Quotes Notes
From Tractatus
I am still working on the right format for my quotes file. I am extending my exploration of XML, and I really think that will be the right way to go. My original `format' is here:
quotes [49K]
I converted into this simple XML format:
quotes [63K]
Next step is better formatting, and integration into the wiki.
If you are interested in math quotes [200K] or Mizel quotes [1K] then check them out.
I have imported the quotes in [1] into the wiki. I converted them to SQL, and added them to the database. The easiest way to find the quotes is to take a look at Special:Lonelypages. I put them in the Quotes:1 to Quotes:269 pages. As I make references to them I am going to move them into more relevant pages. Note that I left the quotes in XML format. My plan is to make a formatting extension just for them. I added an index for easy reference at Index --Iain 22:28, 11 Jun 2005 (EDT)
I uploaded my xsl for quotes, and created an extension to do the formating (simple). I discovered that since the underlying PHP is ISO-8859-1 encoded, I need to explicitly convert the output to UTF-8, which is Mediawiki's encoding. --Iain 23:17, 11 Jun 2005 (EDT)
OK, in order to actually edit the page, you need to update the cur_timestamp as well as cur_title and cur_text when adding a page via SQL. In fact, making cur_random actually a random value is a good idea, otherwise Special:Randompage will not find them. --Iain 01:29, 12 Jun 2005 (EDT)
I added a Special:Randomquote page which will redirect to a random quote. I really ought to create a quote of the day function, but I think that I will import my math quotes first. One thing to do might be to set $wgExtraRandomquoteSQL so that quotes pages do not show up in the output from Special:Randompage. But for now, I'll leave it. What I should really do is extend the search function to pick a random matching page. After the math quotes are uploaded, I'll move all this extra stuff to a notes page. --Iain 16:56, 12 Jun 2005 (EDT)
To make this work, you need to add lines like this:
'Random' => new SpecialPage( 'Randompage' ),
'Randomquote' => new SpecialPage( 'Randomquote' ),
'Randommathquote' => new SpecialPage( 'Randommathquote' ),
To includes/SpecialPage.php --Iain 22:35, 15 January 2006 (EST)
Yay! Mizel quotes are now uploaded. Aside from the fact that I missed the middle initial, they are available from Quotes:Mizel_1 to Quotes:Mizel_22. For those of you who don't know, Victor J Mizel is a Professor in the CMU Mathematics Department. In order to fully appreciate the humor, you need to imagine someone who looks like a mathematician discussing some of the most profound mathematics, and then periodically whipping out one of these lines.
I have these qutoes because I was in Math Studies at CMU from 1996 to 1997. 'Vic' and Dr. Luc Tartar were the instructors. --Iain 17:56, 12 Jun 2005 (EDT)
OK, the Math quotes are uploaded. Since there are so many of them they will almost certainly appear with great frequency if you pick a random page. However, I think I will add a tweak to the search function to generate a random page. BTW, you might notice that none of the quotes pages appear in Search results. This is because they have not been passed through the indexing function in MediaWiki. (I added them directly to the database). To fix this, I need to create a function which will reindex all the pages starting with 'Quotes:'. --Iain 19:07, 12 Jun 2005 (EDT)
All the quotes have been loaded. I am moving all this discussion into a subpage. There are only two things left to do:
- Index all the quotes so that they can be found using Search.
- Painstaking fix all the formatting errors (mostly adding newlines) in the quotes.
--Iain 21:04, 12 Jun 2005 (EDT)
Turns out you index by running one of the basic maintainence scripts. Duh. So, now the quotes are all searchable. I enabled the extended search functions as well. --Iain 02:25, 14 Jun 2005 (EDT)