WORK IN PROGRESS
Working changes throughout the thread. Please refer to post #31 and onwards for latest info.


grq
GRQ

Yesterday I was at AMS and saw a space shuttle.


Notes:
- Lower or upper case doesn't matter

@Matt/Paul, can you give it a try? Write a sentence in your reply with the code "L AX" in it (without the space).

Today I flew from GRQ to MST for lunch. Then I continued to RTM for some approaches, before going back home to GRQ.

My favorite airport is LAX, and my least favorite is JFK. I've never been to RTM or AMS.

Topic unlocked for feedback purposes. Please do not spam or flood this thread and keep on topic. We are just in a testing phase and currently we do not have many codes available yet. Codes that are available if you wish to try: AM S, GR Q, LA X, MS T, RT M, JF K, EZ E, MA D, EHA M, EHG G, KMI A (all without the spaces).

Questions for the users:
1) Thoughts on the general look of it.
2) Thoughts on whether we should use "(city - airport name)" or "(city - country)".
3) Thoughts on whether we should use IATA or ICAO codes as the trigger. Lower or upper case does not matter, so that could potentially cause big layout/reading problems if someone writes a post and includes a word that is an IATA code.

An example of the third point:
Ezequil rode his horse to the farm.
That guy is mad!


EDIT: OH! if the IATA code is within a word but not separated by a space, it works just fine.
EDIT 2: But with a word like "ma d", this will cause issues.
EDIT 3: if we go with the “city - country” format and there are 2 or more same name cities in a country, the only way to distinguish them is the airport code. The entry between brackets will be the same. Combining city, airport name and country and/or state will give a too long entry. It’s not a mouseover anymore, but actually embedded in your post.

I flew from EHGG to EHAM for the flight to KMIA.

EDIT to note: Using ICAO codes will cause significantly less problems when posting/reading posts, but I realize IATA has been the trigger in the past and most people are likely more familiar with those than with ICAO codes. But the former outweighs the latter for me personally.

Yesterday I flew from SYD to LAX and then onto KJFK

Yesterday I flew from SYD to LAX

Yesterday I flew from SYD to LAX via AKL

I took some pictures at PAE today. I want to take pictures at LAX.

[quote="airkas1"]Topic unlocked for feedback purposes. Please do not spam or flood this thread and keep on topic. We are just in a testing phase and currently we do not have many codes available yet. Codes that are available if you wish to try: AM S, GR Q, LA X, MS T, RT M, JF K, EZ E, EHA M, EHG G, KMI A (all without the spaces).

This is a positive development for me. My preferences:
1) General look, OK
2) City, Airport
3) IATA code in upper case without a space. I don't see why a space is needed.

lots of silly things going on in the forums, someone comments on P E R passenger for example and each thread ends up with a PERTH Western Australia insert!

just to add to that, even a lower case p e r passenger will give you a PER (PERTH.........) insert

General look: OK! Much better than the tooltip / mouseover.
Format: City - Country. No need for "Barajas Adolfo Suarez" or other long names.
IATA codes. Easier to use and read. And if possible, parse them into airport names ONLY when written on upper case. In this way we eliminate the issue of converting normal words into ilegible texts.

cougar15 wrote:

lots of silly things going on in the forums, someone comments on P E R passenger for example and each thread ends up with a PERTH Western Australia insert!

I agree I don't like how it's presented at all. Take this example from the Aus Aviation threa reply 38.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1392923

Fuling wrote:

If I recall correctly, LATAM B787 flights to AKL (Auckland - New Zealand) and MEL (Melbourne - Tullamarine Australia) operate with ETOPS 330? When QF replaces the B744 with the new 6x B789, will it also be certified by CASA at ETOPS 330? If so, that means SYD-JNB could operate pretty well too?

What could happen with capacity for the HND flight? Could we see double daily?

It makes it really clunky and unnecessary harder to follow. Also I notice BNE triggers a reference to Eagle Farm. Which was the site of the original airport on the very southern part of the current site but hasn't been referred to as such since the airport was expanded 30 years ago.

Also I notice when to hyphenate between two codes as in a route ie. JFK-EZE it doesn't trigger the code which seems to defeat the purpose of having it in the first place.

Also what about three and four letter codes that aren't IATA/ICAO codes. Are we going to have conversations where people are talking about for example ATR, BBD, CFM , IAE, or even IAG (as the parent company of BA/IB, not the airport at Niagara Falls.) where random airport names and countries start popping in the middle of the text that have nothing to do with the conversation.

A better way implementing this would be to attach it at the bottom of the reply rather than in the body.

For example

vhqpa wrote:

Last December I took my mother to New Zealand with me. We flew on an EK A380 from B NE to A KL, after driving to W LG we flew on a NZ A TR 72 to C HC. At the end of the trip we flew home on a NZ A320.


*(B NE - Brisbane, AU; A KL - Auckland, NZ; W LG - Wellington, NZ; C HC - Christchurch, NZ.)

In the meantime I'm going to experiment on ways I can circumvent triggering the codes.

BNE
'LAX
-JFK
_AMS
`EZE

Thanks for the replies so far!

cougar15 wrote:

lots of silly things going on in the forums, someone comments on P E R passenger for example and each thread ends up with a PERTH Western Australia insert!
just to add to that, even a lower case p e r passenger will give you a PER (PERTH.........) insert

I just removed PER and SEA as to not cause too many reading issues right now. Everything should be back to normal in regards to those 2. I will look into the possibility of only having caps-written abbreviations trigger the airport code conversion.

vhqpa wrote:

It makes it really clunky and unnecessary harder to follow.

I agree, that's why we're testing and want input on how to improve. Point noted about BNE.

vhqpa wrote:

Also I notice when to hyphenate between two codes as in a route ie. JFK-EZE it doesn't trigger the code which seems to defeat the purpose of having it in the first place.

But what about writing JFK - EZE - GRQ. This works. The only thing people need to do is put a space between the hyphen. I don't see that as very problematic to be honest.

vhqpa wrote:

Are we going to have conversations where people are talking about for example ATR, BBD, CFM , IAE, or even IAG (as the parent company of BA/IB, not the airport at Niagara Falls.) where random airport names and countries start popping in the middle of the text that have nothing to do with the conversation.

This can indeed happen if one of those codes is an airport code. However, the old airport code plugin wasn't flawless either and would also trigger random and unwanted matches (but that didn't really show unless you put your mouse over it). So I do get that point.
ATR = Atar, Mauritania
BBD = Curtis Field, Texas
IAG = Niagara Falls Int'l
IAE and CFM don't seem to belong to an airport.
From this short list above, only Niagara Falls is somewhat of a major airport I think (I wouldn't know, I'm not familiair with it other than knowing the name)? But perhaps we can leave those out and solve the problem that way.

Thanks for the efforts guys, I appreciate what you are trying to do (and there was a lot of bitching about this feature not being in place since the site upgrade), it just made for some curious reading this morning. First I wondered why all the posters had suddenly become do detailed & disciplined until I started having my own issues! Best of luck with this, fully appreciate what you are trying to do!!

SCL Test CFM IAD, BBJ

LH526 wrote:

SCL Test CFM IAD, BBJ

Those aren't added yet

LAX then

My summer plans involve AMS - JFK - LAX - EZE - SYD on Skyteam.


My summer plans involve AMS-JFK-LAX-EZE-SYD on Skyteam.

FRA
PAE
HPN
TEB
TTN
ORD
MIA
SFO

- All ICAO codes removed
- All currently available codes standardized in 'city - country' format. If different airports in the same city --> added airport name.


Testing:
LCY
LGW
LHR
LTN
STN

EWR
JFK
LGA

PAE
BFI


What do we think of this formatting?

I'm not a fan of the nested brackets - it seems hard to follow. Perhaps something like (Seattle [Boeing Field] - USA) would be better.

Also is there any particular reason these have been implemented as in-line notes and not tooltips? I'm guessing at it being related to mobile devices, but it really gets to be a bit much when a particular IATA code is used several times in a post and the definition is provided each time...

XAM2175 wrote:

I'm not a fan of the nested brackets - it seems hard to follow. Perhaps something like (Seattle [Boeing Field] - USA) would be better.

I prefer the same format used in the database:

SFF (Spokane - Felts Field)
PUW (Pullman / Moscow - Regional)
SE A (Seattle / Tacoma - International)
JNU (Juneau - International)
ALW (Walla Walla - Regional)
S94 (Colfax - Port of Whitman Business Air Center)
PDT (Pendleton - Eastern Oregon Regional (Municipal))

And I betcha one of your whiz-bang coders could even make the forum reference the database to pull that information.

The way this works is that it's done through the phpbb built-in word censuring option. This means that I can only input a word and the replacement word(s). ( or [ is something that can be changed, but the layout can't really be changed I think. And with a mouseover or tooltips solution like we had in the past likely not happening for the forseeable future (if ever), this is as close as we'll get. So working with limited possibilities, it's either this or nothing.

So if the in-line notes are a problem for the majority of the users, that's fine and we can decide not to implement it. But this will also mean that airport codes on the forum is something from the past. Hence the call for as much feedback as possible.

Kaphias wrote:

And I betcha one of your whiz-bang coders could even make the forum reference the database to pull that information.

This has already been arranged once the decision is made to keep this function

EDIT: Some nested brackets changed from () to [] (see above post).

Just a thought, but maybe there's a better way to purposely trigger the coding? If we can educate enough users on using the specific trigger, then maybe we won't need workarounds. Maybe using a symbol? @ATL, for instance. It's quick enough to type on traditional and virtual keyboards, and it avoids unintentional coding. I don't know enough about coding to know if something like this would work, but at least it would make this an option rather than a requirement or having to exclude codes that are also common words (SEA, CAN, MAN, etc.).

Of course the challenge is making sure users know and understand how they could trigger the code, but I think we could do it.

@BOS

EDIT: Ha! The "@" works! Good solution!
One possible snag I just learned; the forum will get slower the more codes we add. Right now it's probably not that bad, but it likely will be if we add thousands. So that means we can probably only add the most well-known codes.

atcsundevil wrote:

Just a thought, but maybe there's a better way to purposely trigger the coding? If we can educate enough users on using the specific trigger, then maybe we won't need workarounds. Maybe using a symbol? @ATL, for instance. It's quick enough to type on traditional and virtual keyboards, and it avoids unintentional coding. I don't know enough about coding to know if something like this would work, but at least it would make this an option rather than a requirement or having to exclude codes that are also common words (SEA, CAN, MAN, etc.).

Of course the challenge is making sure users know and understand how they could trigger the code, but I think we could do it.

I'm certainly on-board with the required triggering because when reading, I don't like seeing the codes in the middle of the text when trying to read posts and PER has already made a lot of posts unreadable. It could also possible make enilria's OAG threads weekly near un-readable which would be a shame for a lot of users.

All codes now modified and will only work with an "@" in front of it.

Alright, so:

- The codes are only triggered when writing "@" in front of it. For example "@BOS".
- This eliminates the need for a lot of coding to differentiate between lowercase/uppercase.
- Matt indicates that the forum will get slower as we add more codes (exact limits not known). We could start with the most appropriate airports in a country and see where that gets us.
- However, with the codes/airport names now being optional, we could potentially put in a shitload of work for something that will be barely used (if at all).

Especially the last point is what I'm a little wary of. Thoughts on that and whether you would use the feature are appreciated!




EDIT to include working examples:
@JFK
@LGA
@EWR

@BFI
@PAE

@LCY
@LGW
@LHR
@LTN
@STN

No flights IAD-DCA.

No flights @IAD-@DCA.

What am I supposed to be seeing?

D L X wrote:

No flights IAD-DCA.

No flights @IAD-@DCA.

What am I supposed to be seeing?

It needs to be written with a space between hyphens.

No flights @JFK - @BOS.


(IAD & DCA aren't available at the moment)

airkas1 wrote:

.
- Matt indicates that the forum will get slower as we add more codes (exact limits not known). We could start with the most appropriate airports in a country and see where that gets

The big decision then would be what airports are “most appropriate”. While major airports like LAX, NRT, LHR, etc seem most logical they would probably get used the least if you are required to activate it with an @, as most people are already familiar with the code and what airport it refers to. It’s when you get to lesser known airports (like OPO, to use an example present in the forum today) where this feature would be most useful.

Just testing:
@BFI - @PAE

Polot wrote:

The big decision then would be what airports are “most appropriate”.

Our suggestion is smaller/medium sized airports that most users are likely not to know by heart.

LCKip wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

Topic unlocked for feedback purposes. Please do not spam or flood this thread and keep on topic. We are just in a testing phase and currently we do not have many codes available yet. Codes that are available if you wish to try: AM S, GR Q, LA X, MS T, RT M, JF K, EZ E, EHA M, EHG G, KMI A (all without the spaces).

This is a positive development for me. My preferences:
1) General look, OK
2) City, Airport
3) IATA code in upper case without a space. I don't see why a space is needed.

@AMS
@LAX
@EZE
@AMS-@EZE
@AMS - @EZE

Good job all.

Could we maybe had hyperlinks to the homepages of the airports if we are using @, or maybe use a @# to provide a link?

airkas1 wrote:

D L X wrote:

No flights IAD-DCA.

No flights @IAD-@DCA.

What am I supposed to be seeing?

It needs to be written with a space between hyphens.

No flights JFK (New York [John F. Kennedy], USA) - BOS (Boston - USA).


(IAD & DCA aren't available at the moment)

So, are there flights JFK - BOS?
How about @JFK - @BOS?

Okay. I don't like it.

What is the point if the poster has to manually indicate that he wants the airport code translated? My bet is that most posters will not do that, so the descriptive text will never show up. Furthermore, (speaking from my perspective), I know what IAD, JFK, DCA and BOS are. If I'm the one typing a post, I'm definitely aware of what the airport codes represent. The situation where I NEED the airport codes are where I *didn't* write the post, especially for posts about airports not in North America.

If you ask me, the best way to do this is to go back to mouseover translations, but allow users to turn it off in settings. That way I'm not reliant on the poster to actively think to put the @ in front of HEF.

How will this work with thread titles? If a user does it there will the text replacement still activate and potentially cut off half the title due to character limits, or does the text replacement feature only work in the body of the message?

D L X wrote:

Okay. I don't like it.

What is the point if the poster has to manually indicate that he wants the airport code translated? My bet is that most posters will not do that, so the descriptive text will never show up. Furthermore, (speaking from my perspective), I know what IAD, JFK, DCA and BOS are. If I'm the one typing a post, I'm definitely aware of what the airport codes represent. The situation where I NEED the airport codes are where I *didn't* write the post, especially for posts about airports not in North America.

If you ask me, the best way to do this is to go back to mouseover translations, but allow users to turn it off in settings. That way I'm not reliant on the poster to actively think to put the @ in front of HEF.

Fully understood. However it's going to be either a variant of this or nothing (or maybe a separate page explaining with some 1000 codes). Honestly a mouseover function is very far away (if it will even return).

Polot wrote:

How will this work with thread titles? If a user does it there will the text replacement still activate and potentially cut off half the title due to character limits, or does the text replacement feature only work in the body of the message?

I jsut tested this and it works the same way as it does in a forum post. So that's not ideal.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Another one that often went wrong was MOL. This is Molde airport, Norway but how often do you talk about that airport? Most of the times this code is being used on this site it's used for Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair. Same thing with WW which stands for WOW Air but could also mean Willie Walsh (CEO of IAG).

Then we can simply not add that.

airkas1 wrote:

All codes now modified and will only work with an "@" in front of it.

I'm guessing it's too late already, but like D L X, I studiously worked my way down from post #1, all the time wondering why I wasn't seeing anything.

And right here, right now, it's not obviously working even with the "@".
EDIT; I take that back - it's there right in front of me, but without any Hypertext colour emphasis, I couldn't see it.

Is there any way that you can amend the title and/or post #1 to warn people that as this is a "work in progress", various effects might not be apparent until later on in the thread? Or could disappear at any moment? I realise there would be a temptation for some (many?) to simply skip to the most recent post, whereas in some cases it would be useful to read all the stages that have brought us to wherever we end up.

I'm hoping that makes sense to somebody.

Meanwhile, there should be a protocol that whilst the first mention of a destination in someone's post should always receive an "@" prefix, subsequent mentions later on could be omitted. With that in mind, the full name of each airport could be reintroduced, providing it was only used once in each post.

One might also suggest that the blindingly obvious ones (JFK, LAX, LHR) should never require a full explanation. If there is anybody here on a.net who doesn't get those three, they need to find a different occupation!

(Of course that opens the door for lazy posters to claim that their particular local airport has a code that should be known by everybody; I predict plenty of arguments about that in the future {ORD and YYZ are two prime examples, IMO}, so maybe my idea is destined for failure before it even takes off)

airkas1 wrote:

This can indeed happen if one of those codes is an airport code. However, the old airport code plugin wasn't flawless either and would also trigger random and unwanted matches (but that didn't really show unless you put your mouse over it). So I do get that point.
ATR = Atar, Mauritania
BBD = Curtis Field, Texas
IAG = Niagara Falls Int'l
IAE and CFM don't seem to belong to an airport.
From this short list above, only Niagara Falls is somewhat of a major airport I think (I wouldn't know, I'm not familiair with it other than knowing the name)? But perhaps we can leave those out and solve the problem that way.

Another one that often went wrong was MOL. This is Molde airport, Norway but how often do you talk about that airport? Most of the times this code is being used on this site it's used for Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair. Same thing with WW which stands for WOW Air but could also mean Willie Walsh (CEO of IAG).

SheikhDjibouti wrote:

Is there any way that you can amend the title and/or post #1 to warn people that as this is a "work in progress", various effects might not be apparent until later on in the thread? Or could disappear at any moment? I realise there would be a temptation for some (many?) to simply skip to the most recent post, whereas in some cases it would be useful to read all the stages that have brought us to wherever we end up.

Sorry about that! Will amend my opening post.

SheikhDjibouti wrote:

Meanwhile, there should be a protocol that whilst the first mention of a destination in someone's post should always receive an "@" prefix, subsequent mentions later on could be omitted. With that in mind, the full name of each airport could be reintroduced, providing it was only used once in each post.

That could work.

SheikhDjibouti wrote:

One might also suggest that the blindingly obvious ones (JFK, LAX, LHR) should never require a full explanation. If there is anybody here on a.net who doesn't get those three, they need to find a different occupation!

Agree

c933103 wrote:

LCY (London (City) - England) Like this?
How about http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=1000nm@JFK
JFK (New York [John F. Kennedy], USA)
JFK (New York [John F. Kennedy], USA)
There seems to be an inconsistency in using hyphen or comma to show country name?

This is due to testing which format is preferred.

@lcy Like this?
How about http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=1000nm@JFK
@JFK
@JFK
There seems to be an inconsistency in using hyphen or comma to show country name?

And actually, as this forum use bbcode for formatting, why not use bbcode for text replacement too?

Airport codes currently available for testing:
AKL, AMS, BFI, BNE, BOS, EWR, EZE, JFK, GRQ, LAX, LCY, LGW, LHR, LTN, STN, MST, PAE, RTM, SYD, TLS.

Some tests:

@AMS
@BRU
@DUS
@EIN
@NRN
@GRQ
@LEY
@CPH
@CDG
@ORY
@KEF
@ACE

LAX - LHR
@LAX - @LHR
What's supposed to happen?

AAlaxfan wrote:

LAX - LHR
LAX (Los Angeles - USA) - LHR (London (Heathrow) - England)
What's supposed to happen?

Edit:
Never mind, I see what happened.
Original post had the @ symbol before LAX & LHR in second line.


But what about when the OP doesn't use the @ symbol? Will there be a way to get the codes to show the airport by scrolling over the code like before?

airkas1 wrote:

SheikhDjibouti wrote:

One might also suggest that the blindingly obvious ones (JFK, LAX, LHR) should never require a full explanation. If there is anybody here on a.net who doesn't get those three, they need to find a different occupation!

Agree

I don't agree. Eventhough it's obvious everybody knows those airports, you can sometimes be mistaken. Besides, you got to have some uniformity. If you're doing one, you got to do them all.