User talk:Patrick

From semanticweb.org

Hi Patrick,

I think we may be doing similar things with the <ask> examples. See Inline Query Examples. 217.117.47.110 12:52, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

Yes, I have seen your page. There are also live examples in Help:Inline queries. I wonder, however, whether the listing of "correct output" is useful. It is cumbersome to update, and it does not apply when copying the page to another project.--Patrick 13:04, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

I absolutely agree it is cumbersome to update. Is there is a rigorous testing procedure for inline queries elsewhere? The "correct output"/"query output" comparisons are unit tests against the specification. 217.117.47.110 16:09, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

That might be useful if the database is kept constant and a change in software is tested. However, in practice pages are edited more frequently than developers change the software, of course. So it would require a separate frozen copy of the site.--Patrick 16:30, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

If there is no other test procedure, then testing even if awkward is better than no testing. If we are to have SMW running on a production server, we will want to know there has been a rigorous test procedure run beforehand. Presumably database changes can be prevented by having a few pages that are protected. Of course if there are other adequate tests, then it's a waste of time :-) Philip 16:33, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

I do not know whether there are formal specifications and test procedures. In the case of a simple example page the writer and readers of the page can see for themselves whether things work as they understood they would work. If this deviates and the deviation is systematic they may change the description.--Patrick 16:59, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

See also Help:Selection, copied from another wiki. Either examples need to be changed, or pages and annotations added to match the examples.--Patrick 13:13, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

Will have a look later 217.117.47.110 16:09, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

Contents 1 Who are you? 2 Date work 2.1 Date display formatting is available, updates 3 Property:Age

[edit] Who are you?

Maybe a little more info on your user page about who you actually are? That is, full name, publications, whatever. Most of it right now is a test page. 128.101.35.48 17:16, 11 October 2006 (CEST)

I do not find that necessary. I am the same Patrick as on Wikipedia and Meta-Wikipedia.--Patrick 02:11, 12 October 2006 (CEST)

[edit] Date work

Hi, I see you're doing a lot of work with dates. I wrote that code and am going to work on improving it for SMW 0.6.

I suggest you create a {{birth info}} template that you fill in with date parts and it assembles all the various date attributes and relations.

There is already Template:b (talk, backlinks, edit). It is usually substituted. Property:Birthday could be added, but that is perhaps less needed.--Patrick 10:46, 14 November 2006 (CET)

I renamed Template:b to Template:born (talk, backlinks, edit) for clarity, I confess I'm confused by subst and how this relates to Template:b1. -- Skierpage 08:30, 27 February 2007 (CET)

With regard to dates, I would like to support birthdays way outside the current range. I wish PHP would allow 64-bit timestamps, I'll probably have to roll my own conversions.

With regard to sorting dates, I need to figure out whether SMW can or should sort Type:Date on the YYYY:MM:DD string or the underlying "seconds since 1970". The latter should always generate correct sorting order, whereas sorting Augustine of Hippo born 354-11-13 comes after recent 4 digit dates. Even if we pad with zeroes (0354-11-13), negative dates in BCE won't sort correctly.

If sorting is not done on the number of seconds but on the form YYYY:MM:DD itself, YYYY would have to be sorted like Type:Integer.--Patrick 10:57, 14 November 2006 (CET)

These are interesting issues and you seem an actual user of the date feature who can help improve it! As I wrote in Property_talk:Birthday talk page, please participate on semediawiki-users mailing list.

Some of the attribute pages are now hard to follow. Might I ask that you move tests from attribute pages to separate Test date page(s) in Category:Testpage? Also, perhaps replace your {{lifetime}} template that generates a lot of output with a "see also" link to a Test date sorting page.

Done.--Patrick 01:38, 16 November 2006 (CET)

Warmest regards, -- Skierpage 02:19, 14 November 2006 (CET)

[edit] Date display formatting is available, updates

Markus put the pre-release SMW code on ontoworld, so the date display formatting patch is present. I updated Property:Birthday to show how specifying a display format for date of birth in a query gives similar results. Skierpage 27 February 2007.

Interesting. Thanks!--Patrick 19:02, 28 February 2007 (CET)

[edit] Property:Age

Hi Patrick: Don't you think that age should not be a primary property, but an inferred one from "date of birth", for example? There is not much point in changing the value of this attribute every year, is it? Regards, --JosebaAbaitua 09:51, 19 October 2007 (CEST)