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Erik Moeller | 1 Oct 2004 02:13
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Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

David-
> It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails, tables,
> and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to read and
> understand for new users.

Not really. Templates hide complexity and give ordinary users the power to  
quickly make use of things like nicely formatted infoboxes without knowing  
anything about the HTML. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of our  
table syntax, however; I'm as geeky as they come and I still fall back to  
HTML every now and then. The reStructured Text syntax is much lovelier,  
albeit easy to mess up:

+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
| Header row, column 1   | Header 2   | Header 3 | Header 4 |
| (header rows optional) |            |          |          |
+========================+============+==========+==========+
| body row 1, column 1   | column 2   | column 3 | column 4 |
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
| body row 2             | Cells may span columns.          |
+------------------------+------------+---------------------+
| body row 3             | Cells may  | - Table cells       |
+------------------------+ span rows. | - contain           |
| body row 4             |            | - body elements.    |
+------------------------+------------+---------------------+
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#tables

Still, I think a combination of something like this for quick tables, and  
HTML hidden in templates for complex ones would be best.

Like templates, image tags have also reduced the amount of visible HTML in
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David Friedland | 1 Oct 2004 02:34

Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

Erik Moeller wrote:
> David-
> 
>>It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails, tables,
>>and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to read and
>>understand for new users.
> 
> 
> Not really. Templates hide complexity and give ordinary users the power to  
> quickly make use of things like nicely formatted infoboxes without knowing  
> anything about the HTML. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of our  
> table syntax, however; I'm as geeky as they come and I still fall back to  
> HTML every now and then. The reStructured Text syntax is much lovelier,  
> albeit easy to mess up:
> 
> +------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
> | Header row, column 1   | Header 2   | Header 3 | Header 4 |
> | (header rows optional) |            |          |          |
> +========================+============+==========+==========+
> | body row 1, column 1   | column 2   | column 3 | column 4 |
> +------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
> | body row 2             | Cells may span columns.          |
> +------------------------+------------+---------------------+
> | body row 3             | Cells may  | - Table cells       |
> +------------------------+ span rows. | - contain           |
> | body row 4             |            | - body elements.    |
> +------------------------+------------+---------------------+
> http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#tables
> 
> Still, I think a combination of something like this for quick tables, and
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David Friedland | 1 Oct 2004 02:37

Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

Grrr, accidentally pressed ctrl-return to send...

I meant to say

I've just had an idea:

Why not use templates as the solution? Put the dialect-specific code in
the templates, and just put {{ }} around words that vary by dialect.
That can't be any worse than '' '' for italics, can it? That would solve
probably 90% of the cases.

Thus, for our example sentence, we would have something like

The {{colour}}s of the U.S. flag are red, white, and blue.

And the colour template would have the dialect-specific code like

-{en-us color; en-gb colour}-

Similarly, {{zucchini}} could be

{-en-au Zucchini en-nz Courgette en-us Zucchini en-gb Courgette en-ca 
Zucchini-}

Of course, then we would have to agree on what to call the templates,
but that seems like a much easier problem to deal with. At the very
least, {{color}} could just include the {{colour}} template, or vice-versa.

- David
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Ray Saintonge | 1 Oct 2004 11:57

Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

David Friedland wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Angela wrote:
>>
>>> One reason is that the differences between American and British
>>> English are more involved than simply changing the spelling of a few
>>> words. Punctuation and grammar are also involved. If you changed
>>> behavior to behaviour in an otherwise AE sentence, the sentence would
>>> then be wrong in both languages.
>>
>> I can't seem to find the page now, but I seem to remember a policy 
>> page where we've basically settled on a compromise, 
>> partially-invented "international English" punctuation style for 
>> clarity and because it's not really worth fighting over.  The 
>> compromise included the British-style "put punctuation _after_ 
>> closing quotation marks", and something from US style that I can't 
>> remember.  As for being "wrong", that's only the case if you happen 
>> to be a [[en:prescription and description|grammatical 
>> prescriptivist]], which not all of us are.
>>
>> But as far as the spelling issue goes, it seems like a solution in 
>> search of a problem.  The current approach seems to be working well 
>> enough.
>
> I heartily disagree. The current approach is a constant source of 
> disagreement and worsening of linguistic tensions. I am always running 
> into minor tiffs over British vs American spelling that could be 
> eliminated with multi-dialect support. This would also mean that when
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Stirling Newberry | 1 Oct 2004 12:07

Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

>>
>> I heartily disagree. The current approach is a constant source of 
>> disagreement and worsening of linguistic tensions. I am always 
>> running into minor tiffs over British vs American spelling that could 
>> be eliminated with multi-dialect support. This would also mean that 
>> when I run into a Britishism on an article that might be confusing or 
>> misleading to an American reader, instead of changing it to an 
>> Americanism and drawing the ire of the original author (or changing 
>> it to something neutral and probably drawing the ire of the original 
>> author), the original author's Britishism can stay, the Americanism 
>> will be viewable to Americans, and everyone is a little bit happier.
>>

Getting to consensus, even if the process is acrimonious, is part of 
what we do here. If there is a localized expression, then it should be 
filed away, even if the original editor isn't happy with it. Getting to 
NPOV doesn't just mean overt biases, but also the less overt ones, one 
of which is geographic origin. So if you run into it, comment it or put 
it on the discussion page and keep going.
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Ray Saintonge | 1 Oct 2004 12:13

Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

Angela wrote:

>Wiki is supposed to be easy to edit. Having markup like the following
>is going to be very off-putting to most users, and not only to
>newcomers.
>
>with one g like {-en-us garbage en-gb rubbish-},
>
In some parts of the US it is "trash" :-)

Ec
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Jens Ropers | 1 Oct 2004 16:18

Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

On 1 Oct 2004, at 11:57, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Indian English must have a lakh of interesting variations

Indian English... A LAKH OF...

;-D  ;-)  :-P

To the above observation of INDIAN English I add the following:

BRITISH: My dear old chap, British English probably has an indeed 
substantial amount of interesting variations.
IRISH: For f*cks sake, Irish English must have a bunch of interesting 
variations -- and all that Mullarkey.
AMERICAN: Yeah man, American English has, like, a gazillion of 
interesting variations, oh boy.
AUSTRALIAN: Crikey! Australian English has a rweal loarge amount of 
interesting variations!

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com
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Jens Ropers | 1 Oct 2004 16:25

Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

PS: To all non-native speakers: The joke here is that the term "lakh" 
originated in India. Hah, the joys of etymology!
Hey, waitaminute!
I'm a non-native speaker, actually! 96% verbal SAT percentile, but '''I 
ASSURE YOU''' I am a non-native speaker.
Hm. Whatever. Go figure.
</braggadocio>

On 1 Oct 2004, at 16:18, Jens Ropers wrote:

> On 1 Oct 2004, at 11:57, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Indian English must have a lakh of interesting variations
>
> Indian English... A LAKH OF...
>
> ;-D  ;-)  :-P
>
> To the above observation of INDIAN English I add the following:
>
> BRITISH: My dear old chap, British English probably has an indeed 
> substantial amount of interesting variations.
> IRISH: For f*cks sake, Irish English must have a bunch of interesting 
> variations -- and all that Mullarkey.
> AMERICAN: Yeah man, American English has, like, a gazillion of 
> interesting variations, oh boy.
> AUSTRALIAN: Crikey! Australian English has a rweal loarge amount of 
> interesting variations!
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
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Jimmy O'Regan | 1 Oct 2004 16:30
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Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

Jens Ropers wrote:
> On 1 Oct 2004, at 11:57, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> 
>> Indian English must have a lakh of interesting variations
> 
> 
> Indian English... A LAKH OF...
> 
> ;-D  ;-)  :-P
> 
> To the above observation of INDIAN English I add the following:
> 
> BRITISH: My dear old chap, British English probably has an indeed 
> substantial amount of interesting variations.
> IRISH: For f*cks sake, Irish English must have a bunch of interesting 
> variations -- and all that Mullarkey.

No, no, no.

"For feck sake, Irish English is all over the shop -- and all that shite."
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Jens Ropers | 1 Oct 2004 17:05

Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

On 1 Oct 2004, at 16:30, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

> Jens Ropers wrote:
>> On 1 Oct 2004, at 11:57, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>> Indian English must have a lakh of interesting variations
>> Indian English... A LAKH OF...
>> ;-D  ;-)  :-P
>> To the above observation of INDIAN English I add the following:
>> BRITISH: My dear old chap, British English probably has an indeed  
>> substantial amount of interesting variations.
>> IRISH: For f*cks sake, Irish English must have a bunch of interesting  
>> variations -- and all that Mullarkey.
>
> No, no, no.
>
> "For feck sake, Irish English is all over the shop -- and all that  
> shite."

Jimmy, you wouldn't possibly be a Dublin lad, would you? Or knew a few  
Wikipedians from "the capital"?
Because "the nation needs your help".

Please visit
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: 
>> Irish_wikipedians%27_notice_board
and read the note headed "ATTENTION".
Then please help getting as many Dublin-based Wikipedians as possible  
to head over to
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetup_2005#Dublin.2C_Ireland
and sign up as potential Dublin helpers.
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Gmane