Semanticmediawiki: plainlist resultformat named args regression

[WolfgangFahl]

Setup and configuration

• SMW version: 3.1.0
• MW version: 1.33.0
• PHP version: 7.2.19-0ubuntu0.18.04.2
• DB system (MySQL, Blazegraph, etc.) and version: MariaDB

Issue

http://royal-family.bitplan.com/index.php/Template:Sidebyside does not work any more - results are not displayed

Steps to reproduce

see http://royal-family.bitplan.com/index.php/Main_Page - it should show 15 royal family pictures linked to the corresponding pages but non shows.

I assume the named args behavior has changed and the arg names are not starting with? anymore or something along these lines. For debugging i added
{{{?picture|}}}

<includeonly>
{{{?picture|}}}
&#8291;[[{{{?picture|}}}|{{{userparam|150}}}px|link={{{?page|}}}]] </includeonly>

[jaideraf]

@WolfgangFahl try to remove "?" from the parameters in the Template:Sidebyside. See the migration guide from Semantic MediaWiki 2.5.x to Semantic MediaWiki 3.0.x, specially:

• template format becomes alias of the plainlist format
• Removed ? as prefix for template arguments

[WolfgangFahl]

It seems my assumption was right and http://royal-family.bitplan.com/index.php?title=Template%3ASidebyside&type=revision&diff=1332&oldid=1331 is a workaround. I'd hate to have to change dozens of other templates and wonder what motivated this change and where it (the motivation) is documented.

[WolfgangFahl]

I'd rather see the change to be optional instead of forcing a migration. Is there some bot script available to help in the migration?

[JeroenDeDauw]

Ping @s7eph4n

[jaideraf]

You could simply visit http://royal-family.bitplan.com/index.php/Special:ReplaceText and replace {{{? by {{{, probably selecting the Template namespace.

Thanks to @s7eph4n the template/list/plainlist, ol and ul formats were improved a lot in SMW 3.0.0 (a major release with expected changes - almost a year ago).

These changes were documented in SMW 3.0.0 release notes.

[WolfgangFahl]

@jaideraf thank you for the excellent work-around proposal. My usecase is slightly different since some of my templates are generated. The change of the generator will also be simple. I'd suggest to add a note about this migration tipp to the named args parameter explanation. https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Named_args was just created by me to facilitate this.

[WolfgangFahl]

By the way - i still consider it a bug that this is not configurable. The reasoning for me is like this:
If we do an impact and cost benefit analyis of the change i think the result will be:

• the impact is on any SMW installation using the named args=yes that needs to be migrated from pre SMW 3.0 to break
• the benefit of the new approach is marginal to those sites that have used the old style in the past
• there is some benefit for people learning ask since it is more straight forward
• the cost of the migration looks like being low but might be high in environments where templates are generated or where mixed version families of sites need to have a common set of templates
• the cost of implementing support for the old style looks low to me (but I am not sure about this since i didn't look in the source code.

[WolfgangFahl]

Here is a pywikibot/python based approach of checking the use of named args:

migrate.py

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import os
import pywikibot  # no need to import in user_config.py
from pywikibot import config2  # no need to import in user_config.py
from pywikibot import pagegenerators
import argparse
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='migrate the given wiki to SMW 3.0+')
parser.add_argument('--debug',action="store_true",help='show debug info')
parser.add_argument('--wiki', default="smw", help='the name of the wiki')
parser.add_argument('--lang', default="en", help='the language of the wiki')
parser.add_argument('--scriptpath', default="/", help='the scriptpath of the wiki')

# parse the command line arguments
args = parser.parse_args()

family = args.wiki
mylang = args.lang
familyfile=os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser("~")+'/.pywikibot/families')+"/"+family+"_family.py"
if not os.path.isfile(familyfile):
  print ("family file %s for wiki %s is missing" % (familyfile,args.wiki))
else:
  print ("will try to use family file %s for wiki %s" % (familyfile,args.wiki))
config2.register_family_file(family, familyfile)
mysite=pywikibot.Site(mylang, family)
print("migrating templates for %s" %(mysite.sitename))
templateNameSpace=10
pages=mysite.allpages(namespace=templateNameSpace)
for page in pages:
    # https://doc.wikimedia.org/pywikibot/master/_modules/pywikibot/page.html
    title=page.title()
    ttext=page.text
    soup = BeautifulSoup(page.text,'html.parser')
    for codeNode in soup.find_all('includeonly'):
       if "{{{?" in codeNode.text:
        print ("%s has named args" % (title))

$HOME.pywikibot/families/smw_family.py

# -*- coding: utf-8  -*-
from pywikibot import family

class Family(family.Family):
    name = 'smw'
    langs = {
        'en': 'www.semantic-mediawiki.org',
    }
    def scriptpath(self, code):
       return '/w'

    def protocol(self, code):
       return 'https'

requirements.txt

# 2019-09-28
Pywikibot
beautifulsoup4

install

#!/bin/bash
# WF 2019-07-27
# install pre requisites

# install python3-yaml
# install required modules
os=$(uname -a)
case $os in
  Darwin*) 
   pip="sudo -H pip"
   install="sudo port install"
   ;;
  *) 
   pip="pip3"
   install="sudo apt-get install" 
   ;;
esac
$install python3-pip
$install python3-yaml
$pip install -r requirements.txt

To prepare follow https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot and call
./install

then run
python3 migrate.py

and you'll get:

Template:Attendee has named args
Template:Conference presentations has named args
Template:Demo/Template/City/ImageShow has named args
Template:Demo/Template/City/ImageShow has named args
Template:EventBadge has named args
Template:Property has named args
Template:Query named output demo has named args
Template:Show SMW site has named args
Template:SpecialPropertyRow has named args
Template:Topic has named args
Template:Tree format with named args has named args

so even our own environment is broken :-(

[WolfgangFahl]

ping @kghbln

[WolfgangFahl]

This is still a show stopper for migration