[Semediawiki-user] [SF] Version 3.7: "display=table", Google Maps key, etc.

[Yaron K. <ya...@wi...>]

Hi everyone,

Version 3.7 of Semantic Forms has been released. It has been a long time
since the last release - four months - so, not surprisingly, there are a
lot of changes in this version. Also, this may be the last version of this
extension under the "Semantic Forms" name; but you'll hear more about that
later.

Changes and additions in this version include:

- A "display=table" option was added to templates, in a similar manner to
the "display=spreadsheet" option added in version 3.6. This one is used
with single-instance templates, unlike "display=spreadsheet" which works
with multiple-instance templates. This option sets a standard table-style
display of the inputs of this template; as with "display=spreadsheet", any
wikitext between "for template" and "end template" gets ignored. This makes
it easier to create forms - and in fact, it's now possible to have forms
without any wikitext at all. And the resulting tables are superior in at
least one way: the "label" of each input gets an HTML <label> tag put
around it, which improves the accessibility of the form.

This also opens up the possibility of creating more "display" options, and
in general making forms a little more modular (they can now more easily be
auto-generated and so forth). I'm looking forward to seeing what comes as a
result of this.

- The $sfgGoogleMapsKey setting was added. For wikis that didn't previously
use maps, I think now you need a Google Maps API key in order to have them
display on your site. This setting lets you specify your key, if you're
using SF's own "googlemaps" form input (i.e., if you don't have Semantic
Maps installed).

- Composer autoloading was removed. This caused a lot of people problems; I
don't know if it worked for anyone who used Composer for installing SF.

- The long-deprecated "no autocomplete" and "autocomplete on ..."
parameters for the "input" tag were removed. To not have autocompletion,
you just need to set the right input type, while for the "autocomplete on
..." parameters, each one has a corresponding "values from ..." parameter
that should be used instead.

- The similarly-deprecated "remote autocompletion" parameter for #forminput
was removed.

- The "datetime with timezone" input type was removed - you just need to
use the "include timezone" parameter for the "datetime" input to get this
functionality.

- The "namespace" param was added for the "combobox" and "tokens" inputs.
This new parameter prepends a namespace, like "User:", to each value
generated by the input. Thanks to Simon Heimler for this addition.

- The upload window for files, when using an "uploadable" text input, was
improved significantly - before, when there was a problem with the upload,
like selecting a filename that already existed on the wiki, you had to
close the window and start over again for the whole thing to work
correctly. Now, you get an error message but you can keep going. Thanks to
Peter Grassberger for this important fix.

- There was a fix for remote autocompletion when using PostgreSQL databases.

- In Special:CreateForm, the "values from property/concept" parameters are
now only displayed if Semantic MediaWiki is installed.

- There was a problem before with cascading "show on select" components,
i.e. when clicking on a checkbox opens up a section containing another
checkbox which opens up another section, etc. - if you unclicked the first
checkbox, it didn't hide everything. This has now been fixed.

- Popup forms didn't close when they were saved, due to a bug introduced in
version 3.6; this was fixed.

- Forms now no longer crash if the name of a redirect page is entered as
the page to be edited; thanks to Seb35 for this fix.

- fix for CreateClass if "CreateClass" has non-ASCII characters in current
language. Thanks to Seb35 for this fix.

- The approach to namespace declaration seems to have changed in SMW 2.4.1,
which caused a problem for Semantic Forms; this has been fixed.

- There were many other fixes; thanks to Seb35, Paladox, demon, Pyro853 and
others for many of these.

As always, you can read more about, and download, Semantic Forms here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Forms

-Yaron