User talk:Jack Merridew

Award for participation
Proofread of the Month September 2009 Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey

[edit] Welcome

Hello, Jack Merridew, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.

You'll find an (incomplete) index of our works listed at Wikisource:Works, although for very broad categories like poetry you may wish to look at the categories like Category:Poems instead.

Please take a glance at our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). Most questions and discussions about the community are in the Scriptorium.

The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page! John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome, John. I've seen you on en:wp and hope to again. Terim Kasih, User:Jack Merridew a.k.a. David 13:30, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

You might like to take a look at the work that Alex brollo mentions on my talk, as I will be taking a look at it soon (after I have answered your query), and I suspect you will have some good ideas there as well. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CSS proposals

Your CSS suggestions have been good, but I am snowed under atm. Could you collate these CSS changes in Special:Mypage/monobook.css for the moment, so that I can then copy that and see what you have in mind. Cheers. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

They've been pseudo-code; not quite ready for the real-world. I'm reviewing Category:Formatting templates right now, trying to get the lay of the land. Read a good speech, too. As I've said, I'm way-busy and will be on-wiki less this weekend. I will put together same css examples that address some issues I've encountered. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for setting up the testrig - this is another solution for our centering problem. I havent fully thought this one through yet. The text-indent is really only supposed to apply to a P element that has been generated by the system as a result of a person typing a piece of text without any formatting. If the user adds formatting to their text, the default shouldnt interfere. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

The child selector you added is to the part that's setting up the test context; which is doing what the current style sheet is doing; i.e. a descendant selector. Sure you can change the current code, but do so carefully; many pages were built to that code. That '>' should keep the text-indent from applying inside the center-element (or divs...); I've not tried it yet; was playing a bit, see the latest. There is also IE6 to consider, which won't understand the child selector. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I made the same change and have looked in IE6. It looks ok despite my not expecting it to. Hmmm… This bit;

main.css; maaf; Common.css;

/* Justify and indent text */
body.ns-104 {
 text-align:justify;
}

body.ns-104 p{
 text-indent: 2em;
}

is working off the body-element which is quite a few levels up, I'm sure. I've never picked apart the page structure MediaWiki emits; it would vary some over time and mebbe per skins and projects. You don't want to get to tied-in to the page structure; encapsulation and all.

try this; a better hook.

div#bodyContent { border: 1px solid #c33; }

Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Duh. It the centering looks ok in the dumb browser, because the indent is never applied to anything; it doesn't understand the selector and ignores the whole rule. It also lost the faint-lines I put into to highlight the elements.

My views about that browsers are basically if things degrade in non-catastrophic ways fine; people should use a modern browser. So losing the indent for those users might be acceptable. Where there's another solution that doesn't have much downside, I'd be inclined to use it. There don't appear to be paragraph elements generated outside the <div id="bodyContent"> but there are no guarantees; someday there might be, under some circumstances. My current thinking is change the hook to bodyContent and have a second rule such as I first demoed. Dinner time. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:06, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

The css as of now, shows a nasty little hack that also works on most browsers; this oldid shows a version that is simpler due to not trying to show behaving/misbehaving on the page at the same time; it fixed all the sample text.

I'm thinking a change along the lines of;

main.css; maaf; Common.css;

/* Justify and indent text in 'page' namespace; only in paragraphs in bodyContent */
body.ns-104 div#bodyContent p
{
 text-align: justify;
}

body.ns-104 div#bodyContent p
{
 text-indent: 2em;
}
/* special handling for centering; covers center-element and class="center" */
body.ns-104 div#bodyContent center p,
body.ns-104 div#bodyContent *.center p
{
 text-indent: 0;
}

That justify is rather sweeping in scope; it's what's messing up on that index page, I think; probably best to make it specific to paragraphs; just added to above. If you want to truly only indent paragraphs just inside the page body, the universal selector hack might be better.

See Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/13; bottom, the 'Silver Lake' and 'June' lines. They're being nudged over by the text indent rule; they're not quite properly centered in the left half of the page. It still looks fine, but if someone closed-up the two paragraphs into one with a br-element, it would go 'off'. None of this would fix that, but it would be fixed if that page were changed to use class="center".

Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:41, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

We've just edit conflicted, so I'm saving now, and I'll look at this again tomorrow.

The text-indent is a "new paragraph cluestick" for the proofreader; if it doesnt appear in IE6, that is degrading gracefully in my opinion. i.e. the text-indent is part of the proofreading interface — it isnt part of the publishing platform. Ideally I would like to see IE6 work too; does it understand this: "div.ns-104 * P { text-indent: 0 }"

Backtracking a little, the purpose of the text-indent is solely to help the transcriber know where a new paragraph has been detected. The visual indent is one very obvious way to display this, but you have pointed out that it is affecting "paragraphs" that should be centered, etc. Perhaps we can find a better way of doing this? What about injecting a paragraph symbol into the margin on the left? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 14:44, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm seeing that this is only for the 'page' space where folks work; when the presentation layer mashes original pages up, you want it to glue consecutive words from different page together (w/a space) and that seam can be in the middle of the line in the 'true' paragraph that spans the pages. So the 'clue' should be simple and obvious; like traditional indenting!

IE6 does understand the '*' - it's the default; i.e. when you see css like;

• .small-caps { font-variant: small-caps; }

the '*' is implied;

• *.small-caps { font-variant: small-caps; }

is the same thing.

You might be able to get a paragraph mark next to, ah, certain paragraphs (same selection issues we're discussing) using the same techniques that get you a symbol next to external links; that's done with a background-image and some padding. To hang into the left margin of bodyContent you would use some negative left-margin on the paragraph and apply a background-image, no-repeat, position top left, on the paragraph. Here's the code that does the green emblem;

<div style="position: absolute; left: -152px; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 120px;">
 [[Image:Lambang Kabupaten Barru.jpeg|120px|left]]
</div>

I'm quite busy tomorrow, so take your time. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

nb: The paragraph mark to the left would also require padding-left to scoot the body text back into position. I'll do a few non-wiki tests and get back to you. With something like this it will be especially important that the selection of the paragraph to apply the rules to be spot-on; background images and abby-normal margins and padding applied to other than intended paragraphs would be rather more of a mess than the skewed centering from the text-indent. If you know of a nice paragraph-symbol image, drop me a link. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:41, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is one

wrt to "*", I was using it as a "match any node here", which forces the selector to only be used if there is a node (any node) between the "ns-104" node and the "P" node. i.e. the text-indent only applies if there is a P directly within the ns-104. It seems to do the trick, even in IE6. See this css, with the new second block I have added to User:Jack Merridew/centering. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That's what I was doing with the selectors with repeated '*'; idea with repeating them is to cover cases where there's a deeper page structure. Oh, and it's a technique that sucks; a child selector and then an override with one '*'/descendant selector to fix the grandchildren and on would be better if the world wasn't awash in out of date browsers.

I'm still very busy; will be for the week. I'm liking the paragraph marker to the left idea; we lose the whole text-indent mess and do the marker with post-IE6 CSS so only smart browsers do it; those with an old browsers just get the half-line gap between paragraphs. I'll do another set of samples when I have a chance. Oh, do not use uppercase for xhtml-elements in CSS;

All CSS style sheets are case-insensitive, except for parts that are not under the control of CSS. For example, the case-sensitivity of values of the HTML attributes "id" and "class", of font names, and of URIs lies outside the scope of this specification. Note in particular that element names are case-insensitive in HTML, but case-sensitive in XML.^[1]

Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:35, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikisource:Scriptorium#Proofreading paragraph marker :-)^archived If there are small corrections to be made, feel free to alter my text rather than try to correct it with your own comment. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 14:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] edit summaries

Hi, when an edit summary starts with "/* edit summaries */", it should not be altered if you are replying in that thread. It tells the MediaWiki software to automatically hot-link to the named section of the page, on pages such as the history, diffs, etc. When you change it to "/* edit summaries — blah blah */", it links to a non-existent section "#edit summaries — blah blah", which infuriates the clicker, me. What you should be doing is "/* edit summaries */ blah blah". If there is rhyme or reason to your edit summary tomfoolery, let me know. :-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Huh. I'm not seeing the hotlinks you're referring to — even in other edit summaries. Some option I have off? I've just been appending a further comment about what I'm saying in whatever thread and I guess I've been putting everything inside the comment marks because, in most contexts, that where comments go! The C-style comment marks started appearing in automatic edit summaries some time ago, but I never read anything about why. Anyway, I'll go with your suggestion; certainly not intending to annoy. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:30, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah; found it; the '→' is linked. Maaf. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:53, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

A little while ago you tackled a numbered list that crossed the page boundary, and it has cropped up again starting at Page:The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - copy D.djvu/25, and messed up here: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell#A Song of Liberty . Can we figure out some wiki-glue to pull the two pages together. If not, we might need to ask ThomasV if de.ws have worked out a trick. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 21:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks messy due to crossing two page boundaries and the li-elements are being broken across the pages, too. I will look into this, but have little time for a bit. Cheers, Jack Merridew 01:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I took a stab at these; basically the same technique as before, but where the li-elements cross from page to page in mid-sentence, the opening or closing li tags will need to be moving to the header/footer along with ol bit. I copied sope of the other ol styling because the image looked that way, but feel free to rip those styles out if they don't fit with the rest of the page (didn't look).

On the formatting issue with the templates I made, it seems the whole question of minimal formatting vs high fidelity to some original look is an old one. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I was praying for some wiki syntax that could do this, so we dont need to resort to HTML. And you have spurred me into action, to actually think this through a little. The only thing that works for me is removing the line between the two pages, as I have done at User:Jayvdb/sandbox. Now the outstanding problem is how to make User:Jayvdb/list2 start counting at 4. My first attempt failed dismally. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:18, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

If I'm understanding what you're trying to do; it's working for me. The generated page is just what you want;

<ol>
<li>One</li>
<li>Two</li>
<li>Three, and a half</li>
<li>Four</li>
<li>Five</li>
</ol>

I get 5 li-elements numbered 1-5.

On the Blake page, and anywhere else this is going on, I don't see how we can avoid the html; get a dev to extend the wiki-syntax? Each page needs to be a whole, 'well-formed' xhtml page and this means opening and closing tags for the ol-elements and the li-elements. Wiki-syntax, i.e. '#', allows a simple user markup, and the system is generating the ol-tags based on the white-space above and below the lines w/#. If you don't have the ol-elements in the wiki-text (explicitly), how can we possibly do the hide when transcluded trick. Same for the li-tags, in this case. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Opps, you want the '4' when looking at the individual page; this could be done with the raw html approach, but the start attribute is deprecated; for good reason. For text such as test that are truly static; the numbers will never change (but the formatting might), it might be fine to hard-code them all. This would get us away from the list elements entirely. wiki-syntax really is too simple; no encapsulation of div, ol, ul. This is why there are so many table on wiki pages. but none on my user page except for the user page template Cheer, Jack Merridew 08:52, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

<div style="margin-left: 2em" start="4">and a half
<ol>
<li>Four</li>
<li>Five</li>
</ol>
</div>

I just looked at your page 2, under the hood; the nakal start attribute got stuck in a div. No idea why that was generated. I have tried to mix hard-coded ol-tags with wiki-'#' and '*' — and it's never worked for me. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for doing some more thinking about this. What you are saying is making sense. It's worth finding wiki ways to do things if possible, otherwise we need a wiki+html parsers if we were to build tools that understand the formatting; e.g. if we wanted to produce PDFs. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

With wiki syntax rather stable (frozen even?) there must be many tools that are good at parsing it. They may even understand common html in the wiki text; there's just tons of it out on the smaller wikis. Tools that understand templates must be rather rare. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to ask for MediaWiki to detect and accept the explicit <ol> followed by wiki-# (or *). Limited dev time going to block the boy from Huntington Beach globally, presumably. I saw his request to delete his original user page. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What formatting is essential?

Moved to User talk:Eclecticology#What formatting is essential? to keep the discussion together. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] blank lines in the header

In regards to this, we all need to discuss this, and Wikisource:Scriptorium#New paragraph at top of page is probably as good a spot as any. At the heart of this is ensuring that we end up with a paragraph marker in the right spot. Your version places a paragraph marker where we dont want it (midway through a paragraph); the prior version has an additional paragraph marker that isnt desirable. Neither is ideal, but the prior revision is the defacto standard, and is also what our tools expect as the definition of an "unmodified header".

Making a change like that on a single page, when there are 36193 pages that are affected, doesnt help. It doesnt hurt much, as a bot will have all sorts of strange cases to worry about, but it is a waste of your time if you are right, whether you are right or wrong, but if you are wrong, you will have to go undo them :-). A bot can update them all if that change is required. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I just undid that one for now. I agree that this has to be discussed. I believe I've used that same edit summary on all such edits, so they're findable; there may be a few exception. I don't understand what you describe as marker midway through a paragraph; it looked right to me. I've also noticed that the '+' link to show the header and footer doesn't allow you to get at this detail; I've been turning off javascript to edit the true page as a piece. Reviewing that discussion, I believe I was missing some of what you were getting at there, so all the more reason to discuss it further. I'm going to finish up the Horace pages, skipping this issue. I'll then revisit that thread. Cheers, David

The first words on page Page:Sacred Books of the East 3.djvu/318 are part of the paragraph which begins on Page:Sacred Books of the East 3.djvu/317. We dont want a paragraph marker to the left of "the Yâ and the Sung" at the top of Page:Sacred Books of the East 3.djvu/318, which is what I am seeing on your version. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:31, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Seems you're viewing the high-floating paragraph marker as indicative of a continued paragraph, which is not what I've been thinking. Seems to make sense. Mebbe we need an alt-marker that includes a little left arrow… (No, I've not thought this through.) It this written up somewhere (in an out of date form that need a rewrite due to the indenting being history)? It seems to me that there's an element of individual perception going on here; and a fair bit of it would be the new guy missing casually understood conventions. I think I should review a bit and back-off any other stay places a I may have tweaked headers; I've keep the ones I've done in the early Horace pages as a test case for now, but confine it to keep a grip on it. I see I did this to the German Instrument of Surrender pages, too; but may just leave them as there are just the two. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:43, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Horace

No worries it was all minor stuff. The one thing I did notice was that the text for the footnotes was not present. I guess you realised this, but I wondered what the plan was. It looks like the archive text does have them. Suicidalhamster (talk) 13:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm very aware of the missing footnotes; and thank you very much for that link! I would say from a first peek that they'll by copy-pasted over. I just finished slicing-up the original doc into the individual pages. There are formatting issues, especially in the first 100 or so pages, but it's a good start. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Well if the plan is to copy and paste them I will try to do some the next time I make edits to the pages. Its looking good so far! Suicidalhamster (talk) 14:17, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the alternative is to scan everything and copy-paste from there; which makes little sense to me. I dropped your link on John's page and will look to follow his suggestions. I'm pretty much done for today, anyway. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

That link is to the djvu text layer containing OCR, which is what User:JVbot routinely adds to Wikisource, but it is going to have a hell of a time merging it into the pre-existing pages. But, leave it with me — I'll figure that out.

p.s. congrats on finishing uploading the good quality text.

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 14:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I did the last three so don't dupe them. If you have to write something custom — a one-off — it may be easier to copy-paste them by hand; it's a lot of text, but the footnotes are nearly a full page each in some cases, and many span pages. They will need manual attention anyway. Damn file is (only) 17,000 lines long. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:50, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

It would not be a one off; it would be a first use. If it isnt this work, another project will require it. But, if you can stomach doing more copy&paste it will likely happen sooner that way, as there are a few gotchas such as the footnotes that span pages, and they wont be quickly coded. It is up to you; I wont fight you to pick up the plough. But this does need to be coded sooner or later. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 15:02, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to bed soon, and you're 2 hours ahead of me… I expect we'll do both; mebbe it gets to much and I'll wait for the bot. If I do some it probably makes the job messier for the edge cases. I'll likely attend to formatting the chapters, or whatever they're called, first. The H1s in there are acting strange, so there's lots of non-footnote work to do; also some are in Greek and Latin and have paragraphs and lists inside the footnotes; joy. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:08, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Due to other events, I wont be progressing on this front anytime soon. The next bot task for me is going to be over on fr.ws. Might be better if you tackle this. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:55, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I've just about finished the core clean-up and formatting of this work; I'll start pasting over more of the footnotes, next. I'm going to need some help with the Greek in some of them. I'm also thinking that the proofreading needs to be by someone else as I may well overlook stuff. Aside from the footnotes, it's a pretty clean text now. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:48, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DJVU files

I'm going to try and start proofreading them, but would appreciate some help with this, since I'm fairly new here. --Sunstar NW XP (talk) 10:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

If you're looking at the Horace pages I'm working on, they're not ready to be proofread, yet. There is formating yet to do and a huge number of missing footnotes. For others, see WS:TP and WS:FTC. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template change

Hi Jack, thanks for the heads up about the hyphenated word template change. I am a little confused (as usual). I am using the corrected templates right? If I need to change something please point me in the right direction. Thanks for all the work you have done! - Epousesquecido (talk) 16:34, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Replied on your page. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page:The Pilgrim Cookbook.djvu/163

The reason I was struggling with the underline on this page Page:The Pilgrim Cookbook.djvu/163 was because I think the original intention of the underline was to separate the two recipes, not to underline the ladies name. This is trivial, I know, but what do you think? - Epousesquecido (talk) 19:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense to me; I've changed it to a horizontal rule wrapped in a div to control the width and set the margins; tweak if they're too big; or small. --Jack; 125.162.164.138 09:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Any ideas?

I'm going crazy here. MediaWiki converts the wiki code

A
B
C
D

E
F
G
H

into html

<p>A B C D</p>
<p>E F G H</p>

which is just fine with me.

I would like to implement {{float right}} so that the MediaWiki code

{{float right|A
B
C
D

E
F
G
H}}

results in the html

<div style="float:right"><p>A B C D</p>
<p>E F G H</p></div>

This is intuitively what that template should do. But I can't seem to make it happen. If I implement it as

<div style="float:right">{{{1}}}</div>

it renders as

<div style="float:right">A
<p>B C D</p>
<p>E F G</p>
H</p></div>

which is an absolute disaster; and if I implement it as

<div style="float:right">
{{{1}}}
</div>

it renders as

<div style="float:right">
<p>A B C D</p>
<p>E F G H</p>
</div>

which is better, but it inserts a spurious carriage return that subtly corrupts alignment (e.g. the page number at Page:The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal 1(1).djvu/3). :-(

Any ideas?

Hesperian 01:16, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

(nb: this discussion ended-up over on User talk:Hesperian#page number off by .4em —Jack Merridew 11:55, 23 October 2008 (UTC))

[edit] float:center!

Do you know how to center the poem block at Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/8 without changing the text-alignment? Hesperian 14:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I tried a few things that didn't quite work out. Then I stuck a table in there (which will bother me until I sort the other techniques). Given wiki-syntax, the table will be the least markup. I've not really looked at that 'poem' tag before; I'll have to sort through what styling is being dragged in. —Jack Merridew 15:43, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I had another crack at it, and came up with something that I think is an improvement on your table solution, though still not ideal. I reckon margin-left:auto and margin-right:auto were resolving to 0 because there was nothing to prevent the width from resolving to 100%. I put in an explicit width and—viola!—a centred paragraph. The only problem I see is that if the font should change, the block may be too wide (hence the text no longer centred) or, worse still, too narrow. Hesperian 03:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that table sucked. See my latest take. The fixed width you used was causing a lot of poor line wraps for me; this varied by browser (and their settings). The width we want is whatever the content adds up to. By floating a block, the width wraps to the content instead of expanding to the container.

So, from the outside in, I use a div that I float to collapse its width to that of the content (the poem) and then position halfway across the width of the ambient containing block (which spans the width of the content area). If I stopped here, the poem would be left-aligned in the right half of the content area. But I also style the poem-div to move left by 50% of its own width. The clean way to do this is margin-left:-50%; but dain-bramaged browsers screw up, so I used position:relative;left:-50%;, instead. I also tweaked everything a bit to get the poem 'looking' centered; the poem has trailing white-space on most lines (all but the longest one) and this space still counts, so by padding the poem with padding-left:2em; I got things to look better.

This could be encapsulated in a template or possibly a class; the latter would likely involve an adjustment to the mechanism that's parsing the faux-element 'poem' and spitting a <div class="poem">. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:17, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Since the above post, I've refactored that page to use the new Template:float-center where I encapsulated the gore. Seems to place-nice. Try it in a few spots and let me know if you see issues. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:14, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Sweet! Thanks! Hesperian 10:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome, but there are some issue with this. See; User talk:Jayvdb#You'll like this trick. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:41, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Related issue: Second tab of {{Welcome}}, where it uses {{Song of the day}} - alignment is all wrong, and I don't know whether to fix it through the first template, or the second. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:John McCrae} 14:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I recall wondering why that had float: right; in it. I did not look to see if it was used elsewhere and it seems you're just adding it there. IMHO, that welcome is getting way overboard. I suppose from the look there it should center there? Will look a bit further. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another question

I apologise for continually bugging you; I am afraid I have gone out of my depth w.r.t templates.

Have you any idea what can be done to fix A specimen of the botany of New Holland/Billardiera scandens, other than to substitute out the broken templates (which, I can confirm, does indeed fix the problem)? Hesperian 00:04, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's going on there; I'll look further, but today is too busy with other stuff. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank you for thinking of me, and best wishes. :) Durova (talk) 18:45, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some html tweaking

Hi, User:Jayvdb recommended me to ask you for some help on this. Would you be so kind as to take a look at the html code of the boxes from Modern Money Mechanics, and see if there's anything you could improve? diego_pmc (talk) 08:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I made a first set of tweaks; I saw a lot of extra table rows that I feel would be better done with padding and/or margin attributes. I made a bunch of other twiddly sort of tweaks while in there. I also saw a bunch of nesting of elements that could be simplified; a div inside a td can often be made one. I just looked at the pdf you linked on John's page and see that you're trying to mimic the shadow effect of a hovering page; the borders are easy — as John did — the shadows not so, without tricks more suited to a regular web page (as opposed a wiki-markup page). You'll also have difficulties with some of the arrows I saw in that pdf. It's making me think images might be the way to go. Revert if you feel I went the wrong way. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:12, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually I was planning on leaving the shadows out—unnecessary cosmetic detail. :) Thanks for the help! diego_pmc (talk) 15:43, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A full and public apology for my vandalism

I apologise for my vandalism. I recruited meatpuppets. I was stupid at the time, but I was only 16. I managed to find open proxies to edit Wikipedia via, as such, and got people who wanted to edit blocked.

But I have a reason for this — I was influenced by people I knew in school who edited Wikipedia abusively, treating it as a game.

Also, if anyone has ever seen any accounts with the username "Sunstar/SunStar" whatever, well, they're fakes created by me, not affiliated with the real individual's website (someone I know has a website with that name, I just felt it was a funny prank to play at the time, now, looking back I feel like an idiot!)

The SunStar username really should not have been used by me; it was a joke account I created that used the name nicked from someone else's site (apologies to the site owner for stealing your website's name)! I'm not going to waste anymore time now, I don't find vandalism fun anymore, and anything suspected of being a sockpuppet of me is more likely to be a copycat. I'm not Willy on Wheels or responsible for any vandalism like him, unlike what some people on Wikipedia said. I also faked my edit history — well, stole someone else's to be honest. I've upset you, checkusers, far too many people. Not everything that is always suggested as me is me. I did share account passwords too, making these role accounts. Anyhow... I've been a bloody idiot and want to "go straight" now, so to speak. I've upset too many people, and may as well turn around. I've decided to grow up now. 'I do have mental health problems, so apologies if my on-wiki behaviour came across as a bit odd.' A full and public apology

My mental health problems are either w:autism or w:Asperger's Syndrome as far as I know, I was diagnosed with it about a year ago, now that explains why I was the way I was. --Sunholm (talk) 20:29, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] impossible?

Until now I've assumed it can't be done, and I still expect that is the case, but I suppose it is better to ask:

I've been proofing The miscellaneous botanical works of Robert Brown, a compilation of Brown's many botanical publications. It includes markers indicating the pagination in the original documents, but instead of marking the exact locations of the page breaks, the markers are floated to the left or right, within their paragraph!

An example. Brown's General view of the botany of the vicinity of Swan River was first published in Volume 1 of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Page 18 of the original can be seen at Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/38; note that it begins with "must be supposed to exist". The page of miscellaneous that reproduces it is Page:Miscellaneousbot01brow.djvu/326. Note the "18]" in the final paragraph, marking the line on which the page break occurs in the original; but note too that this marker does not mark the exact location of the break, but instead has been floated to the left, on the same line, within the paragraph.

Can it be done? The obvious thing is to wrap it in a <span style="float:left">, which appears to work but on closer inspection it puts it on the next blank line, then floats the succeeding text around it.

Hesperian 05:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The following suggests that what I tried ought to work, if only my browser was CSS2 compliant:

"If inline boxes are placed on the line before a left float is encountered that fits in the remaining line box space, the left float is placed on that line, aligned with the top of the line box, and then the inline boxes already on the line are moved accordingly to the right of the float"[2]

Hesperian 05:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Are you clear on what an inline-box is? Think the rect around a sup-element, or a bit of text marked as italic or bold. I don't see where you tried that floated-span, but float is for block level elements — and inline elements that have their display property tweaked. nb: most of the valid values for the display property are not supported the retarded browsers, and note also that I've low tolerance for less than modern browsers ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

majik ;)

See this test. For wider use, it would go in a template: {{inline page ref}} or something like that. Note that I added an nbsp and that would be better done with a margin, mebbe padding, on the right of the block. I combined the {{smaller}} functionality because it was producing extra span-levels and was somehow expanding the block such that the next line was also indented. nb: there may be browser support issues here... It is unclear to me just where such refs should be placed in the text as the original typesetter basically did a float left from some point in the text and just where has been lost. Common sense, I guess: end of phrase; it may well be best to not actually go with the spot where it appears in the scan, but rather the next comma down the road. If you've been looking at these texts a lot, you're likely way ahead of me here. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I'm using the latest Firefox, not a retarded browser. Or is it?!

You can check things like that on preview; there's no need to hit save.

Neither span nor div worked for me. I didn't think to try span style="display:block". But your solution doesn't work for me either; it is floated onto the line below where it should be. Are you clear on what an inline-box is? — no, not clear, apparently.

Yes, it has been lost, in general, and in general I think I will leave them unfloated for that reason. But there are special cases, as in the example I gave above, where I am able to consult the original. In those cases I wish I could float them left from the location of the original page break.

Thanks once again for your help.

Hesperian 12:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S. The code you've used there is the same as your new version of {{float left}}, so I guess we could just use that... if only it worked. Can you advise what browser you consider not retarded, and double-check that it renders the float on the correct line? Hesperian 12:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Mozilla doesn't make retarded browsers; neither does Apple, or the Norwegians ;)

On second look, I'm seeing that it is (was;) down a line from where it should be; this could be fixed be moving the ref, but that's introducing a lot of subjective judgment and isn't a good approach. I suspect that there's a fix for this, and will look further. I saw that there are some right-side versions of this in those pages; issues would be the same. Maybe make something that does left, right, and in-place? The '[' and ']', and margin could be automatic. Any float causes text to avoid the floated block; this includes whatever padding, border, and margin go with it — and the test above doesn't have full control of those; getting this into a template will allow further properties to be set. One thing that may sort the issue wrong-line issue is to avoid font-size: smaller; — as it's a loosely-defined thing — and use a value such as .6em; TDB. If you'd like this in the margin along the lines of the '¶', that would be doable with positioning; might have situation where they squabble, though.

Another thought; by positioning this between 'of' and 'tribes' — as in the scan — you're adopting the post-float the original typesetter implemented; he would have been referring to some point to the right of that on that line. If his rule of thumb was left or right as-closest, that point would be somewhere on the left half of the line.

A related discussion is over on;

• Template talk:Dropinitial-span

Chip in. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:20, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The text I quoted you is from the CSS2 standard; no such text appears in CSS1. I understand that CSS2 support is poor at present, even in non-retarded browsers. I conclude that the most efficient solution is to close this discussion and carry on with proofing. By the time I've finished the 1200+ pages in these three volumes, the problem will have gone away! Hesperian 23:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

CSS2 support is pretty good in modern browsers; they're supporting some of CSS3, too. Even Microsoft's benighted browser is coming along. It's an interesting issue you've run up against and I'm sure there's a good solution available; just a question of time and priority. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Update: this is Firefox bug 50630, now fixed on the Trunk and in 3.5b4. It only took them 9 years to get around to it.... Hesperian 00:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's rather interesting. I've actually run into this in a non-wiki context this week. I'm relieved to see it sorted (and to know that's it's a real bug, not a misunderstanding on my part of the intended behaviour). And soon enough, there will be a 3.5 released and I can ignore it. I'm increasing less concerned about poor performance by old browsers, no matter who made them. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] messed up footnotes

somewhat related to: Wikisource:Scriptorium#Dropinitial template changed — Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Jack, could you explain what was wrong with the footnotes on The Forgotten Man and A Short History of Standing Armies in England? I use table settings like the ones you replaced all the time but haven't noticed any problems — for example, here and here. Thanks! --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 12:50, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry — and what's the point of this edit? --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 12:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi. On the two pages where I changed the table to a div, the 'notes' section header and the first footnote (and the first word of the note) were being rendered way up at the top left of the page; the rest of the text of the footnote was still down below. I still see it here and here. The other two examples you've offered exhibit the same problem, so I'd be inclined to change them, too; what I'll do is take another look. This may be a browser-specific issue; I'm on the latest Firefox.

The {{blank line}} is a more subtle issue; without it, the initial paragraph is being generated with an initial br-element, which is not ideal. I'm doing a lot of this in response to looking to the generated page source, not just the appearance on-screen. Hope that help. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:01, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

re the tables; I understand this further now. The table is set to 96% of viewport width and is right-aligned; if the remaining 4% is wide enough for "Notes" to fit, it pops to the top left along with a few other loose bits. This only happens on higher resolution displays; it seems to kick-in at about 1360 pixels wide. This will vary depending on skins and likely other stuff. A page that used "Footnotes" (wider) would not have this happen until somewhere above 2000 pixels. The div technique will avoid this entirely by not leaving any room for stuff to sneak into. Any of the usual div-techniques should be safe; i.e. class="prose" or class="lefttext" or reasonable hard-coded styles such as I used. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:14, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

re {{blank line}}; I've cut that back out as it was only an issue in the page-space. In the main-space, it's not an issue. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm on FF 3.0.1.0, and not seeing any problem. More detailed response later... Never mind — I think this makes sense. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 17:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Finally got a chance to look at this; seems like the div works well. I'll start fixing the pages I've created with tables. I'm still not sure what the benefit of {{blank line}} is — I only use it when the top of a page in the page namespace is a new paragraph. If there's a good reason to use it elsewhere as well, I'm open to it. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 03:44, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Great. I'm not sure how widespread this sort of table usage is. I'm worried that there could be hundreds or more. And I'm not sure how one might search for this sort of thing; mebbe a bot looking for any index page with a table in it and then building a list for review. The {{blank line}} was a much more minor issue and I've cut it for now. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Float left

→ User talk:Spangineer#Template:Float left

[edit] controlling columns break?

Any thoughts on the best way to manage Page:The Botanical Magazine, Volume 1.djvu/78? Multi-columns was easy enough but it seems there's not yet any support for controlling columns breaks. Hesperian 05:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

At first glance, I see Gecko-specific code, which is rendering the left and right chunks over and under with other agents, and CSS3 which also has spotty support; (which is why I'm not using it on a regular basis; also part of the MSIE rants). Cool column handling is probably an area that could use good tools, but in this case I'm wondering if a plain two-column table would be the best route. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Re: your aside, it is {{ls}}. This document uses a range of ligatures including {{ct}}. The transcriber (not me) has made the editorial decision to honour {{AE}}/{{ae}} but ignore all the other typographical nonsense, but is fine by me. Hesperian 06:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] white-space

Thanks for all your help. I did not realize the text I was adding had all those space issues. I won't add anymore more text until I have cleaned it up using AWB. (I think my laptop problems are resolved — bad power supply.) TGIF! - Josette (talk) 00:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

RUReady4tehweekend? Have a beer; have 4! A few loose spaces are no big deal (tab characters are a big deal;) but those pages had hundreds or even thousands all over. With the right tools, it's easy to sort these issues. A lot of working with software involves working with large bodies of text and making changes to it in carefully controlled ways. Don't worry too much about this issue; web browsers strip-out extra spaces all the time. It is only in editboxes and external editors that one notices them and mostly only if one is looking for such issues. I also look for extra or omitted newlines. Bad power supplies are often caused by bad power — surges. Autotransformers (10kg, lots of copper coil) are common here. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:00, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I started History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution/Chapter XV. Would you please take a look, when you get the chance, and make sure I edited it correctly and it meets your approval before I continue. Thank you. - Josette (talk) 06:11, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I removed a few odd bits of extra white-space in the middle of sentences. These just look odd when reading the text in the editbox. As I said, these are likely coming from whatever OCR system was used by whomever.

Ready for something new?

So, I have another idea; like to have a new user page? I have an idea, and I'm not telling. I would like your ok and to know your usual screen resolution. I will make it work for most common resolutions, but am inclined to assume that things like 800×600 are quaint and not to be concerned with. I'd like to hear that you're running 1280×1024 or better and that we can allow users at 1024×768 to have to deal with a horizontal scrollbar. My idea can be imported to other wikis, too.

Sure, I'm up for a new user page. My usual screen resolution is 1280×1024, so play away. - Josette (talk) 11:20, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

How’s that ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Too cool for school! - Thanks -Josette (talk) 12:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It would work on other projects, too. Issue on en:wp would be that you've more content there and positioning it all into the scene would not work as well. I can start by tidying the tables. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to rid me of some of my content ;). Do your worst. - Josette (talk) 13:30, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, but mostly tomorrow as Dayu wants me to have dinner. I'll tidy the tables and see if I can fit everything in. Some other image might work; one with more space for tables. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:34, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I reverted your last edit to my user page - ok? - Josette (talk) 06:59, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Last I checked it was your user page ;) and I did suggest that you might revert that edit; it was only a tweak to see if it would make it fit on your preferred screen resolution. If that fits horizontally, great. The vertical scrollbar is to be expected; the box on-screen for the image is 1090×970 and when you add stuff like toolbars and other stuff on the page and the browser chrome, you've got a page about 1500 pixels tall. This could, of course, be trimmed but I think it works well for this image. People are used to vertical scrollbars, but hate horizontal ones. The actual image being placed on your user page is 1800×1247 pixels; this is being cropped to the part seen; this: margin: -120px -540px 0; is chopping 540 pixels off the left and 120 off the top. The overall page weight is high; that image is 423.59 KB (433753 bytes).

There are sites pages that do intend horizontal scrolling; prêt-á-porter, for example. See also. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm very happy with the way it looks. Thank you David !!!!!! - Josette (talk) 21:08, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] sic

Hi Jack,

Want to help me flesh out an idea?

{{Sic}} and {{SIC}} do different things. SIC indicates the presence of an error by underlining the erroneous word, and provides a correct form in a tooltip. Sic does nothing at all.

The task of indicating the correct form of a misspelled word is fundamentally the same as the task of indicating the full form of a hyphenated word; yet the manner in which SIC presents the correct form is completely different from the manner in {{hyphenated word start}} and {{hyphenated word end}} present the complete form.

Here's an idea:

1. Define a CSS style named "sic" which defines how the incorrect and correct forms should be displayed; e.g. inline and in a tooltip respectively.
2. Redefine sic, hyphenated word start and hyphenated word end to apply that style;
3. Redirect SIC to sic.

What do you think? Want to help me thrash out the details? e.g. is it best to pass the correct form in an attribute and the incorrect form in spanned content, as in

<span style="sic" value="cops">oops</span>

or is there a better way? What would the CSS style definition look like?

Hesperian 04:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

The rule, for Template:SIC/User:Pathoschild/Template:Sic, would be this — or something much like it:

• span.sic { border-bottom: 1px dashed #666; }

The example span above would not fly; span does not take a 'value' attribute and it would be class="sic". Definable arguments is a job for templates.

It seems to me that there are two goals here and the two templates reflect that. The customary usage of [sic] in a quote leaves it up to the reader to suss-out the original intent; {{sic}} is following this view and simply seeks to warn editors off who might fix an obvious typo; probably especially useful in the absence of a scan. The tooltip form is seeking to offer a correction of an error, which is more than the hyphenation templates are doing. It is probably reasonable to offer the correct form in those cases where it is quite obvious (to us;). Some future tool could parse everything and generate a corrected text. There are probably cases where someone has written mush and we would be better off not seeking to make sense of the mess (written before I found the second example, below;). I don't think we want to tie sic and hyphenation together; the norm for hyphenation is just the hyphen. What we can't do is style the tooltip; that's pretty much up to the browser — although there are ways to make a hidden span that appears on-hover, and we could style that (I could cobble together an example; this would be a fair amount of code spat-out by a template and some new rules in a style sheet). Consider these two examples;

• Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/127
• Page:GHW Bush Letter to General Greene.png

The first is likely a mistake by the typesetter; if such a typo was made by the author and missed by his editors, the typesetter would have just fixed it as he worked; the second is rather more likely the author's true manner of speaking. A cultural/genetic idiom, in this case. I don't see how the tooltip-form of template would be invoked on the second page. I'll think further on this. I'm surprised that there are relatively few uses of these. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. What a shame that CSS can't be used to style textual relationships! There are many different ways in which one might choose to represent a piece of text as an annotation for another piece of text. You could underline the annotated text, and put the annotation in a tooltip (as in SIC); you could leave the annotated text as is, and put the annotation in a tooltip (as in hws and hwe); you could make the annotated text a link, and put the annotation in a popup; you could render the annotation in superscript immediately after the annotated text; you could render it in square braces after the annotated text; you could add a footnote number to the annotated text and render the annotation in a footer or sidebar; you could suppress the annotation; as so on. In a perfect world, the determination of how such an annotation relationship should be rendered would reside in the style sheet, not the page content. Alas! The Unattainable!

Point taken re sic v SIC.

I still say that it is bad style for SIC to indicate its tooltip with underlining, and hws and hwe to indicate its tooltip with nothing. It offends my sense of consistency. But the whopper I thought I had hooked has proven so small that I think I'll throw it back.

Hesperian 07:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Don't give up on this yet; I'm rather liking the idea of going a step beyond system tooltips; i.e. the title attributes. If we use a bit of extra code, generated by a template in this case, we can have a span of text that's hidden most of the time, but that appears when you hover over it. This requires css in the style sheet (inline css is not enough; no :hover selectors). Anyway, I can look into this, and will. These will amount to custom tooltips and these we can style as we see fit. Round corners in the smart browsers; we could even have background images — not that this is much a good idea. I also like your sidebar suggestion. On a page rendered in a fixed-width narrow column, such that there's room along side it, we could have a positioned box with some annotation in it; a word, a paragraph. Too many on a page could cause them to interferer with each other the way template:page can. The rules for such stuff would be defined in the style sheet; however, the markup would vary for some of these techniques so the template generating the markup would have to be adjusted along with the css. All good stuff to consider. Adding a dashed underline to hws/hwe would not be a bad thing; hell, most people will never notice that there's a tooltip if we don't drag their attention to it. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

a well built stone wall

I realized my mere sentence above was not enough to thank you for all you have done for me; I needed a whole section. Thank you for the new user page, always cleaning up after me when needed and for taking the time to explain why. Terima kasih. - Josette (talk) 02:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

You are most welcome; look! another one! Yon stallion recommended this to me a while ago; I had seen it, but it was time to see it better. My view of the wiki-communities has changed for the better as I've meet more of the serious people — an you're one of them. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:07, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Need some coding help/advice

Gday JM. When transcluding pages from the Page: namespace to the main namespace, I am having problems with the class="lefttext" mucking up the formatting. In many cases this isn't a particular issue, however, on this specific part of the work, it is. I am too CSS clueless to work it out. :-/

Main namespace: Omnibuses and Cabs/Part I/Chapter X
Pages at issue, p. 129 through end of chapter.

They are nice hanging paragraphs in the Page: namespace, when transcluded they are YICK! Your help or advice would be most welcome. Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 13:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

You seem to have noticed my work in progress ;) adding class="tiInherit", which is brand new so clear your cache (Command-Shift-R, or something along those lines), will invoke an override of the ambient rule re text-indent; it uses the value "inherit" which will pull in the value from the div-element you were wrapping around stuff. What was occurring before was the paragraphs were still getting the indent the normally goes with lefttext and it was being pushed-in by the padding. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Award for participation
Proofread of the Month June 2009 Omnibuses and Cabs

[edit] Admin needed

User:Hohauto on a vandal rampage. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I was asleep for this. Looks all cleaned-up. Cheers, Jack Merridew 02:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

User:Fandalbot, probable returning vandal. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:50, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed it. billinghurst (talk)

Back again as User:Return of the Fandal. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm only on sporadically this week, sorry. Jack Merridew 10:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting help needed again :-)

Hey JM. CSS is defeating me again.<shrug> Can you please look at The History of the Church and Manor of Wigan/Sir Richard Kyghley and see if you can stop the indent on the first line of the list of names (towards the end). Thanks. [Yes, I know one of the pages is wonky further up, I need to do tables, and will get to that when my patience returns.] -- billinghurst (talk) 10:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. It was the same issue as before; class="lefttext" indents paragraphs and it's not always appropriate. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Divs, Spans, and html bibs and bobs are not my forté. I will program that into my autotext and try it as the first attempt to bloody fix my snafu. :-) -- billinghurst (talk)

[edit] Vandal again

User:Fandal - A New Beginning. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Template Collaboration and Main Page

With the new PotM, the front page looks a little wacky. Care to express an opinion and offer/implement solutions? -- billinghurst (talk) 15:55, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Does this help? The 'recent' text was running under the image at some screen resolutions and I added a margin to keep the text in a column. The right hand side of the page is typically rather longer than the left and this will nudge that further (at lower res). I'll try and squeeze a bit of space out of the new texts section. Flexible layouts often have this sort of issue and it can often help to adjust the amount of content; cut new texts to 6 or write a longer featured text blurb, for example. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] OCR button

Hello,

The ocr button is now enabled by default. you'll need to update your preferences as it's been disabled for you. sorry for the inconvenience. ThomasV (talk) 18:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem; looks like you toggled the use of the check-box. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] tiInherit

I just applied it to {{center}} to make it actually center transcluded text. Can't say I understand how it works, but I thank you for it very much. --Eliyak T·C 16:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Glad it's working; the intent here is to provide a way to *not* have the text-indent on paragraphs applied. If the prior usages of that center template contained paragraph that were getting the text-indent, it would throw the look off. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:53, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] line breaks

Hi. Nice to meet you, if we haven't before. I'm having problems with line spacing, someone dobbed you in to help. Formatting poems with transclusions is a problem, or anywhere I want control of the format; I tried using the header/footer and various means to control the line spacing after </poem>, the ":"-type indenting is no good either. Does one of the various poem templates resolve this, or do we use <br/>? I also failed to find a solution to a centered block of left aligned text, another example of my more trivial concerns. Cygnis insignis (talk) 13:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi. You can do styling on the poem tag:

I have a line-height in there that's not working, but a technique such as in the class="tiInherit" (see prior section) Would work here.

I did a bunch of poems that were left-aligned in a centered table (with a poem tag inside that); see:

• Page:Emily Dickinson Poems (1890).djvu/141

and of the rest of that work. There are some that are transcluded and as I recall there were some issues with some. (fyi, low-energy today; I have a cold). Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:22, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

moar

I've added class="lhInherit" to the poem above and the definition to MediaWiki:Common.css; now a container can control the line-height of contained paragraphs. The ambient is 1.5em and I'm using 2em, above; adjust as needed. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Great!—thank you. I'll play around with it. Hope you are feeling better soon. Cygnis insignis (talk) 10:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CSS help needed Template:pright

Gday. The template {{pright}} has been working fine, however, when combined with {{sc}} it goes all googly as per Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 1.djvu/146. Would you be have a look and see if you can suggest a fix to whichever template to make it all nice and ungoogly. As {{pright}} is only in its early stages and being trialled on this work, feel free to make whatever improvements you think necessary. Also note there is a little discussion about the template at Index talk:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 1.djvu Thx. billinghurst (talk) 10:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Not to worry, my faux pas. I had done it differently on earlier pages. Of course, you are still welcome to improve {{pright}}. :-) billinghurst (talk)

Hi. Just noticed this as I'm shutting down for the night. Sorted? I'll look into it tomorrow; {{tl|pright}'s not one I've looked at before. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:00, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Need some wikitable and css expertise ...

Hi ... I'm back, & flummoxed again. I am needing some help with the table at Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/220. I am having problems with getting the table correct, and will need to use it on subsequent pages, and elsewhere through the work. Are you able to give this num-num some help? Thanks if you can. -- billinghurst (talk) 08:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, and sorry I didn't notice this yesterday. I cleaned-up a few bits, like 1.5px on the borders which is improper. I set a caption and heading style in the table, too. Then I went and looked a few pages ahead and see that this is long...

Smack me! I am not good at px/em/+++ (could be quite a long list). Yes long. As the work is WS:PotM I was looking at something that was transportable and usable.

I've believed for a while that this project needed some table formatting classes; I was mostly thinking about Tables of Contents on works, but this sort of data table would benefit as well. How far would you like to go with this table? The spaced-out dots could be done with repeating background imagery. The row spanning "{" & "}" could be just a huge character or an image.

I usually use File:GullBrace.svg and File:GullBraceLeft.svg. Anything that makes table easier for me is very much appreciated. Spaced out dots would be usefu, JV utilised them in another work, but they were too fiddly for me (ie. I cannot remember them, and couldn't find the work again). If adding them is going to have ongoing complexity, then I am happy to say no, they are ornamental.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

My aim is the transcription, and any tools/tricks/twists that I can use to make the formatting easier, I am very appreciative to have available, especially reusable. Thanks for cheats help that you can give. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I looked to see if I could one off define to centre specific columns, NADA from my looking. So I had been thinking to beef up the cell padding to sort of simulate that, and gave up there as beyond me. I have worked down to some braces.-- billinghurst (talk) 13:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

[wave] Not sure whether you are around or not. I am closing in towards the completion of Index:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu with the tables and index to do. I was wondering whether you had thought further about table styles for common.css. If you have guidance that would still be appreciated. Thx. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] save me from myself

I have been lazy and used a table to lay out a page. Can I interest you in putting Page:On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae.djvu/39 right, so that might do the following pages they way they ought to be done. Hesperian 07:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, don't worry about it. The layout is different on recto and verso pages, and it would be pointless to try to preserve that in the transcluded document; so I am just going to float the margin notes right and be done with it... and not a table in sight! Hesperian 14:00, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 2chicken2 referral User talk:Hesperian#MediaWiki:Proofreadpage header template

Both Hesp and I consider ourselves 2poultry to undertake a task, so I am again laying it here 2roost. See our scratchings at User_talk:Hesperian#MediaWiki:Proofreadpage_header_template and help us unscramble our eggs. Thx if you can, and please excuse all puns. -- billinghurst (talk) 13:03, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Really sorry I've wandered off. I'm looking at the css now. Yon question is not too clear. Just color tweaks? Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:03, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's a look-and-feel thing. Our headers and footers and whatnot all have a consistent look: box with light green fill and bright green border. I think the idea is to make MediaWiki:Proofreadpage_header_template look much the same. If you don't know what MediaWiki:Proofreadpage_header_template does, go read Wikisource:Scriptorium#Problems with new update, and maybe follow the announcement link from Wikisource:Scriptorium#Code update. Hesperian 14:17, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll go read those links; thanks. Just dropping the colors in to the template would be easy, but such things should be centralized (choir, I know;). At the moment, I'm thinking of rearranging the current css with the colors broken out to different rules that have multiple targets. This sort of encapsulation of color rules is a lot of what I've been doing elsewhere on teh internets the last month or so. Dynamic site skins ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:24, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for being weird and vague. It is the look that needs to be updated. When digging, I thought preferable that there was some standardisation of the template by application of existing classes, rather than pasting colours, etc. I am happy with all cheats that can be applied for this CSS-chook. -- billinghurst (talk) 14:52, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] gap

A quick sanity check of {{gap}} please. Is this an acceptable, portable, standards-compliant implementation? Can you think of a better way to do it? Hesperian 13:22, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sending out search parties

I am presuming that either Abu Sayef have kidnapped you, or it is a host of lithe and nubile vixens. Please confirm which as if it is the second I will lead that search party myself. billinghurst (talk) 09:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Nah, the kidnappers are mostly over in the Philippines. I did have a rather buxom girl doing my toes yesterday and another young lady doing my hands; this while a gay fellow cut my hair (which had gotten a tad ragged). All followed by a pleasant hour-long full body massage by another girl. Doesn't everyone unwind after a bit of real-life stress this way?

It's been a busy month, meaning October, and I see that we're much of the way through November, too. Real-life is still busy but less stressful, now. I'll try and pop in here a bit more often. Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Great news. I will go back under my desk and finish off the rocking that I started earlier. billinghurst (talk) 08:57, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] hicups ;)

Going? Go in peace, dude. It was a pleasure knowing you. Hesperian 03:40, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey mate, just found out about all the drama yesterday oddly. Sorry to see a good contributor pilloried over 5% of his decisions. I hope you continue to hang out at WS; don't think anybody here really judges you based on other projects - here, you're just the guy who adds some great historical texts :) Keep in touch, and don't forget us! Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din.} 12:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a case of the hicups ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Restoration complete

I updated your archives at Wikisource:Administrators/Archives/Jack Merridew#2009-11 Self-requested Removal/Restoration. I made the notation very dry, because I did not feel confident explaining it more fully. I have only read what you posted locally, which was rather oblique and seemed to assume people were reading things elsewhere. After you feel that everything is settled you might consider to adding a short explanation there. It may be easier to write this when it is fresh in your mind, as your confirmation is seven months away. It may not be asked about at all and you need not add anything, but I wanted you to realize that my notation comes across rather mysterious.--BirgitteSB 19:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Hooray! WB! Didn't read the notation, however my feel on the process falls along the lines of after a nuclear explosion on one of the WMF projecta, a premature expectoration (dummy spit) about WMF participation was reflected upon, with community consultation, with the decision that a person's consideration and reputation not should not have a negative connotation in their exploration and undertakings within other projects. Clear as mud! billinghurst (talk) 20:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Terima kasih; I actually saw this last night but was on handphone and it was late. My comments here were terse and oblique because the mud involved had nothing to do with this project or any other than the one rather well known as the toxic wiki. I agree fully with your comments at WS:AN and will comment there, next: i.e. June is still on; the notion of a reset to next Nov/Dec had not even occurred to me. I believe a local explanation should not delve into other project specifics in the interest of drama-encapsulation. None of us want such things spilling over into our library. I will post a note to the Admin/Archives/Jack page, but it will be later today as I'm about off to something else. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the note. That was exactly what I had in mind.--BirgitteSB 21:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Glad you like. As I see you've noticed the multi-front forest fire over there rages on. I've been otherwise busy and think an en:wikibreak is in order for the holidays. I'd hang out in our library, where it's quiet. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] wb

Welcome back. Hope that you are all settled and enjoying the change of environment. billinghurst (talk) 20:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)