Wikipedia:Table: namespace and editor

User: Omegatron proposes that a new table editor should be written and that tables should be moved to their own namespace, to keep the article wiki markup clean and make editing easy for people who don't understand code (either HTML or pipe syntax):

Could tables be created as separate "articles" in a Table: namespace? Then you could link to them like images, with right and left floating tags, for instance, and edit them separately from the article. Also a single table could be used the same way as a template directly.

This would be beneficial because:

Large tables are annoying to work with while editing text. They clutter up the wiki markup. You have to scroll around them and it gets confusing and easy to get lost. They are definitely confusing for some newcomers. With taxoboxes they are often the first thing you see when editing an article! This is really ugly and bad for newcomers.
Editing tables is difficult in regular text editing mode. Especially large ones. A textarea-based table editing page could have non-wrapping text, for instance. It could have a list of the table elements displayed at the top for reference. Or even clickable like the ÁáÉé at the bottom of this edit window.
Even better, it would allow an alternative paradigm of editing tables that is more in the spirit of easy-to-edit wikis. Less difficult to learn, hard to remember markup; more usability. The current table markup is harder to use than it needs to be. I am imagining a table of form cells that can each be edited individually, and the total number of cells chosen in another form box, a clickable box for spanning rows, etc. (Maybe this is related to some of the ideas that people had for m:SVG image support, of providing an edit window for each image that would allow people to change the XML directly and edit annotations and whatever.) I just like the idea of each type of unit (image, table, template) having its own efficient editor functions and abilities.

Tables, images, categories, and templates are all fundamentally different from articles, but only the latter three have their own namespaces. The others have their own specialized functionality, too, which I think the tables need.

Examples

"Basic mode" example here.
"Advanced mode" example here. It gets confusing fast, but with colors and more creative borders I think it could be made much more manageable than markup right in the article source. The checkboxes are for spanning cells, and could also be updated when you click the update button, refreshing the page with the affected cells merged into one. - Omegatron 19:13, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Comments

I (sort of :-) disagree with your suggestion of making a whole new namespace just for tables, but I do like the look of your tool: do you have a functional version yet or is it still at the design stage?. Maybe you might consider how to integrate it into the Mediawiki interface so that it could be called up for editing any page anywhere? --Phil | Talk 09:34, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Well, images and templates and categories have their own namespaces, and each have their own specialized functionality. It makes sense to me that tables should have their own, too, since they are fundamentally different from articles. What concerns do you have about moving them to their own space?

How would this type of editor work with "any page anywhere"? It is only useful for tables, really, so you would have to code some kind of table editor into the regular editor... I don't really understand how that would work.

I don't know enough about html or php or whatever to code this. I will certainly help design it from a usability and visual standpoint, but I don't know how to program it. The example is just to show what I am imagining it would look like. - Omegatron 15:11, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I don't really like the tool that much, but I like the idea of a namespace. Tables are a self-contained entity and should be treated as such. In books, tables are treated the same way as images. They should be treated similarly here. Of course, it's possible to get the same effect using a template, but that's really semantically incorrect for one-off tables. – flamurai^TM 15:23, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

What don't you like about it? I just think markup (pipe or html) is unnecessary, and should be circumvented for ease of use. - Omegatron 15:33, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I also really like the idea of a namespace, with the table could be easily inserted by {{tablename)) -- not as intimidating for newbies, easier even for experienced editors who have to scroll past large tables to edit the rest of the text. I like the simple table editor a great deal -- the advanced could use some more work -- but that shouldn't be a stumbling block to the fundamental idea. Please continue to develop it and submit a feature request to bugzilla! Catherine\^talk 01:49, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking [[Table:tablename|right]], as they are more like an image. What other options would it want, though? I guess nothing else about images is applicable. Maybe table size (width and height in px or percent) would be better indicated in the link than in the table markup itself? Maybe not.

Each table would need an Edit this table link at the bottom.

I will see what I can do with the advanced example... Anyone have ideas for making it powerful, yet easy to use? What features would it need? Maybe you could list some examples of tables currently in the wikipedia with weird/complicated markup to demonstrate the extremes that would challenge this idea? - Omegatron 04:01, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

I went through a lot of tables during the evolution of the MBTI article. The best solution is to make them a template and style them heavily with css. --Alterego 04:16, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

The best solution? Or just the best solution currently available? My proposal would make all tables behave as you suggested, but in their own namespace instead of as templates, with their own special functions like categories and images. - Omegatron 19:36, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)