Please include a description of the issue to be resolved, the need for it, and how it's expected
to solve the problem.

moamail wrote:

• initial:

Right now mediawiki can print pages in a statical form. This means they are as
they were printed on paper. The only interactive part is the one that shows/hide
the content on the top of the page.

• description of the issue:

The isseu is about introducing layers, that can alow the reader to customize how
he surfs web pages and how he can read a page. This will not modify at all the
internals of mediawiki but work neads to be done in the engine that generated a
HTML web page from a text-based page.

One sugestion, for example the folowing text:

Page description.

[[Layer:Content|main content]]

First chapter

[[LayerOFF:See_also|various links]]

See also

[[LayerOFF:See_also| some external links]]

External

[[Layer]] <----- this means end of all layers

Final chapter

This are lists:
*% item1 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:1]]
%% description1.1 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:1.1]]
% description1.2 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:2]]
**%% description1.3 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:1.3]]

• item2 <---------- this is part of no layer, it is a

traditional *
% description1.1 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:1]]
%% description1.2 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:2.2]]
**% description1.3 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:3]]

• item3 <---------- this is part of no layer

*%% item4 <---------- this is an error

• desc4.1 <---------- this is part of no layer

% desc4.2 <---------- this is part of of [[Layer:2]]
%% desc4.3 <---------- this is part of of [[Layer:4.3]]
*% list4.3.1 <---------- this is part of of [[Layer:1]]
*%% list4.3.2 <---------- this is part of of [[Layer:3.2]]
***%%% list4.3.3 <---------- this is part of of [[Layer:2.3.3]]

• • list4.3.4 <---------- this is part of no layer
• desc4.4 <---------- this is part of no layer
• desc4.5 <---------- this is part of no layer

% desc4.6 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:6]]
%% desc4.7 <---------- this is part of [[Layer:4.7]]

[[LayerOFF:1]] <---------- here we say that [[Layer:1]] is a LayerOFF
[[LayerOFF:4.7]] <---------- here we say that [[Layer:4.7]] is a
LayerOFF

[[Tip:2|this is layer 2]]
[[Tip:See_also|this is layer see also]]
[[Tip:4.7|this is some other layer]]

Once there is a layer to every part of the file, the HTML page should have some
links like this:
Show/hide layers:

• main content
• various links
• some external links
• 1 (this means 1 and 1.1 and 1.3)
• 1.1
• 1.3
• 2 (this means 2 and 2.2 and 2.3.3)
• 2.2
• 2.3.3
• 3 (this means 3 and 3.2)
• 3.2
• 4 (this means 4.3 and 4.7)
• 4.3
• 4.7
• 6

When the page is printed the first time, the user will not see any of the parts
with LayerOFF, and he will see all the parts with Layer simple or no layer at all.

Then he will click in order to show/hide each layer (without reloading the page
of course).

When he stay with the mouse on a text witch is part of a layer (for about 3
secconds), he will see a tip, if the tip was defined for that layer.

For tables, we can say that there are the folowing Layers that are created for
each table ONLY IF they are declared somewere in the page (to avoid having too
many unwanted Layers):
[[Layer:Table1Line1]]
[[Layer:Table1Column1]]
[[Layer:Table2Line1]]
[[Layer:Table2Column1]]
[[Layer:Table3Line1]]
[[Layer:Table3Column1]]
[[Layer:Table3Line1]]
[[Layer:Table3Column2]]
[[Layer:Table3Line2]]
[[Layer:Table3Column1]]
[[Layer:Table3Line2]]
[[Layer:Table3Column2]]

• nead for it:

One of the neads is to alow writing additional optional information in the page
that someone will not see by default. He will only see if he makes that layer
visible or if he moves the mouse over for the tips.

Some pages are difficult to read because they have many information. Also tables
of comparison on wikipedia are difficult to read because there are offten too
much lines. It should be nice to see only part of the lines.

The need is more when we need to make a list of items, and a number of
descriptions for each item. It is in fact like a table, because each item has a
number of descriptions (and a table has a number of columns). This will alow
hide/show of various descriptions, for exaple keeping only the 2nd description
for each item in order to compare them. This is neaded in the project
Wikisolutions from Wikibooks:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikisolutions

• how it's expected to solve the problem:

This alows more interactive pages, and they are also more easy to read,
especialy big pages. For example you will turn off many parts not so important
in order to let the user read what is most important first. In Wikipedia there
are tables of comparison. It could be used to show/hide various parts of the
table (verious lines and columns).

Most of all, this will alow to atach descriptions to lists that are not shown by
default.

• what is realy neaded

It is not easy to implement all this, but at least somethink that will alow to
hide/show descriptions in the lists based on their number. Possible
implementation to begin with: only lists and only with a single %:

• item1

% description1
% description2
% description3
*% item2
% description1
% description2
% description3

• item3

% item1
% item2

Here we have only 3 Layers defined: 1(used 3 times) 2(used 4 times) and 3(used 2
times)

This simplification is all it is realy neaded, the rest is only optional if
someone likes the idea.

moamail wrote:

This will also eliminate the nead to have a talk page, because you can just put
that page on a layer that is OFF by default. You could also have more that one
talk page for each page.

Anyway, the talk page is good is you don't want to archive it...

moamail wrote:

Now, wikisolutions has moved to its own wiki on wikicities. From now on, it
changed name and will be called the "HowTo" project:

http://en.howto.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page

Changing all WONTFIX high priority bugs to lowest priority (no mail should be generated since I turned it off for this.)