Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2005-10

Page lengths

I am concerned that the page length limit of 34kb quoted can impact on the appearance of the edited page. I don't know the reason for its size. The browser I use, Firefox has no problem to download big pages. Is it a figure we have inherited for historical reasons? Perhaps it was it set for Wikipedia to make sure pages there are not too long. But there it is simple to hyperlink. If this size is adhered to rigidly, texts have to chopped up in to arbitrary sections by Wikisource editors in a way that does not appear in the original text, and is liable to confuse people. This is likely to cause problems in modest pages in EB11, which are text heavy for example. Maybe we might have a greatly enlarged figure specifically for Wikisource. Could a developer comment,please. Apwoolrich 20:08, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

No one at Wikisource really follows this page size. Unless the work is over 500kb, I don't look twice at it (unless, of course, the work can be logically divided up, as in chapters or parts). For the EB1911, I wouldn't worry about some of the articles that are really large; just put the entire thing on one page. I don't think we should arbitrarilly divide pages up to meet a very small kilobyte limit.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 17:59, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I thought this was in fact so. In which case, why are we getting a bannner appearing at the head of long pages >34kb saying they are too long and needing shortening? It can only confuse newbies. Maybe we ought to mention this on the 'how to' page. Apwoolrich 07:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The reason we get those messages is probably because it's in each wiki's code to show it. It would be nice if we could get it removed for Wikisource, but until then, making a mention on the "How to" page won't hurt.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:54, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I think the limit of 32kb is only for some really old web browsers, so the page length should not be a problem unless the page is much larger (100kb? 500kb? 1000kb? I don't know). The message can be changed by an administrator ([MediaWiki:longpagewarning]).

Just added a note on the help page.Please amend as necessary. Thanks Apwoolrich 20:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I submitted a bug report to make the maximum value customizable but Brion doesn't seem to think its a good idea because of issues with older browsers. --CSN 22:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Hackery: Okay, an alternative to changing the code is adding a function to monobook.js. This function removes the size disclaimer if the page is 100 kb or less. It waits for the page to load so the disclaimer will pop up momentarily.

if (window.addEventListener) {
  window.addEventListener("load",removeMaxPageSizeMessage,false);
}
else if (window.attachEvent) { 
  window.attachEvent("onload",removeMaxPageSizeMessage);
}

function removeMaxPageSizeMessage() {
  if(document.getElementById) {
    var content = document.getElementById('bodyContent');
    var p = content.getElementsByTagName('p')[0];
    if(p != null) {
      var text = p.firstChild.innerHTML;
      var re = /This page is (\d+) kilobytes long/;
      var match = re.exec(text);
      if(match != null) {
        var num = match[1] * 1;
        if(num != NaN && num < 100) {
          content.removeChild(p);
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

I tested it on Firefox but not IE. It should work on any browser that supports getElementById and do nothing on older browsers. 100 is an arbitrary value. Maybe 50 would be better. The numbers listed on Special:Longpages get rounded so this function will actually pickup pages with length < 103kb or so. --CSN 02:33, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikisource News Page (multilingual)

There is now a news page at Wikisource.org for all languages to share updates about what is going on in their wikis. All updates can be written in all languages.

Please add your comments there about en.wikisource or any of the other wikis!

It would be great if someone could summarize the initial growing pains of en.wikisource (software bugs, new text projects...). This page can be added to until the end of October (at which point a new page will be started).Dovi 20:31, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

CSNbot

I'm sorry about spamming recent changes with CSNbot stuff. If people could please support me getting a bot flag it will make things much easier to read. The request is here. --CSN 22:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Okay, Angela took care of it. Thanks. --CSN 01:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Copyright violations

How does Wikisource handle copyright violations? Transwiki:Why I Am Not a Painter is a copyright violation from http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=850, and should not have been transwikied from en.wikipedia. User:Zoe. 172.194.143.211 23:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

You can post it at Wikisource:Possible copyright violations.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 02:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Templates

Would it be possible, please, for us to have a 'template page' added to the list of special pages. There are several we have devised for the EB1911 project, and I would like to see one that can be added to a Wikipedia article directing to a relevent Wikisource page.

I feel it would be useful if we could compile a kind of Wikisource editors' toolbox. It seems to me that Wikisource editing is a little more complex that writing for Wikipedia, in that more special markup coding is possibly likely to be involved. - Greek, Hebrew, typogrpahical symbols, etc. which need to be available if we are going to be able to replicate the appearance of the printed page. Not all these are available on the Wikipedia style sheets, and to make a proper job of thimgs we will need to make our own styelsheet up, copying the Wikipedia one, obviously, but adding to it. Apwoolrich 07:50, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This would certainly be a good idea as it is a hassle trying to find templates right now. AllanHainey 07:25, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Author Template

Are we going to use the author template or the list of links to wikipedia in various languages like we had on old wikisource? I ask because I don't want to change pages to use the template if people are going to change them back. Are the other languages something we could add to the template? --CSN 21:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I say we go for the template (although, you and I are the only ones who've taken part in that discussion). The old way is outdated now and needs to be changed. I don't think interwiki links to other Wikisources can be added to the template, because we can't be sure which author has a corresponding page on another sub-domain. I say we just add those manually.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 23:09, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I would go for the version with the full list of wikipedia language links (either the old version or the new template with foreign language links included). I think it would be useful for the large number of people for whom English is a 2nd language as they can access the wikipedia entry for an author in their own language without having to go through the English wikipedia (& can also see if there isn't an entry in their own language, & possibly they'll then start one). I don't know how much this would actually be used though.

One issue is that if we keep the 'old' style author pages a whole lot will need to be corrected as currently most show only the english link in red & no other interwiki links. It'll also be a bit of a hassle entering new links as you can't just copy them directly from wikipedia anymore (& add the |name of language) as the W: prefix needs to be added. If anyone knows how to do this more simply, or it is possible to get bots to add language links like on wikipedia then this would save a lot of work. AllanHainey 07:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm in a bind here, between being nice and mean :-). I understand that people might come here who only speak English as a second language (because of all the 'Source wikis, we provide the most material, and most of that isn't available in other languages), and having a biography link to that author's page in numerous languages would be nice.

But, we can't always assume that the language the user is a native speaker in will have an available page at Wikipedia--English might be their best choice. Also, overall, the English Wikipedia pages have the most information than any other language sub-domain over there. So if an ESL speaker wants to read a biography, English would probably be the link of choice, and if they're really picky, they can try to find that biography in their own language over there.

And having the numerous language links on pages is the most horrible thing to have to keep up-to-date :-). Trust me, I used to do it. It takes hours to do, and with the number of author links rising, the number of author pages to keep updated will only add more time to the procedure. It will get to the point, where it will take a week just to update all of the language links over here. It's much easier if we just put the English link and let people sift through the other available languages themselves.

One thing we do need to do is interwiki author links. I don't think many of our pages have those, even though there were numerous author pages in different languages on the main WS.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I do not think it would be mean to remove the biography links. In wikisource, the purpose of author pages is to let people know what works we have by this author. There is no reason to believe someone visiting an author page is looking for something else. Filling the page with other things makes the retrieval of useful information more difficult. (of course, the list of biography can be useful too: but in a different context; it is useful in wikipedia, not here) ThomasV 15:03, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I think there's another snag we have to get past, now. Some author pages have biographical work here on Wikisource that we link to (for example Author:John Adams). With the template, we aren't fit to work with this kind of deviation. Do we add another parameter to the template and try to make it fit or add it manually?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:12, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

This is probably a pretty rare situation. I say we use the template for the average author page and then in special cases like Author:John Adams, do whatever looks best, even if that means not using the template. --CSN 20:39, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

How do you like the look of the german author pages (like de:Dante Alighieri). I think the template they use is a bit complicated but I like the three links to pedia, quote, and commons then the Works below that. Maybe we should adopt something like that. --CSN 20:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

It's a good template. The problem we'd run into over here, though, would still be the TOC. But, that's something we could do away with (even though it wouldn't be ideal), unless there would be a way to incorporate it into the template itself? Is that possible?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 20:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, its possible. Check out Author:Dante Alighieri. Is it too much of a distraction to have a table of contents even if there is only one entry in it? Alternately we could pass an option into the template that specifies whether or not to include a TOC. Does the new template look too complicated? --CSN 23:40, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

So, are we passing on including pictures on the author pages? Either way's fine with me. I think the template might be too complicated for new users (no one will know what parameters to use), so that might need to be considered. You and I might be the only ones ever to use it (which is also fine with me). A TOC of one entry is kind of pointless, so if we could pass an option into the template to include or exclude a TOC that would be great.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 02:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Yep, thanks to those geniuses over at Wikimedia, you can use Template:HideIfEmpty and Template:IfEmptyDo. Anyway, I updated the template. Now you can pass a parameter called TOC and set it equal to nothing and there is no TOC. If you set set it equal to true or anything else, you get a TOC floated to the right. If you leave it out all together you still get a TOC so you have to specifically set it equal to nothing to remove it. Check out Author:Dante Alighieri again.

As far as pictures go, I don't know. We could do them. German Wikisource does pictures plus some other biographical info but I feel like that is all available on Wikipedia and we would just be duplicating their efforts. It would be nice to have some user feedback on this. I don't mind if it is just us adding the template either. There aren't nearly as many author pages as I thought anyway. --CSN 02:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, the consensus seems to be to get rid of the old author template with the list of foreign links so I'll go along with that. On what new template to use I'd say that while new template looks good it is probably too complicated & cluttered (in the code) for new users, most of this seems to be due to the wee wikipedia/wikiquote/etc logos which we could do without. I think we should avoid a situation where the author template could scare away new users from adding author pages & where only 2 users actually add these. I would be happy with the existing (author template or the new version if it can be simplified a bit & made more accessible (eg on edit page line gaps between wikipedia/wikisource/etc, remove wee images, remove links to projects (wikiquote, etc) as opposed to authors pages on those projects, simplify formatting - don't know if any of this is possible/feasible no doubt someone will) & less daunting.

TOC would be useful for those authors where there are a lot of subcategories of work but would be irrelevant for most so I think it could be left out except where it is specifically needed (say if there are more than 3 categories or sub-categories, don't know if that's possible though).

I don't think pictures are really necessary as they are available on wikipedia & noone goes to the author page to look at a picture anyway. AllanHainey 07:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess we can do without the pictures, although it would be nice to take up the vast sea of white space on the right sides, but it would conflict with the TOC if we did that. Looking again at the parameters, I think it might be more complicated (but not impossible)--there are only five(?), and it's all pretty straightforward. After doing it three or four times, I think people would get it down pat. We could turn the parameters into numbers if we had to, to simplify things, but I say we go with just how it is. Author pages aren't added very often, so the big mess would be to do the initial conversion.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 20:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Funny, I specifically used descriptive terms for the template because I thought it would be more intuitive then numbers. Another thing to think about is, this doesn't have to be the end all of author templates... We could suggest that users use this template but also provide the shorter template {{Author|Name|Initial|Dates}}. Let's face it, most new users don't know much about templates and will probably just ignore them all together. We can always go back and update those pages. I actually like the little images for the various projects, but I agree about the links to the project mainpages being overly complicated. How about this? The nice thing about the style and formatting is that we can go back and change it at any point without messing up author pages (as long as we don't change the parameters). Zhaladshar, we could just include images manually. If we can't come up with a good way to include a TOC and an image we could just add images for those pages without a TOC. --CSN 23:01, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Ha ha, I keep forgetting about that doing it manually thing :-). Yes, it probably would be best if we did it manually. That way we could have more freedom over it (like not even having a picture if it will be overly problematic). I'm fine with the template, and say let's go with it. Maybe another day or so for anyone (very doubtful, though) to comment?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 00:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

That Dante page is much better, I'd agree with using that as the template. On pictures if people want to go to the trouble to add thm manually then that'd be ok but I think we shouldn't have an automatic part for images on the template. AllanHainey 07:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I agree about the pictures. Besides, not all authors are going to have good pictures. By the way, I added some javascript to User:CSN/monobook.js to add a author template button to the edit toolbar. It shows up next to the horizontal line button as a big A. Click on it to insert the author template into a page. Feel free to copy. Of course when we move them template from Author/New to Author, you'll need to change that in the javascript. --CSN 23:56, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks CSN, the author template button is useful & will save a fair bit of copying & pasting. One other thing, I've just added a few author pages & I've just noticed (missed it earlier) that there aren't any dates of birth & death like in the old versions. Do you all think it is worth adding these to the new template so that it matches the 'Authors-D' (or whatever letter) pages which include these? AllanHainey 11:47, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm kind of ambivalent about the dates but we need to decide now whether we want them or not so we don't have to go back and change pages later. --CSN 21:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah! I completely forgot about those! I think it would be good to have them (helps put the works in context and/or differentiate between authors of the same name). But this brings up the question of where to put them.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Some tips to remember when adding the new author template:

1. It includes a backlink to Authors-X so you don't need that elsewhere on the page.
2. It includes category authors and category author-x so make sure they are not on the bottom of the author page.
3. It includes ==Works== so you don't need that on the main page.
4. The IfEmpty template only works if the value is there but blank so if there is no link to Wikipedia for instance, you have to specify Wikipedia=.
5. Same goes for TOC, you always get one unless you specify TOC=.
6. Now is probably a good time to go through and check that authors are on the corresponding Author-X page since these have to be manually maintained.
7. When you add links to pedia, commons, and quote, make sure those pages have links to source using the {{wikisource author}} template on those pages.

--CSN 21:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

You know, after messing with this a bit last night, I actually like having the author picture more than having the TOC. Most pages don't seem to need a TOC since they aren't that long or don't have alot of subdivisions. And using the thumb parameter for images does the aligning and framing automatically like on Author:Oscar Wilde. Hmm. I know we already talked about this, but what do you all think about adding the image into the template? --CSN 21:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd say that it is unecessary to have a picture as standard, in a lot of cases there won't be a picture (or a good picture) in any case. If people adding author pages want to add a picture & no one else objects then I don't see a problem with them manually adding it, but is shouldn't be automatic or expected. AllanHainey 08:59, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we should treat it like the TOC though, include it in the template but then leave it blank if there isn't a pic for that author. That way it isnt mandatory but if you want to include it, the template takes care of the formatting. I already added it last night but if its a big deal we can get rid of it again. --CSN 13:03, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

That's fine with me. Of course, if the author needs a TOC, then we won't be able to have a picture, but I think we'll live :-).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:28, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I just added an author page for Paul Keating and the image code ([[Image:{{{Image}}}|thumb|Paul Keating]]) has come up automatically on the page without there being any image to link to (or any line on the edit page to note the location of a image or to leave blank). AllanHainey 07:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Looks like EnDumEn fixed it. You just need to include |Image= in the template (with no value) to use no image. --CSN 22:16, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Middle English

Now that we're on a separate sub-domain, the question of inclusion must be asked. Should we accept works written in Middle English? It's still readable according to English standards today (spelling is very different and word usage has changed in many instances, though). And we currently have works in Middle English--John Gower's Confessio Amantis and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Should these be here on this Wikisource or moved back over to the main one? (I imagine, if we move them back, we will have many problems trying to keep them there, though.)—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 02:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd go with keeping them on the en: language subdomain. Middle English (or really any pre-modern English) is still historically English & are more appropriate here than anywhere else, unless there is a Wikisource subdomain for middle English (& if there is I'd expect it to be fairly empty). AllanHainey 07:12, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there is a request for Old English. I personally think the most natural thing is to keep them here, just like ancient and medieval sources kept at Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic wikis. (Greek users recently added a link here to their index of ancient Greek texts. Nevertheless, if enough people eventually really want an Anglo-Saxon wiki shouldn't we let them try? Even a certain amount of overlap is not really so terrible.Dovi 08:12, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Alright, it sounds like we keep them. That's good, because since the amount of literature in Middle English is very small compared to everything written (and Old English even smaller), that wiki would be tiny. So keeping Medieval texts and older here, since it is still English (just in an earlier form) makes sense.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:50, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Use new main page?

The new Main Page still has plenty of things that can be improved over time. But right now it already has everything of importance from the current main page and looks quite nice.

Do people think it can be moved over? Obviously, improvements can always still be made...Dovi 11:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

go ahead. it already looks better than the previous one.ThomasV 12:40, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Move it over, Dovi. We can correct/improve it as we need to.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Very snazzy -- lets do itApwoolrich 18:00, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Wanted Pages

Why aren't there any pages listed on Special:Wantedpages? Do we need to talk to a developer about this? --CSN 19:41, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I would imagine we should file a bug report. That's just odd.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 20:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Featured Pages

Should we start doing a featured work section on the main page kind of like the featured articles on Wikipedia? We could do like one a month and it would help to get people involved in cleaning up and wikifying pages. We could start with classics and then start nominating other pages. For big works it would be nice to have the whole community working together. --CSN 19:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

This isn't a bad idea! We could have a page like Wikisource:Featured page nomination where we make our choices and such and could make a section on our Main Page for it as well.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 20:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Legibility

Has any thought been given to the legibility of the pages we create? A typical screen line-length is around 30 words, nearly three times the words per line of a book page. When a Wikisource page is printed on A4 portrait format the figure reduces to about 20 words. Apwoolrich 07:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I created a "prose" environment on the french wikisource. it centers the text, imposes a fixed line width, text justification, and paragraph margins. you might want to have a look at it. check fr:Les Habits neufs de l'Empereur for an example. ThomasV 08:02, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

That is very nice. Where is the code?Dovi 08:56, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Something like this means we could replicate the appearance of format of the original page, which would be very useful in many circumstances. I find long lines very tiring for editing,so that I increase the type size on screen (Firefox Control,Shift then+. Apwoolrich 09:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

the code is in [:fr:MediaWiki:Monobook.css]. you might want to adapt it to English typographic rules, I guess paragraphs are not indented in English. ThomasV 11:29, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

That's pretty nice! It makes reading less tedious, because the eyes don't have to scroll the entire width of the screen, but get a nice break after a bit. This is something we should think about incorporating here. Although, doing this, especially with novels, will drastically increase the length of the page and how much must be scrolled, but that can be put up with, I believe. There's also another talk at Help talk:Special characters about adding character inserts so when people edit pages, they can immediately click the character they want to insert and not have to pull up Window's Character Map.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 20:40, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

On EB1911 the original text is 2 columns to the page, and 10/12 words per line. I wonder if this new software can make 2 columns on the screen in which the text can flow? I certainly would welcome shorter line lengths as it makes editing very much easier. I urge we set about incorporating this gizmo as soon as we can as part of the Wikisource eding toolkit. How do we do it and who does it? Apwoolrich 07:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Here is a link with some line length research. And here are two articles from A List Apart on multi column layouts: Here and Here. If you are using Firefox 1.5 you can do multi-column layouts right now by wrapping your text in <div style="-moz-column-count:2;column-count:2;"></div> (One more link) (I forgot, Firefox needs the proprietary -moz on the front of their style.) --CSN 13:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you,CSN this is very useful stuff. The line length figure I quoted above was for a 19 in monitor, running at 1152x864 pixels. By changing the screen resolution the word count shortens, 1024 x 768 gives 25 wpl, and 800x600 gives 17 wpl. I don't know if different result comes from a small monitor to begin with. Apwoolrich 18:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

If you're going to start using multi-column format, please be sure to do it through css classes so those of us who don't mind one column can adjust our css to overrule it. Thanks. —Mike 02:15, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Text in multiple columns does not work well one web pages (IMO). I think that single column should be the default and those who want two columns should have to overrule the single column in their css files.

I agree with the person just above me. If someone would like multiple columns, it should all be done in his own .css/.js monobook. I don't think it should be changed sitewide unless we get unanimous support all around to do so (because that's quite a major change). But if individual users want multiple columns, I'm sure there's some script he can find that will do it for him.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:54, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Main page link

The main page link in the navigation bar is missing. Did we used to have this or am I getting confused between the different wiki projects? If we did it'd be useful to have it back as I couldn't find how to get back to main page for a while.AllanHainey 12:31, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why it's not showing up for you. I've got the link to the main page, and it should be site-wide unless you've changed your monobook.js. Try doing CTRL + F5. That might get it to show up again.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It's ok CSN helped me out, I'd copied too much of the monobook sourcecode for the author template. It's sorted now. AllanHainey 15:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Gent up the ladder

What has happened to the new picture, posted this morning. I rather like it. Apwoolrich 17:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I think Dovi replaced the old one with the current one.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 17:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The British Museum one has been up for some time, but when I logged on this morning this painting had replaced it. Now its back to the BM one. I don't understand computers! Apwoolrich 18:03, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

And now its back to the painting! Apwoolrich

Ahem. When I turn on my PC and call up WS it is the BL image. After I have logged-in and returned to the Main Page it is the painting. Interesting. Apwoolrich 20:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Songs ?

Hi. I added a song to wikisource (Little Annie Rooney), but I didn't find a "songs" category !? There is one on the french wikisource but as it is an english song I thought it was better to bring it here. If somebody who knows well about categories here could fix the mess I brought... :-) jn

Link to WS.org

Hi,

When will the links to and from wikisource.org work ? This bug is really annoying. Yann 20:29, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Not sure. We should probably write a bug report and ask for a link to there. Like we affix "ws:" to the links to go to the main Wikisource.org.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, let's file a bug report. The report should link to the discussion of the matter at the Scriptorium at wikisource.org.Dovi 03:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought there was a bug report already ? Yann 18:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

We know know that the link oldwikisource:Main Page works just fine! Dovi 10:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Character insert

I just added the first draft of a character insert menu. Please tell me what to remove and what to add.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

So far so good, but it wants augumenting with the other characters we have discussed. Is there any possibility of having it a bit larger, please. I have not so far had any response from Brion, maybe he is away. Apwoolrich 07:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Any hope of having the typographical symbols as well, please. Apwoolrich 18:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Sure, just tell me what typographical symbols--I'm sure we've talked about which ones, but my schedule is really busy right now, so I'd rather not spend the time looking for the discussion. I'm going to add the Greek alphabet, as well (if scientific papers ever start getting posted, that will be a benefit). Any ideas for other symbols?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:28, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

¿ ¡ « » § ¶ † ‡ • - – — Apwoolrich 12:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for putting these up. Apwoolrich 19:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Some decent quality fractions would be a bonus if we can get them 1/2 1/4 etc is not acceptable in my view. An alternative is to use a small type size for each digit, eg 1/2 1/4, but the result is typographically ugly since they cannot, as far as I know be rendered in superscript and subscript format. Apwoolrich 13:06, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Have you looked at Wiktionary? Their character insert function is more advanced. Maybe something similar would be useful here. /EnDumEn 15:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I have had a look at Wiktionary, but had a problem in that while the full character set appeared on clicking on edit, it reverted very fast to the basic Roman letter suite. So fast that I did not have time to properly examine the content. But I did see Greek. Apwoolrich 19:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll look for the fractions. And I'll add the characters sometime tomorrow (I'll be gone the rest of the day). Wiktionary's character insert's good, but I can't read the IPA vowels or consonants (can I get the fonts for those somewhere?). We should definitely import some of them.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:28, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Is some of Wikisource superfluous since we already have Project Gutenberg?

Moved to Wikisource talk:Project Gutenberg.

Copyright problems

How do you handle Copyright violations on Wikisource? Transwiki:Why I Am Not a Painter is a copyvio from http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=850, and was inappropriately transwikied from en.wikipedia. User:Zoe. 172.194.143.211 23:29, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Please list it at Wikisource:Possible copyright violations. AllanHainey 12:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Wanted Pages

There seems to be a problem with the wanted pages. It is listing wikipedia links & it has shows the wrong numbers of links(W:Robert Frost is in red & it says 82 links, but there is a Robert Frost page on wikipedia & when you click on the 'what links here' for the red page it shows no links). Does anyone have any idea what is wrong with it AllanHainey 12:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that yesterday when I went to correct all the links that were to point to Wikipedia. I don't know what caused it, but I'm giving the database a week to refresh before I report it as a bug.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:13, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

This bug has already been reported, see bugzilla:3586. /EnDumEn 16:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Breaking new ground

Have a look at The New Student's Reference Work. This combines both page images and a Wikified OCRd text, and must be a first for WS. Apwoolrich 13:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

That is absolutely outstanding! Incredible! I dreamed that someday Wikisource could do things like that...Dovi 02:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Digitizing books with MediaWiki which is quoted in the above article is a valuable commentary on how we might proceed on this. By coincidence there is a very interesting thread now running about digitisation of scholarly works on SHARP-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU. For those editors who do not know about it SHARP is the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. I posted a message yesterday about WS, but so far there has been no response to it - unless we have had a mega-increase of new editors since:) Apwoolrich 07:58, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Just read it. Extremely cool. That essay should be made a project page at Wikisource.Dovi 09:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow! This is amazing! This is one of the things that Wikisource has needed to do for a long time. I really hope this works out. It will spell a new era for this place if it does.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:58, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I also very appreciate these efforts. As a historian it seems me clear that scanned books images should not be deleted but archived because often it is complicated to re-create the original layout and a researcher might wish how exactly an old text is looking (see the German version of the famous Schedel chronicle de anno 1493 in the German branch of Wikisource). Lars is highly expert as an digitizer, his project Runeberg ist the leading Scandinavian digitisation project. We should be very proud that he is working here with us. Greetings from Germany --134.130.68.65 15:54, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The mechanics of digitisation need to form one of the articles on the editing list on the WS help page. I am part way through drafting something about this but it will need augmenting on the mechanics of scanning and uploadoing images to Commons. I scan and use OCR regularly for my work. These are typed (not word processed) books MS submitted to a publisher for whom I sometimes work, and also obscure C19 articles and papers concerning various research projects I am involved with. It is time-consuming, but not rocket-science, and IMHO any competent editor should be able to cope with it.The main thing is to work out best practice and have it on the help pages. I have learned various wrinkles about handling documents which I have not seen in the manuals. The main problems I have found revolve about OCR programs not being happy with certain sizes and font-faces of type, double and triple column work, and blemishes in hand-made paper causing false scans. It needs very careful proofing to sort it out. Whether every scan should automatically require an image to be stored as well is debatable. Are there any figures for the probable band-width requirements? Apwoolrich 18:12, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines concerning an ancient text found in Internet

In short: I have found a famous ancient text in Greek I was interested in in Internet (on some personal homepage). I'm tempted to put it to Wikisource. (Why? Personal homepage is not a reliable long-term repository. I'm uncertain about following questions:

• Responsibility for the source of the text: I didn't control the process of scanning the text. Is it still OK to post it to Wikisource (although I don't know exactly how it was made)?

• Copyright issue: Well, it was written in Ancient time, are there any copyright issues to worry about? (Related to the publisher of this paper version of the text?)

• How to put it to the correct place: I don't know Greek, so I can't be sure I'm putting it to the right place on the Greek Wikisource. Is there a way to put a well-known text by a well-known ancient author to the right place using mostly English web interface?

Could someone please answer the questions (I'm quite new to Wikipedia projects), thanks in advance!

Details: I'm talking about w:Marcus Aurelius' w:Meditations---I listed the Greek text I found [1] in the External links section of the Wikipedia article, the upper level page [2] at that site says the text was taken from a A.S.L.Farquharson's publication.

--Imz 01:28, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi! Your first point. Go ahead and post it. Most of the works found here were not scanned in by the users. OCR entails no copyright problems. Second, if this translation was made before 1923 (which it sounds like--a Greek version of the Meditations doesn't sound like it would be recent) there should be no copyright issues, so go ahead and upload it. Third, go ahead and post it on the Greek Wikisource. The people there will know what to do with it and where to file it.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 12:39, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

stable page protections

There seems to be some discussion about page protections of stable pages to prevent vandalism. I think that it's never safe to assume a page is really finalized ... typos, formatting, templates, tags, links, attribution, footnotes, html anchors ... all these things may be improved over a long time period.

One possibility, that I mentioned above in the 'Gutenberg' talk, is to adopt wikipedia's experimental edit auditing system. It's not in use now, but it was enabled for a week or so a while back. Basically, it keeps track of whether an anon edit has been checked. This prevents redundant RC patrolling, but makes sure everything does get checked by someone. That might prove helpful in avoiding the need for full protection.

Second, we could have a 'sandbox' version of a page. In this case, someone trying to edit a 'stable' page gets redirected to a sandbox, or testing, version to make their changes. Then, when some trusted user has approved the changes, the diffs are applied to the protected version. This would allow anyone to contribute in the small ways I mentioned above while preventing vandalism from ever appearing in the stable version. This would also remove some of the pressure to constantly be doing RC patrol. In addition, it has all the advantages of the 'audit' system mentioned just above. The disadvantage is that it would require a software change.

Just throwing it out there. Any thoughts? Wolfman 19:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Copyrights of Translations

Hello guys , i wanna ask about the copyrights of translated works , actually i have some ancient arabic philosophical works translated to Enhlish and Deutsch , i know the name of Translater for some and some with no Translator's name . As the Original arabic texts are hundreds years old , so i can add them in arabic wikisource with no problem , but the question : is it legal to add the English Translations or there is copyright for the tranlator . Thanks --Chaos 08:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

There will be a copyright for the translations, unless the works were translated before 1923. Then it is automatically PD. If this is not the case, it still might be PD depending upon whether the copyright was renewed. This is always a pain to investigate, however, unless you feel like taking that time. If these translations are, however, in the public domain, by all means reproduce them here.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The same copyright rules apply to authors and translators. The 1923 rule (or is it 1922?) is for (works published in) the United States. For Europe, you have the life+70 rule. For both authors and translators. --LA2 15:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

No, it's a bit more general than that. The United States will not protect the copyright of any work which was published before 1923, unless the work has such things like an editor's preface, or notes from the editor, etc. And then, the copyright only extends to the material that is new.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 16:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Whatever, but we are still talking U.S. copyright law, and Chaos didn't say if this was the U.S. or somewhere else. I'm in Sweden. --LA2 17:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't matter, though. As the Wikimedia servers are on United States territory, they are subject only to United States copyright law. So, regardless of whether it's still protected by copyright in another country, it's not protected here (so long as it's been translated before 1923).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 17:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

When I read ur comments , I get a Question : Under Which Copyrights Law Wikiprojects works ? is it the US laws or European laws ? and what about the anonymous Translations , i.e. the translations published in public domain without mentioning the name of Translator ? --Chaos 18:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The country where the Wikimedia servers are (in this case, the U.S.) are the ones whose laws we have to obey. As one country has no jurisdiction over what happens in another, we do not need to worry about another country's copyright laws. All we have to obey are America's.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 02:22, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, that's just plain wrong. The laws don't apply to servers, but to people. The servers are not going to jail, but you are. If I sit in Sweden and use some server in the U.S. to violate the copyright of Korean authors, I will be taken to a Korean court the next time I visit Korea, if not earlier. --LA2 08:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

After doing much digging, I will amend what I said. If it was published in the U.S. before 1923, it's in the PD. If it's a foreign work and it was published before 1909, it's PD (however, if it was published between 1909 and 1923 with proper copyright notice, it's also in the PD--however, if it was published without proper copyright notice, by the GATT treaty, there's a good chance it might be protected under copyright).

And, yes, the laws apply to where the texts are being used (i.e., where the servers are located). Case in point: Orwell's 1984 is protected under copyright in the U.S. (and England, of course) but not in Australia, Russia, or Canada. In fact, there is a server in Russia which has the full version of the text, and Orwell's estate hasn't gone about suing the person who maintains that server because they have no right to. One country protects another country's works (assuming those works were not published in the first country) through treaties it establishes with the foreign country. It doesn't enforce another country's copyright laws just because they're copyright laws (just as it doesn't enforce any of its other laws). Nor can Country A prosecute someone from Country B for breaking Country A's copyright law, unless there was perhaps a treaty between the two which stipulated that Country B would protect all of Country A's copyrights.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 12:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I support Zhaladshar, although it is even more complicated than that. Here is a good summary of US copyright law: [3]. It depends of the author national origin, and whether the work was published outside the USA before being published in the USA. Example: copyright law in India is only 60 years after the death of the author, and Indian authors' works are usually considered PD worldwide if they are PD in India, even they are not published in India. Yann 19:32, 14 October 2005 (UTC)