I don't quite understand your initial question: a repeated event can have
thousands of repetitions, so it wouldn't be practical to specify them all
manually; meanwhile, #ask is just how data is retrieved within SMW.
You do point out one weakness in the scheme I'm proposing, although I don't
think it's a major one: that it doesn't let you have more than one data
property on the page that's the recurring event. To show why I don't think
it's a big deal, let me illustrate with your example: for a book, all the
dates you listed are most likely single events. But let's say one of them is
repeated, like there's a daily editing meeting for several months. In that
case, you can create a page called "[Book name] editing meeting", and have
all the necessary repeating-event properties on that page, instead of on the
book's own page. Which I think is natural anyway: if any sort of event
happens on a regular basis, it's probably important enough to have its own
page.
To your other question - I don't know about all the formats, but I think
most handle multiple values per property. Semantic Google Maps does, and I
think the 'calendar' format does as well - if it doesn't, it should.
Date arithmetic can, and I think should, be done by parser functions outside
of SMW - I don't know of any extensions that do it at the moment, but it
would definitely be a good idea for an extension.
-Yaron
2009/4/3 John McClure <jmccl...@hypergrove.com>
> Hi Yaron,
> It's not so much what sf/smw can or can't do -- it's about
> whether {{#ask:}} is the right approach for repeating event. #ask is
> presently used to query articles having *any* date-property. So what
> benefit actually is there to having repeatable events handled by #ask? I can
> think of just ONE BENEFIT: a user does not need to specify multiple
> date-properties for an article. Maybe there are others?
>
> Here's the bigger problem though. Lets say we have an article about a book.
> The article contains many, many dates -- dates for composition, editing,
> proofing, publishing, shipping, distribution, etc. If repeat-properties are
> present for the article, which action is being "repeated"? Or maybe is the
> book itself somehow being "repeated"?
>
> So my concern is that -- yes while technically possible -- hardcoding
> repeat-event properties for an article kinda leads to many questions about
> the data model you're assuming/looking for.
>
> I'm curious, does #ask today handle multiple instances of a named property
> for an article, or does it just look for a single instance? Does the
> calendar format accurately show those multiple values?
>
> Hmm, if you'd like to bring #ask to a 'new level' that involves dates,
> might I suggest that a useful generic function would be to perform date
> arithmetic, eg difference(dated-property-1, dated-property-2,
> units-selection), and output the result. Or something like that. I'm not
> thoroughly knowldegeable about #ask, so maybe that's already there. Another
> example that ties right into the calendar option would be
> duration(dated-property-1, dated-property-2), which would bracket the two
> dates in an interesting way. Maybe that's there with the timeline option --
> I havent studied it all enough yet.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
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