[Wikisource-l] Wikisource poem extension - but the intro text?

Tue Jul 25 01:23:44 UTC 2006

On 7/24/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry for crossposting this. It felt wikisource-l was the most appropriate
> list, but since the topic has been discussed a lot in wikitech-l it seemed
> reasonable to post it there, too.
>
> I agree the poem-tag makes life easier on wikisource, it saves loads of
> time when putting poems there. I wonder if it would be a good idea to add
> another semantic tag - that for the "intro" text, before the actual poem.
> Sometimes there is none but usually there is the name of the poem and/or the
> name of the author, and sometimes a little extra info.
>
> Att small wikisources, this little intro - like most texts on the wikis -
> are often in plain text. When the poem tag is applied, it does not look so
> good. The result is like this
> http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Till_min_far
> With no difference in indentation or font, it is kind of difficult to see
> where the intro text ends and the poem starts especially if we imagine a
> very short intro. It is not appealing to the eye. One could add extra blank
> lines, that would work, but on most wikis that method seems to be frowned
> upon. English wikisource has a set of templates for fomatting the "intro"
> part - here is an example.
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/That_Day
> So now, at least at Swedish Wikisource experiments with similar templates
> have been started. That is an option, but adding a semantic tag resulting in
> the need of templates seems a bit awkward to me.
>
> What is the solution here, for the wikis that do not already have these
> elaborate templates? One could do some wiki-specific adaptation to the poem
> tag, so that it adds blank spaces above the poem - that is however not so
> nifty when there actually is no "intro". Should we ask to get another
> semantic tag for the intro? Or is templates, like at English Wikisource, the
> major solution?
>
>
> /habj
>

Personally, I think <poem> should be kept as simple as possible and
shouldn't be changed.  And I don't think it's necessary to have a new
semantic tag created for merely a specific type of literature--it seems to
be quite a lot of work for only a small feature.  However, I can offer a
number of solutions:

   1. A new semantic tag (always an option, although I don't believe it
   will happen)
   2. Use for dashes ("----") right below the intro to separate it from
   the body of the poem.
   3. Use h3 headers for introductory material ("===INTRO===") or use
   font formatting (maybe make the text italic or bold)
   4. Use templates

My (strong) suggestion would be to use templates, as they offer a wide array
of presentation variations, and can be easily changed if you want to change
around the layout later on.  Especially with the Swedish WS being a smaller
language WS, it would be much easier for you to make the change now than
wait until you have 25,000 pages.

> So now, at least at Swedish Wikisource experiments with similar templates
> have been started. That is an option, but adding a semantic tag resulting in
> the need of templates seems a bit awkward to me.
>

Could you explain what you mean by this statement?  I don't quite
understand.  What semantic tag have we added that results in the need of a
template?

Z
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