Automatic search suggestions

The automatic search suggestion, that has been available at Wikipedia for some time now, has just been enabled at OmegaWiki.

Now, when you type a text in the search box, it suggests results according to the words that are present in our database.

At the moment, the "Expression:" will unfortunately appear, as well as data from UMLS and Swissprot that we would need to filter out. In fact, the functionality should be rewritten specifically for OmegaWiki, with also the possibility to specify a language (a nice mix of php, java and sql... anybody interested in programming it?)

However, I think it is already useful as it is now.

You are all invited to try it out (no need to be logged in).

Note that if you don't like, you can disable it in your user preferences under "Search Options" => "Disable AJAX suggestions".

Images to illustrate the definitions

There is now the possibility to add images from Commons in order to illustrate the definitions and make OmegaWiki look prettier.

The following is a screenshot of Expression:mouse.

The image annotation is given at the DefinedMeaning level, which means that when the image is added once to the concept, it becomes available for all the languages : souris , Maus , etc.

Anyone can edit!

As of today, anonymous users can also contribute to OmegaWiki, without the need to create an account and having to wait to be given edit rights by a bureaucrat.

However, since we do not have roll back functionalities at the moment, IP users can add new data, but not modify existing data.

Let's see what comes out of it (more spam or more contributors?).

So we like #Commons

Yesterday Kipcool surprised us with a more visible link to Wikipedia, today he added Commons to it as well. Commons is essentially different in that there is only one link to Commons per concept.

When you look for pictures of a horse at Google or Bing, it makes a big difference in what language you are looking for that animal. If you look for instance for an "សេះ" you will find far fewer horses.

This is what it looks like in Arabic. As there is an annotation referring to the Arabic Wikipedia article, the Arabic article is selected.
Thanks,
      GerardM

So we like #Wikipedia ...

Every now and then, I am happily surprised with new functionality for OmegaWiki. This time Kipcool made our existing Wikipedia visible. When there are references to a Wikipedia article, he will point you to the article in your language.

The expression dólar shows the Dutch Wikipedia article for me. It will show the Spanish article for Ascander and the English article for Kipcool (the French and German article are not linked yet).

The link is added to the page with Javascript. This prevents additional load on our server. I hope you like it, it is an other excellent reason to dig into our annotions.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Polyglot functionality on #OmegaWiki

#Multilingual #MediaWiki is really helped by the Polyglot extension. What it does is show for instance the main page in your language if there is a translation. This helps the usability of OmegaWiki and any other installation a lot when multilinguality is important.

There are a few cotchas, the first is that it prefers the ISO 630-1 code when one is available. This means en in stead of eng, fr / fra, nl / nld .. This is the same for the Babel extension. However, this extension that the change to the short version for you.

Given that the ISO 639-6 will restore the primacy of existing two character codes, it makes sense for OmegaWiki to use this algorithm.

When Kipcool had a look at the code, he found that for OmegaWiki only a few lines were really needed... If you want to see the default or English text, you can always add "&redirect=no" to the URL.

Statistics, because we love them

I could not even say that we were looking at the statistics again, considering that we might want multiple statistics, or less then a day later we have multiple new statistics. Kipcool outdid himself..

Not only does it show the statistics in "your" language, when "your" language shows from right to left, so will the statistics.

Syntrans statistics in the Arabic script

As you can see, it shows nicely with Arabic characters, you will believe that it does the Latin script (boring), it also does Cyrillic, Devanagari and ..

Definitions in Georgian

These two statistics are new, the first ie the "Syntrans statistics" show all the words used for a language and as such it includes homonyms and synonyms. The second shows the number of definitions that exist for a language.

We are really happy with the result so far, now we have to phase out the old statistics and see if we want to do some caching of results.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Word not found

When an expression is not found at #OmegaWiki, a link will be proposed for you to create either a new article or a new expression..

Kipcool informed me about this on IRC, he also expressed his amazement at the speed in which localisations become available at translatewiki.net. There are already localisations for 10 languages for the new message.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Adding multiple translations at once

At Omegawiki, it used to be that if you want to add 10 translations or synonyms to a word, you have to add them one by one. This implies that the page is reloaded 10 times. It takes time for the contributor, and load for the server.

But now, with a bit of java, there is the possibility to add multiple translations without reloading the page.

For this, you just have to click on the green "+" and a new row appears.

I give translations as an example, but it works also for definitions, classes, annotations, etc.

I am glad, it is my first steps in the AJAX world, and it will allow us to reach faster the 400k milestone.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

Etymologies

Thanks to Dh, it is now possible to add etymologies in Omegawiki (in fact, since about a month).

It has been implemented as a translatable text attribute. It means that the etymologies for any word can be explained in all languages.

This may seem like an overkill, and actually, the initial idea was to have only one text field, and to enter the etymology of a word in the language of that word, since we expected that only people who know a language would be interested in etymologies of words of that language.

However, while I might be interested in the etymology of a Latin word, I am not able to write it in Latin, and there is also no particular reason to write it only in English in that case.

What is missing now is the possibility to have etymons as links to the corresponding DefinedMeanings. This is also a desired feature for having the words of a definition linking to the corresponding DM to avoid ambiguity, and will need further development.

Have fun adding etymologies,
Kipcool.

Linking to external ontologies

At Omegawiki, it is already possible to add links to Wikipedia and Commons.

In order to be part of the Web 2.0 , we are now considering adding links to external ontologies as well. There are many ontologies out there. For example, there is a small list on Wikipedia. From the discussions we had, there are several ways of linking to them:

1. We only link to Wikipedia and Commons (this is the current situation).
2. We link to as many ontologies as we like, as soon as there is a contributor willing to add links to it.
3. We link to a few ontologies that we consider authoritative or relevant.
   
4. We link to only one (or two?) super-ontologies, where we expect that this ontology will link back to other ontologies (and ideally to Omegaiki).
   

There are problems with each proposition.

1. Why only Wikipedia and Commons?
2. If we link to too many ontologies, we cannot keep track of what they are for, and then it is expected that we will be lost in too many links. We also have the risk that some user will come with their favorite ontology that do not bring any information to Omegawiki users, and are therefore useless links.
3. What is an authoritative ontology? What is relevant? and for what purpose (OmegaWiki users, or automatic processing by programs)? In this case, each ontology of possible interested has to be discussed by the Omegawiki community, and it has to be clear what information it brings.
4. What is this super-ontology? The name of Opencyc has been proposed. Opencyc links for example to Wikipedia, Umbel, Wordnet and Dbpedia. However, Opencyc does not link for example to geonames.
   

For more details, you can read and give your opinion on the discussions taking place in the omegawiki beer parlour: here and there.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

Colors in the interface

In order to make OmegaWiki less austere, colors have been added in the interface:
- light red for each language entry
- light blue for each definition or concept
For an example, have a look at Expression:wild

Note that these colors have been chosen to match, more or less, the colors of the OmegaWiki logo ;-)

These changes involve only a modification of the Monobook.css, so each user can also re-configure it to his own taste.

We are looking for more ideas to make the interface more appealing. Please do not hesitate to make any suggestion, should it involve only a css change or even a change in the php.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

Thank you Brion

Brion has added Kipcool to the illustrious roster of MediaWiki developers. His first contribution to OmegaWiki is a nice one; when you translate from one language to the the next, the definitions will be shown in the source language when available.

This is a much more friendly approach when translating from one language to the next ... Thank you Brion for making it possible to have cause to thank Kipcool :)
Thanks,
       Gerard

Two improvements

Kipcool has written two nice improvements:

"patch-needstranslation" changes the SpecialNeedsTranslation in that :
instead of link to "Expression:", we have a link to the actual "DefinedMeaning:"
that needs to be translated.

"patch-classes" changes the way the classes are displayed when you want to
add a class to an element.
The current way displays in the first column the name of the classes
and in the second column, the collection to which the class belongs
(which is almost always "Omegawiki Community database")
I have changed it so that the second column now displays a definition of the class.

Note: "patch-classes" also includes additional documentation in the code,
that I am trying to add when I understand what a function does.

Thanks,
       GerardM

A new patch went life

Kipcool had written an improvement on the Expression needing translation special page. The page now shows the number of expressions that exist in one language and have no translation in the other language.

I have had fun playing with it, you find that there are words in Hindi that have no equivalent in Dutch.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Multi lingual support

When you support languages like OmegaWiki does, then there are two levels where this support is provided.

• Localisation of the user interface
• Localisation of the data

With the recent major upgrade of OmegaWiki we moved up from release 1.10a to 1.16a. As a consequence we gained the massive amount of localisations that had been provided to MediaWiki by the fine people at translatewiki.net. This is shown really well in for instance the Russian language..

The complete user interface is now in Russian. We will be able to do even better in the future. We will implement the "LocalisationUpdate" extension; this allow us to continuously adopt all relevant new localisations as committed to the code repository from translatewiki.net.

Making OmegaWiki a resource that is continuously updated for its multi language support is a dream come true. Really important in this has been the perseverence of RobertL. He got to grips with the complicated even convoluted code that makes OmegaWiki. His work included a lot of sanitising of the code base, this will make it not that hard for us to upgrade in the future.

One other upgrade is planned; this is the implementation of the Babel extension. We will be saying goodbye to all the current templates. They have served us well but they have been an absolute pain to maintain. Smaller project like OmegaWiki are best served by getting the localisations for this functionality from one central place. It makes thousands of templates redundant and, new localisations will now be provided on a daily basis through the LocalisationUpdate.

All in all, the latest major upgrade to OmegaWiki has been an important and most necessary boost to our code base. It adds a new sparkle to our project.

Thanks,

GerardM

What a difference a day makes

When you compare this screen shot with the one in my previous blog entry, you will agree that the right to left support has improved quite a lot.

One concern that has been raised is what the MediaWiki developers will say about this. It is obvious that there will be many people who get a different view and consequently the cache will be affected. My idea is that as this is about improved functionality, cache efficiency is secondary to a very large extend.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Right, to the left

OmegaWiki is a multi lingual environment. We have been proud to support your language. When your language is not supported, you can ask. When your language is not properly supported, you can make the difference.

There was one thing though.. Languages like Arabic or Hebrew should go right to left. They did not.
Thanks,
GerardM

Usage

Some words that you look up in a dictionary, have a particular usage associated with it that is not always apparant. The word Balkans for instance is always preceded with "the" when it is used as a noun. The same is true for the Ivory Coast..

This new type of annotation was requested because people wanted to indicate the difference in usage between words that were otherwise synonymous.

Thanks,

GerardM

Wikiprofessional is doing Portuguese

One function of Wikiprofessional that I really like is the Concept Web Linker. If you have not played with it, you should. What I am really happy with is that the Concept Web Linker is getting into other languages. I have an example of this..

This is the screen dump.
Thanks,
GerardM