Last modified: 2009-09-19 19:12:39 UTC
The <nowiki>[[has improper value for]]</nowiki> property doesnt work well for properties that are typed as Text. Because it fails, the value is not recorded for the property. type:Text should differ from type:String primarily (only?) by allowing CRLFs embedded within values of that type. '''Currently, there appears no difference between values allowed for the two properties.''' Furthermore, HTML markup should be allowed for at least type:Text property values if not <u>also</u> for type:String values. Again, because it is deemed an improper value, no value can be retrieved for the property.
As far as I understand the bug description, this bug report is not valid: * "Has improper value for" is a way of recording SMW input errors. Type:Text does not generate any SMW input errors (it accepts all non-empty strings, and empty strings are filtered in parsing). Hence, by definition, Type:Text properties cannot fail for "has improper value for" since they are not expected to do anything. * Type:String and Type:Text differ in the maximal length of input strings they accept. The differences are documented. See http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Type:Text * I do not understand what kind of HTML mark-up you ask for, but mark-up is generally supported in Type:String and Type:Text in the same way. However, mark-up is processed in different ways by MediaWiki, so not all mark-up can be entered using ::-style annotations. Use the #set parser function as an alternative, but some mark-up still is entirely impossible to get past MW (e.g. HTML comments are always stripped out by MW). This will not be changed in SMW, but it would be possible to develop SMW extensions that support more HTML mark-up in annotations (Type:String and Type:Text certainly support this). In general, it would be helpful to provide an example page (e.g. on http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org) where the actual and the expected behavior of SMW is documented to illustrate a bug.
I think you may be correct. My SMW installation is acting strangely in that it is trying to interpret all property values as LINKS to pages. Given that problem, any characters deemed invalid in page names, such as html markup, naturally invalidates the value of the property, reporting it as an 'improper value'. If you have heard of similar SMW installation problems such as this, it'd be great to hear about them. Yoren has advised me privately to cycle out/in all extensions I've added to my installation in an attempt to find out why my installation is trying to interpret all property values as page links. I will be doing as he recommends this weekend. Thanks very much.
Ok, you may also want to check that the Property:has_type page shows that your properties indeed have types stored properly (you may have to create this page to get this view). Also, the respective Type: pages should (if existing) show the properties using this type, and the link "browse properties" (in the toolbar on the left) should also confirm this when following it from some property page. Finding out whether or not has_type information is stored at all might help to narrow down the problem.
