Template talk:Infobox language/Archive 1

message: There have been some good updates of the template recently, but there has been little talk about here. As there are a few ideas about what we ant from this template, I thought it might be best to air them here and see what the consensus really is. The issues I've seen are:
# Addition of pronunciation line in template to record the pronunciation of the name of the language. As the IPA template won't work inside another template, and the fact this would involve updating every instance of the template with very specific information, I suggested we shelve the idea.
# Whether we should align, float or something else seems to be a technical display issue.
# A few users seem to advocate border="0": as it has been consistently reverted, I assume we don't want to get rid of the border.
# Flamurai's change to CSS throughout the template is good, but this has got rid of cell borders. Do we want cell borders?
# Mustafaa suggested on the project page that, as most languages do not have anything worthwhile to add to the Official status section of the template, we allow a variation without this section. If we can combine the two modes into this template (call a parameter to collapse/expand the template) without having to fix every template immeadiately, this would be the best path to follow.
Any thoughts? Gareth Hughes 12:05, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we talk about what we want the temaplate to look like? 

message: Hi, I've started (barely) an article on Tunica, and I was wondering whether there's some way to indicate the fact that it's extinct in the template (or even if other folks agree that that's the place for it). I don't have strong feelings either way, except that the "Official status" fields seem out of place. --babbage 22:37, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we have jsut been discussing what to do with the 'official' section of the template. I think it might be best to replace it with a number of modules that are loaded by parameter into the existing template — the current 'official' section, a section for extinct languages &c. However, that would require a parameter to be placed in every use of the template before a change could be made. Any thoughts? Gareth Hughes 23:09, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extinct languages? 

message: I liked the color bars indicating the language family; where did they go?  I don't much like the "See also" bit; it seems kind of intrusive, and breaks the theme of the template insofar as it does not describe the language.  But maybe at a smaller font size it would look better...  Any thoughts? - Mustafaa 20:47, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The template used to show the colour bars in orange, but since it was changed to CSS they show white. It's really odd, but I think it's about parameter defaults. I agree that the see also line is unneccesary, and I would prefer to see each line of the classification box linked to an article instead. Gareth Hughes 21:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What happened to the template?

message: The user 80.178.165.124 changed the table design back to the old one that seemed a lot less gracious to me with the following explanation in the edit summary:
"this change allows also browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer to view this template properly"
Being a user of Firefox for both Mac and PC this somehow doesn't make sense to me, since I have never had problems with the new table designs. Could someone comment this? Peter Isotalo 21:03, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)
:That user changed it again, and I changed it back. I've left a note on the user's talk page. The change was from CSS back to HTML. This would suggest that the user is using an old browser that isn't kitted out to deal with CSS. Gareth Hughes 13:25, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. I'm using Firefox just like Peter Isotalo and I don't have any problems.  — mark ✎ 14:45, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template design 

message: There seems to be interest in the proposal of a modular template to cover all language articles. The first step would be to agree what the basic template should look like (without any modules). This might be a little tricky if we want to include sign languages as well, but well worth a try. Then we need a rough idea which modules we would like to see, and how they are to be implemented. The first actual change would be to drop module=[module name] into the template of every article that the template. This is to stop the template 'breaking' when the template calls a non-specified parameter from the article. Once the articles are fitted with this parameter, the basic template and its modules can go online. The drafts of these templates could be kept on sub-pages here for us to work on. I shall get started with some of this work. If there are any concerns or doubts, please voice them now. --Gareth Hughes 10:10, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just how are you planning to incorporate Ntennis' suggestion? I agree with you that 'Used' and 'Number of users' sound a bit awkward for spoken language. Is there great harm in having two separate basic templates, one for spoken languages and one for signed languages? It would be best, of course, if there was the possibility of some [IF > THEN] structure changing 'speakers' to 'users' when a certain parameter, say, 'type=signed', is present. But I'm a noob with regard to templates, so I don't know what's possible.  — mark ✎ 10:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  First steps towards modularisation 

message: some editors add ISO codes that do not exist. Thanks to direct links to ethnologue this can be discovered fast. Example:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Novial_language&diff=prev&oldid=28166338
if an iso3 is defined we should make sure there is allways a link to ethnologue.
Tobias Conradi (Talk) 09:44, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: quality control

message: I think the colors suggested here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages#Colors in the infoboxes are too bright. I really think we could find a more pleasing color pallet, for example see List of Presidents of the United States. Basically I think a paler set of colors (like the colors used on the Main Page), would be more pleasing. Anyone else agree? Any chance we could choose better colors? (I have also initiated a discussion about this here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages#Infobox colors.) Paul August  ☎ 03:11, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
:I most defenitely agree! -Mariano 10:27, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
::I think no colors at all would be better.  Hot green is just fucking ugly (who chose that anyways?), and there's no reason to  have colors in the first place.  They don't signify anything like categories in the List of Presidents page, they just highlight headings which need no highlighting.  Of course, given past precedents the current ugly color will remain for at least another year because every change will get reverted until some drawn out discussion and voting completes. (Unsigned comment by 69.208.113.209)
:::We need to have them because each different color represents a different language family. For the presidents page, they represent a political party. I think the colors are fine. --User:Hottentot
::::this is not logic. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better colors? 

message: I would like this template to have a field for the script used in the written form of the language (Roman, Cyrillic, Devanagari etc). Is this a sound field to add? -- 128.46.143.159 22:34, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: some use more than one script. but inclusion would be nice. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need a field for script.