[Semediawiki-user] [SF] Time for a new addition to SF?

[Dennis G. <den...@gm...>]

[I'm forwarding this]

Hi Chris,

Semantic Forms Select is no doubt a wonderful extension (thanks to Jason
Zhang, James Hong Kong and Toni Hermoso Pulido), one which I've been
gratefully using, but it's not quite what I'm looking for, for three
reasons:

(1) The example I brought up was decidedly kept simple, just for clarity's
sake, so I can see where comment about SFS is coming from, but I imagine
that users of the form are able to exert a little more control over the
criteria for a search - radius, price, number of rooms, facilities, etc. -
and even use wildcards to retrieve relevant results.

(2) To the extent that SFS does offer a (partial) solution in relatively
simple situations, it comes with a number of important limitations,
including lack of support for mapping properties.

(3) There are still limitations to do with SF, as explained in my earlier
post.

In theory at least, being able to run a query in a separate window should:
(a) take away a good deal of the burden from the form itself
(b) offer more refined search functionality.

Best
Dennis







2016-10-24 7:49 GMT+02:00 <... <tha...@gm...>>:

> Hi Dennis,
>
> What you're asking seems very similar to the extension: Semantic Forms
> Select (minus the pop up part). That extension allows one to use a query to
> generate a form element. Unfortunately, I think, that extension can't work
> with the newest versions of Semantic Forms. So I would endorse the notion
> of either getting Semantic Forms Select updated to work with the newest
> versions of SF (and maybe also add the ability to work with Cargo) and/or
> add this ability directly to SF.
>
> Chris
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Oct 23, 2016, at 9:42 PM, Dennis Groenewegen <...> wrote:
> >
> > Dear community,
> >
> > As a long-time user of Semantic Forms (and its relatives), I have had an
> > awful lot of time to spend thinking about what new feature I would like
> to
> > see from SF and what seems to me useful to the community at large. Here's
> > one that I would like to suggest to Yaron and all other developers who
> may
> > be interested in pursuing this further.
> >
> > ==(1) The issue==
> >
> > Sometimes an editor confronted with a given form field simply wants to be
> > able to look up a particular page or value before adding it to the form
> > field. Imagine, for instance, that you have a wiki about travelling in
> > Germany, there's a field where you can suggest a hostel for a given
> > location, say Frankfurt, and you want to select from "all hostels within
> a
> > five-mile radius of DIPF".
> >
> > It is perfectly possible to let users do a search for these hostels
> using a
> > query form but it would be an isolated action: run the query form in a
> > separate browser tab/window, copy the query result and go back to the
> edit
> > form to paste it in. It's not only laborious and error-prone but for
> those
> > of us hiding the actual page titles in favour of display titles (e.g.
> using
> > Semantic Title) probably not even a viable option.
> >
> > Even when autocomplete does provide the basic functionality you need,
> there
> > is a point (once the number of possible results starts to become
> substantial)
> > at which you'll be hitting limitations to do with server (or browser?)
> > capacity - see e.g.
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:Semantic_Forms
> #Remote_autocomplete_and_mapping_property_don.27t_work_together.
> > I noticed myself that pushing MaxAutocompleteValues (config. setting)
> over
> > the limit of "100" cause autocomplete to fail. Again, query forms would
> > present no such problems.
> >
> > ==(2) A possible solution==
> >
> > The kind of solution I have mind is partially inspired by the upload form
> > of the kind ({{{field|input type=text|upload}}}): a button associated
> with
> > a form field opens up a popup window, which basically represents a
> special
> > page, and once the file has been uploaded and selected, the user is taken
> > back to the form, where the page title for the uploaded file is filled in
> > as the value for said form field. I guess that most of you are familiar
> > with the way this feature works.
> >
> > The basic steps here lend themselves rather nicely to a similar approach:
> >
> > * A 'search' button is located next to the form field (example: "Suggest
> a
> > hostel for this location")
> > * Clicking it opens up a query form (Special:RunQuery/<form>) in a new
> > window (ex.: "Find hostels")
> > * Queries can be run within that popup form. (ex.: Find hostels, with the
> > option to choose an appropriate radius)
> > * Clicking on a result, or checking multiple results and confirming the
> > selection, brings the user back to the edit form, (ex.: Hostel X)
> > * And voilà: the selected result(s) are automatically filled in. (ex.:
> > Hostel X)
> >
> > Such a feature would be extremely powerful (I'm sure you can think of
> even
> > better scenarios than mine) and I would expect, not infeasible since a
> > similar framework already exists for uploading files.
> >
> > Please let me know if anything was unclear.
> >
> > Dennis Groenewegen
> >
> > Wikibase Solutons (www.wikibase.nl)
> > CODECS (www.vanhamel.nl/codecs)
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