User talk:Russ Cox

Searching OEIS for real numbers

By now there are many real numbers scattered through OEIS in the Comments sections and in Examples which are not registered as Axxxxxx entries. It would be great to be able to search for them. For example, searching for "0.123456789" might search for the exact string of characters, not for the sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 the way it does now (the latter mode is of course great when there are no quotation marks). Maybe there already is a search mode that does the job, in which case I apologise for disturbing. --Stanislav Sykora 09:49, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Documentation of progress towards the OEIS wiki

Hello Russ, is there any documentation on this wiki about the progress (roadmap, ideas, what's done and what's to do, ...) towards the upcoming ("full" / true) wiki version of OEIS? Since you are the one working on this (thumbs up for accepting this big job), it might be nice to have a link to such information on your "User page". Thanks in advance!

PS: The Road_map is not what I mean, rather something like Issues, but that page neither contains any technical info. I was thinking about questions as: should "sequence" pages Annnnnn be stored as any other wiki page, or remain stored e.g. in the internal format, and only be displayed (via the formatting software), maybe cached, as a wiki page, and the result of editing (or "approval" of a new revision) be converted back to a change of the "internal format" database? I think this might be an interesting option, not only for performance considerations, but also to maintain a homogeneous structure and look of the pages... — M. F. Hasler 14:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Every wiki sequence page could be a redirect page

Every wiki sequence page could be a redirect page to the oeis.org/Axxxxxx sequence page; this would allow to rebuild all the sequences categorizations in the wiki, hopefully from the backup of the former wiki sequence pages. I made the test page A000001 (note that the redirect is not automatic, though.)

The wiki sequence pages could be in edit draft mode to make sure that they contain only a redirect to oeis.org/Axxxxxx and categories.

— Daniel Forgues 03:16, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I've thought about setting up redirects. Technically it's a little bit annoying, but feasible, to keep them up to date as new sequences are created. However, it seems somewhat artificial to have the majority of the wiki be 185,000 redirect pages.

The category structure is one possible motivation. As far as I was aware, though, all or nearly all of the category structure that was in place for the Axxxxxx pages was automatically derived from the OEIS index pages. Do you know of significant category structure beyond the index-derived structure? We're planning on moving the index back into the wiki so that users can update it, but haven't fully settled on a structure.

David Applegate 23:47, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Blog spam?

I noticed that some of the new users

• User:Larry Fitzgerald [1]
• User:Steve Breaston [2]
• User:Stephen Spach [3]
• User:Johnson, Wesley [4]

have bios that appear to be bot-generated blog comment spam mistakenly finding its way here. Thoughts?

Charles R Greathouse IV 21:02, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Blanks in sequence entries

FYI: A181776 has blanks for certain fields (a few spaces, I guess, rather than an omitted line in the internal format or the usual tilde placeholder in the editable form). For some reason this caused it to be uneditable except in internal mode.

I don't think this causes any immediate problems (possible a few other sequences are like this, with somewhat funny appearance and editing difficulty, but surely not many). But this is a heads-up[ in case there's deeper significance for some reason.

Charles R Greathouse IV 19:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Since the MediaWiki update, the String Functions are not supported anymore!

The MediaWiki extension StringFunctions is not shown anymore in Special:Version#Installed extensions

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:StringFunctions

whereas it was previously, and lots of templates (more than one hundred) use that extension, which is one reason why so many templates, including the Math template, don't work anymore!

On https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:StringFunctions

This extension is obsolete. All of these functions are now integrated into the ParserFunctions extension, but are only available if an administrator sets $wgPFEnableStringFunctions = true; in LocalSettings.php.

Test: {{#replace:string|search term|replacement term}}

{{#replace: first prime number|prime|composite}} should yield

first composite number

but yields

first composite number

NOT SUPPORTED ANYMORE!

Test: {{#explode:string|delimiter|position}}

{{#explode: zero;one;two;three;four;five;|;|3}} should yield

three

but yields

three

NOT SUPPORTED ANYMORE!

— Daniel Forgues 22:32, 16 February 2018 (EST)

About the {{math}} template

I had written the {{math}} template to improve the typography of inline math by using HTML+CSS markup instead of LaTeX markup, since using LaTeX for inline math has many issues: inadequate baseline alignment, blurry typeface rendering compared to HTML+CSS... For completeness and flexibility, I had written the template to generate either inline style or display style, in either HTML+CSS markup or LaTeX markup.

I did extensive tweaking and testing on the template. It was working well before the MediaWiki update: since then, the String Functions are not supported anymore (the {{math}} template uses the String Functions).

Usage

{{math|mathematical expression|format}}

or

{{math|mathematical expression}}

where format (default $) is among

• $: LaTeX markup (inline style);
• $$: LaTeX markup (display style);
• &: HTML+CSS markup (inline style);
• &&: HTML+CSS markup (display style).

— Daniel Forgues 23:15, 16 February 2018 (EST)

Many cases of <math> ... </math> succeed in Internal Explorer, but fail in Firefox!

I'm not even using any template here!

All the following <math> ... </math> succeed in Internal Explorer, but fail in Firefox!

• <math> \prime </math> yields $\prime$
• <math> f\prime </math> yields $f\prime$
• <math> f^\prime </math> yields $f^{\prime }$
• <math> f^{\prime} </math> yields $f^{\prime }$
• <math> f{ ^{\prime} } </math> yields $f{^{\prime }}$
• <math> f ^{\prime} </math> yields $f^{\prime }$
• <math> f^{ \prime } </math> yields $f^{\prime }$
• <math> f{}^{\prime} </math> yields $f{}^{\prime }$
• <math> f {}^{\prime} </math> yields $f{}^{\prime }$
• <math> f {}^{ \prime } </math> yields $f{}^{\prime }$

Why? I'm not even using any template here, so it has nothing to do with my templates! — Daniel Forgues 21:24, 21 February 2018 (EST)

I tried the two options marked Y in Preferences|Math:

• PNG images Y
• LaTeX source (for text browsers)
• MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools) Y

Same problem with either option. — Daniel Forgues 21:32, 21 February 2018 (EST)

It now works in Firefox! Thanks! — Daniel Forgues 21:36, 21 February 2018 (EST)

Switching back and forth between the 2 options:

• FAILS in Firefox: PNG images
• SUCCEEDS with IE and Firefox: MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools)

Why? — Daniel Forgues 21:41, 21 February 2018 (EST)

Bug reports

Hi, various bug reports and other issues ended up in limbo on OeisWiki talk:Community Portal, broken SVGs on the Wiki side, two OEIS proper nits, and various issues requiring elevated rights in three maintenance categories: Items pending approval, Protected items with edit request, and Discarded items. I need a clue where + how to report bugs, posting on user talk pages for 4 of 6 admins is spamjust wrong. –Frank Ellermann (talk) 08:01, 14 March 2020 (EDT)