • "Closing" one (winding up with say Battleships:1930s gives you cat page: Battleships 1930-1939
• Quick additions {{Info|(subject name)}} allows user to quickly:

1. immediately after use, gives the page a transwiki an en wiki article of the same name
2. immediately after use, assign a category of the same name
3. flag the page for automatic upgrade (a bot that references the EN wiki site, loads the topic sentences from all the transwikis, maybe encodes some links from external links section.

• Many settings are now made optional-

• Obsolete:
  • Text- now en=, ja=, etc.
  • Wiki-articles. Now |en_article=, |ja_article= etc.
  • Heading. Now uses Info name
  • Synonyms= and using {{{2}}} {{{3}}} for synonym extension lines.
    • Now uses enSyn, frSyn= etc.

• Optional:
  • Missing Info= will assume same name as PAGENAME if not present.
  • My Category. Now uses Info name. May be overriden, if existing can name does not correspond to Info page name, which usually would be the EN wikipedia title.

• No change:
  • Links Presentation specific syntax, but we can generalize later.
  • Thumb Presentation specific syntax, but we can generalize later.
  • Short_name we may still need this. When category names are too long for displays, and shorter names can be used since context is known.

• New
  • do= a template parameter- use a different template to display info
  • get= set to an info field name. eg get=en_article would return the value of that field.
  • Info
  • en= captions
  • en_article- possibly sidebar, possibly the Mona Lisa Lang technique.
  • enSyn (replaces Rare use for vernacular names)
  • "Trails" lists- a list of categories is given for each list. The result of the boolean operation on the categories is the navigation list.
    • TrailsNNN=category1 AND category2
    • Navigation UI looks like Image:Infm919.jpg, and is generated by bot.
      • User may override the Bot by placing a comment line on the page.