Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 October 25

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October 25

Help edit for the blind user

Hi all. I'm an editor at Arabic Wikipedia and there is someone who blind asked us if . there is a wiki system for special options to content management, to Accessible appoint for blind users to browse and edit articles easier? thanks. --Q argun Q (talk) 11:32, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

What kind of assistive technology are they using ? I assume they have some type of a screenreader. StuRat (talk) 13:56, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

yes. he hase a screen reader.--Q argun Q (talk) 16:31, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry that nobody was able to help you here. I suggest you post to the Wikipedia:Help desk, which is specifically for help using Wikipedia. You might have better luck there. StuRat (talk) 14:53, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

What is API?

In Drupal i hear the acronym API time and again. could someone elaborate of it's full meaning, in simple words? (I am not a student of Computer sciences) Thanks. 109.66.110.231 (talk) 17:07, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Application programming interface. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:21, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

That article sure jumps right into things... Unfortunately [[1]] is too far in the other direction. Katie R (talk) 19:14, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

An example might be an API for a 2D graphics program that let's a programmer draw a circle by supplying the center point coordinates and radius. StuRat (talk) 22:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

• As simply as I can put it: It is common in programming to use "libraries" containing pre-written code for performing certain tasks. Libraries save programmers from having to do everything starting from scratch. An API is the mechanism that a specific language uses to gain access to a library. APIs typically have documentation that allows a programmer to use the library without knowing how it is implemented. To take a simple example, in the C language one of the most commonly used libraries is libmath, which contains many mathematical functions. One function it contains is sqrt, the square root function, whose documentation looks like this:

 double sqrt (double x)
   Returns the square root of the argument, in double precision format.  If 
   x is negative, the function generates a floating point exception.

This is all the information that a programmer needs in order to use the function -- the programmer never needs to look at the code that actually calculates square roots. To sum it up, an API is the mechanism that allows programmers to use generic code that other programmers have written. Looie496 (talk) 22:50, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

What is said above explains it pretty well. What Drupal would use an API for is probably things like supplying ways to pull user profile data and display it. So, if you're making a plugin for Drupal, you can use code like userProfileDisp and will display a user's profile. This saves you from having to write the possibly dozens of lines of code to do just that yourself. Dismas|^(talk) 23:28, 25 October 2013 (UTC)