On 5 Aug 2012, at 11:42, Kake wrote:
External links: I've hacked Wiki::Toolkit::Formatter::UseMod to remove the square brackets from external links, and instead include a class of "external", which lets you style it with CSS. On CGC, we have a little pointy arrow thing for these, like on Wikipedia.
Approve!
Category/locale prefixes: Again with a W::T::F::U hack, I've made a new "INDEX_LIST_NO_PREFIX" macro, which suppresses the leading "Locale" or "Category" when listing; see for example: http://croydon.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Category_Retail_Shops
Also approve!
Along-the-street navigation: Because this is a completists' guide, the aim is to include every business on every street within our area of interest (something that I believe the Oxford Guide is also planning to do). This means that it makes sense to have some visual way of showing a place's neighbours. On CGC I've done this with a set of 5 thumbnails at the bottom of each page, showing the two neighbours on either side. See e.g. http://croydon.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Maplin,_166_North_End
Looks useful; may also be an interesting way to navigate between search results on non-completist wiki guides?
I did this by (a) adding new macros to make it easier to add those thumbnails, and (b) writing a script that takes a list of existing page names, finds the thumbnails using Flickr::API2, and writes the "neighbours" div into each page. I also hacked Wiki::Toolkit::Search::Plucene to ignore anything within this div when indexing the pages.
Metadata display: I've moved the postcode field up to join onto the rest of the address, and moved the map links to one side underneath the inline node map, to make the metadata display look a bit less "wall of text" like. I will also be separating out the categories (and maybe locales) at some point, though I'm not yet sure where to put them.
I particularly like the inline node map, which I would happily see added to other wiki guides, including RGL. I might personally be tempted to hide the other map links behind an "other maps" link with a bit of javascript magic on browsers that support such things, but this is a question of taste. (Perhaps several questions of taste...)
Restricted editing: The public face of the guide is read-only. Editing is accomplished via an /edit/ subdirectory which contains copies of the CGI scripts and a wiki.conf that's identical to the public one except for being set to editable - this directory is protected with HTTP auth. Edit links on the public side appear only for viewers who've set their preferences to show admin links, and go directly to the edit side. This is a refinement of the technique I used previously on http://london-crafts.org/
Maps: I've added Stamen Watercolour and Google Satellite View to the options already provided in core OpenGuides (OpenStreetMap and MapQuest).
I guess there's an interesting larger question here about how to choose which maps to offer, and who should do it. I don't like the Wikipedia solution, which IMO involves too much indirection and too much choice. Having the wiki operator make a selection that feels appropriate to them is a reasonable and simple compromise, but it doesn't feel ideal. It might be optimal, however.
S