User:Aldyron/Sandbox/Monster Manual experiment

Reasoning
Personally, I'd much prefer a Monster Manual in single table form, rather than multiple tables form. In fact, I have a spreadsheet on my computer laid out that way. That makes certain browsing patterns more practical. Let's see if wiki tables could fit the bill as well. I'll explain how I use it if and when I get it in shape.

Moreover, I'm a big fan of "a single source" wherever and whenever possible and practical. This comes from theory and practice: whenever any kind of database gets duplicated even partially, the (possibly multiple) duplicates soon start misaligning. That leads to people (say, me) often finding out-of-sync data, usually without even realizing it, and the efforts to maintain the several copies of the data likely becomes too onerous. I consider this the zeroth law of database handling: always strive for single-source, never duplicate unless indispensable, always consolidate if not unpractical.

Finally, as a wikibeginner, I need practice in a lot of fields. I'm going to use this as a starting/stumbling point in order to find out what I need to learn about wiki software. :-) That's why I'm doing this by myself instead of making requests to my senior fellow editors. As soon as I have something resembling publish-ready, I'll tap people on the shoulder.

Notes to self
The table itself is looking good.

Labeled Section Transclusion doesn't work (yet?). Labeling sections in the template doesn't seem to propagate the markup to the actual pages, so lst can't work. I'm not sure if it's impossible or just me being a newbie: seems to imply it cannot work, while  seems to imply that it can, since I'm not interested in dynamic tags. The jargon is too new to me, I'm not sure about the practical meaning of those sentences. Besides, I suspect the sanitizer isn't my ally, as far as lst is concerned.

Anyway, head's full of lst, I'm stuck in a loop of the same three ideas, so time to switch to something else for the time being, in order to clear up the slate.

Will give Dynamic Page List a try.

Unless something ugly shows up during tests, dpl definitely looks like the way to go. I'm halfway there already, in a few minutes' time.

I may need a template to map kind to volume.

I may need a phantom template or two in order to sub-query.

include then format together to pull content then create content for the same row.

[http://semeb.com/dpldemo/index.php?title=DPL:FAQ#A.29_A_table_of_page_meta-data.3B FAQ / How do I create tabular output? / A) A table of page meta-data]

Test table / A2: putting the link into the second column

DPL:Manual - General Usage and Invocation Syntax / Characters with special meaning

Current state
What follows is my experimentation to reformat and expand Mm export by hand (for now) into a shape more suitable to me and, I believe, to anyone else. I'm now pretty much satisfied with the result, as far as both (minimal) aesthetics and end-user functionality go. Now the hard part: I'll try semi-automatic compilation from single-monster pages.

'WARNING! You're in my sandbox. This is *not* the Mm export, it's just an experiment. You are advised *not* to rely on the data you find here, which I could purposefully alter (even making it wrong) in order to experiment with formatting, coding and other wikiful things.'

'WARNING! You're in my sandbox. This is *not* the Mm export, it's just an experiment. You are advised *not* to rely on the data you find here, which I could purposefully alter (even making it wrong) in order to experiment with formatting, coding and other wikiful things.'

Test section lst - please ignore
test section 1 should follow:

MM type section should follow:

test section 2 should follow: