Template talk:Chinese/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Section lines go through template 2 Template 3 Chinese Postal Map Romanization 4 Template conflict 5 Can we standardize and combine features from the templates?? 6 Replacing inline format

[edit] Section lines go through template

Take a look at Sino-British Joint Declaration. At the time of this comment, the lines dividing the sections of an article go right through the template. I've tried to fix it to give the template a solid background, but my fixes did not work. Someone more familiar with the template, please fix it so that it has a solid white background. - Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:32, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template

This template is horribly unattractive in its font, spacing, font size, and color. Could it be made just like the Korean name (or Chinese name template, but just with a slightly different color? Thank you, Badagnani 08:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese Postal Map Romanization

I have changed "Postal system pinyin" in the template to "Postal map spelling", which will redirect to Chinese Postal Map Romanization. For any questions regarding this change, see Talk:Chinese Postal Map Romanization.--Niohe 19:17, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template conflict

This template should be avoided in articles where it comes into conflict with other templates. This is especially true for Template:Language, which already carries information included in these templates.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you give some examples? Template:Language redirects to Template:Infobox Language, which I have a hard time imagining conflicting with this (except perhaps in articles that are specifically about a language/dialect of China). But maybe you meant Template:Lang? -- Visviva 05:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I meant the infobox. I forgot that they moved it...

The problem is that they both go in the top right corner of the article. See this version of Cantonese (linguistics) for a good illustration. The current state of Zhejiang also looks quite awkward. There are tons of infoboxes and series templates which all take up the upper right corner space, so there's plenty of instances where the templates could clash with one another.

I understand that the motivation behind this kind of template is to clean up the lead, but I would rather insist that editors prefer to simply cut down on the amount of transcription trivia (the postal version are especially pointless) rather than trying to transfer it to these kind of templates. Try to keep in mind that the vast majority of our intended readership can't read either of the transliteration systems, let alone Chinese characters, simplified or not. And I'm saying this as a former student of Chinese, so it's not just a complaint about what I don't understand.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I will abstain from the general discussion, because my understanding of templates is limited, but I'd like stress that it is not pointless to mention postal map Romanization in a template on Chinese. This was the form of Romanization that was used to transcribe Chinese place names for generations and it is used in almost any English language work on China before 1979. By comparison, Legge romanization, Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Latinxua Sinwenz, may have their scientific merits, but they are far less commonly used.--Niohe 19:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can we standardize and combine features from the templates??

• There is the current Template:Chinese which can do Chinese names but not Japanese or any other names. But it can do multiple names.
• There is Template:Chinesename which can do simple language names, but not multiple names. It can switch between traditional or simplified displays.
• There is Template:cjk which can do Chinese, Japanese etc. But not multiple names.

It would be best to just combine the best feature of all three. Benjwong 19:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid that is not entirely correct.

• Template:Chinese can actually display names in Japanese and a lot of other languages. For example, the parameter "jpn" is for Japanese, "kor" for Korean, "por" for Portuguese, "rus" for Russian, etc. Notice that the three-letter name of the parameter is simply the ISO 639 code for the language, instead of some random, arbitary names.
• Template:Chinesename can display the names in both traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters, but so can Template:Chinese and Template:cjk.
• Template:cjk cannot do multiple names in one language. But the template is intended for displaying multiple languages. As long as there are already many languages in the list, I am afraid that it would make the list too long if we enable it to display many names for each of those many languages.

Alan 22:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The color scheme of cjk doesn't look very good, though it might have potential. Chinesename and Chinese are similar; I support adding extra languages to "Chinesename" rather than using "Chinese" (the colors and layout of this one are strange too). Badagnani 20:27, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

On one hand you said that "the colors and layout of this one [the "Chinese" template] are strange"; on the other hand you said that "Chinesename and Chinese are similar". In that regard, the two templates - "Chinesename" and "Chinese" - are equally strange. :-P - Alan 22:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I apologize that I have nothing overly constructive to contribute, but I would definitely support the creation of an effective template for this. The more features in a single template, the better. It compartmentalizes things nicely, and avoids the problem of multiple templates vying for the same space. (I rather like Template:Cjk, if the colors were changed, and the ability to do multiple names were added.) LordAmeth 21:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I am glad that you like Template:Cjk. However, I believe that we should worry more about whether the templates are informative, clear and systematic at this point, instead of putting too much attention on the colour scheme. Aesthetic is something subjective and arbitary. While some people would like colour scheme A better, some people would like colour scheme B better. It would be an endless discussion to talk about which colour "looks nice". But overall, the color scheme is something that can easily be modified in the program code. Perhaps we can ask around and find out the colour that most people like, and then switch to the new colour scheme. That shouldn't be too big of a problem to worry about. Alan 22:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

One very serious problem is that the template syntax of cjk and Chinese are extremely complicated, something that is not true of "Chinesename." And cjk takes up a lot more space, being less economical in that regard.Badagnani 21:10, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

In terms of the template syntax, I don't think "Chinese" and "cjk" are a lot more complicated than "Chinesename". All three templates make use of tables. Their codes have similar formats. I would say that the three templates are more or less equally complicated.

If you want a template to be able to do lots of different things, you can't avoid the complexity in its syntax. This is the price that you have to pay. :-) Fortunately, a lot of Wikipedians know programming. As long as the source codes are well organized, a lot of folks should be able to understand.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because it is a template. As long as whoever writes the code makes it simple for people to apply the template to articles, who cares how complicated the code is. :-) I beleive this is also a very important purpose for having a template. With the template, we only have to write the complicate code once, and make our life easier when we apply the template to articles.

You also mentioned that "cjk" takes up a lot more space. I am afraid I don't entirely agree with that. The "cjk" template initially hides all the transliterations. It doesn't display the information (namely the transliterations) that most readers don't care unless the readers ask for them (by clicking on the "[show]" button). By hiding some information, "cjk" actually takes up a lot less space than "Chinesename".

Alan 22:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, well, I have very little experience in coding, so whatever others think is good should be fine. I think the key thing is to make sure the template is flexible to represent as many different languages and different scripts as may be needed on any given article. LordAmeth 22:05, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I am ok with changing to Template:Chinese if it can do the Japanese and the many languages like Template:Cjk. The problem is that I am not much of a wiki coder. Let me do a comparison chart. I will print result here. Hang on. Benjwong 22:41, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, we are not really "changing to Template:Chinese". Notice thatTemplate:Chinese has been existing, and has been widely used, BEFORE another Wikipedian wrote the additional template, Template:Chinesename. Also, as I mentioned above, Template:Chinese can display names in Japanese and many other languages. - Alan 22:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Chinese still looks very strange. Better than when it had the dark blue highlighting on top, but still strange, non-standard. Badagnani 22:44, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, aesthetic is something subjective and arbitary. You think Template:Chinese is strange. But a lot of other Wikipedians might actually like it. I think Template:Chinese is actually pretty colourful and attractive, while Template:Chinesename is rather dull and unattractive. Alan 22:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not just the color, but the design (such as the fact that Chinesename is more economical of space). And the syntax of the template is very, very complex. Any number of new languages can be added to the Chinese name template, so that's not a problem. Badagnani 23:18, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, I don't believe the transliteration should be hidden, as in Template:Chinese. Badagnani 23:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The idea of hiding the transliteration was a consensus of a long discussion started by Hong Kong Wikipedians long ago. But no one figured out how to write codes that does that until recently. The rationale behind hiding the transliteration was that there are just too many transliterations to be shown (e.g. Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, Wades-Giles, Jyutping, Yale, POJ, and a lot more...). These transliterations take up a lot of space and are not something that most readers would be interested in. You were complaining that the template took up a lot of space, but now the transliterations are displayed "on demand", and the template now takes up a lot less space than "Chinesename". I don't think it makes much sense to complain that "translierations should be hidden". - Alan 23:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Comparison charts are coming. Hang on. Benjwong 23:22, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Template	Cjk	Chinese (2 means a 2nd alternate field)	Chinesename
Picture	pic	pic	image
Picture caption	piccap	piccap	image_caption
Context switch for simplified/trad display			s
Traditional/Simplified	c	c, c2	st
Traditional Chinese	t	t, t2	traditional
Simplified Chinese	s	s, s2	simplified
Literal meaning	l	l, l2	lm
Chinese postal map	psp	psp, psp2
IPA	i	i, i2	ipa
Cantonese Jyutping	j	j, j2	ca
Cantonese Yale	y	y, y2	cay
Mandarin Yale			may
Hakka	h	h, h2
Hanyu Pinyin	p	p, p2	py
Gwoyeu Romatzyh	gr	gr, gr2	gr
Tongyong pinyin	tp	tp, tp2
Wade Giles	w	w, w2	wg
Taiwanese POJ/Min nan	poj	poj, poj2	poj
Latin phonetic Shanghainese	lmz	lmz, lmz2	sh
Teochew	teo	teo, teo2
Korean generic		kor
Korean Hangul	hangul		kng
Korean Hanja	hanja		knj
Revised Romanization of Korean	rr
McCune-Reischauer	mr
Japanese generic		jpn
Japanese Kanji	kanji		jpkanj
Japanese Kana	kana		jpkana
Japanese Hiragana			jphiri
Romaji	romaji		jprom
Filipino Tagalog	tgl		fi
Malay language	msa	msa	ma
Manchu language	mnc	mnc
Mongolian language	mon	mon
Portugese language	por	por
Russian language	rus	rus
Thai language	tha	tha
Tibetan language	tib	tib
Uyghur language	uig	uig
Vietnamese language	vie	vie	vi
Zhung language	zha	zha
Additional language 1	lang1	lang1
Additional language 2	lang2	lang2
Additional language 3	lang3	lang3

Ok here it is. Every template is missing something. Benjwong 23:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Replacing inline format

Please do not systematically replace the existing inline format for display of Chinese text and romanizations without warning or discussion. It is not necessary to have this box on every Chinese-related page. In any case there should be a consensus on the Manual of Style before this kind of massive replacement is done. — Kelw (talk) 23:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's continue the talk here. Benjwong 23:56, 7 July 2007 (UTC)