[OpenLayers-Users] MediaWikia

[Matt Williamson]

Robert,

Glad to help. Yes, to a certain degree an understanding of Semantic  
MediaWiki is required, and that isn't covered much in my extension's  
documentation. I had to walk a fine line between making my  
documentation complete and unnecessarily duplicating SMW documentation  
that already exists. So, if you haven't already take a look at this  
page: http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Help:Annotation_%28SMW0.7%29 which  
should help you learn about SMW annotations.

The good news is, I think your particular map that you're trying to do  
will fit the features in Semantic Layers and Semantic MediaWiki very  
nicely. I think the example in my wiki that is closest to what you're  
trying to do is this one: http://s89238293.onlinehome.us/w/index.php?title=Charon_doesn%27t_make_change 
  , so have a look at that page, if you haven't already.

I'm guessing what you are going to want to do is to make a wiki page  
for each city (kingdom?), right? Great! With Semantic MediaWiki, you  
can create "properties" or "attributes" named "Government" and  
"Leader". Then in each page you can annotate those properties with the  
appropriate values. Then, with the Semantic Layers features, you can  
make a "Layer:" page that uses the "Display description attribute::"  
relation to show those two attributes. Then in each city page you  
define the "In layer::" relation to the Layer you created, and specify  
the "Displays layer image::" relation so the proper icon shows on the  
map. (Actually you should probably create the Layer page first, so you  
don't have to edit all your city pages twice...but it was easier to  
explain in the order I gave :-) ).

Another thing I'll point out, you should check out Semantic Forms ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Forms 
  ) ... that's another extension that lets your users enter data into  
the wiki using a form, instead of having to learn all the SMW markup.  
It works really well. In the not too distant future, I plan to  
integrate my extension more closely with that one, but they already  
work together well.

Hope that can get you started...if you get stuck, send me the link to  
your wiki and I'll help you get straightened out!

-Matt



On Nov 3, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Robert J Becraft wrote:

> Matt Williamson wrote:
>> Robert,
>>
>> I'm the author of the extension Christopher mentioned (thanks!).  
>> Yes, check it out, and also the demo wiki at http://s89238293.onlinehome.us/w/
>>
>> If you need any help, let me know. The extension also relies on  
>> another MediaWiki extension called Semantic MediaWiki, which I  
>> highly recommend anyway. Currently it requires version SMW 0.7, but  
>> I've officially started work on the modifications necessary to make  
>> it work with SMW 1.0--I hope to have the update out by the end of  
>> November or so.
>>
>> Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with it!
>>
>> -Matt
> Hello Matt,
>
> I got the simple example up and running... I'm now trying to  
> understand your documentation and convert my map at http://www.metaphaze.com/Avalon/AMII_world_map.htm 
>  to my wiki page.  I think I blew a gasket trying to follow the  
> documentation.
>
> You have (I believe), two different components mixed together in  
> your descriptions... part of the setup requires an understanding of  
> the Semantic_MediaWiki extension and the second part is how your  
> extension uses that setup to do its part of putting the map together  
> and adding the elements.
>
> It would be a great help if you could walk me through this process  
> once so that I can get the gist of it.
>
> Regards,
> Robert J Becraft
>