Template talk:Physics particle

Forced bold?

I applaud the idea of having standardized templates for all subatomic particles, but it looks like the current version of {{PhysicsParticle}} always displays the particle's symbol in a bold font, which is distracting in most contexts. In particular, since this template is used in {{SubatomicParticle}}, we get particle names like e⁻
(electron) or γ (photon), which is rather uncommon in my experience. Perhaps the default should be non-bold, but with an optional parameter for requesting bold/italic symbols? Hqb (talk) 13:29, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. I originally made them bold because the page I based the first version off was using bold. These templates are there to facilitate making all physics pages have the same look and feel and the Category:Nuclide templates aren't bold either, so neither should this one.

There should be no need for make it available as an argument, as it is simpler to use single quotes like so: ''{{SubatomicParticle|electron}}'' -> e⁻
and '''{{SubatomicParticle|electron}}''' -> e⁻
.

My TODO list includes rewriting the various Category:Nuclide templates to use this template as well, making it possible to change the look and feel of everything in one place. That should save vandals a lot of work :)

- SkyLined (talk) 20:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Hqb (talk) 20:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Urgent: link= parameter?

The support for link= was recently removed by this edit, but it's still listed in the documentation. And though {{SubatomicParticle}} does not use link=, several other templates, such as {{Element}} do, and are currently broken (i.e., do not create a link even when asked for). Consequently, several WP articles (such as Radium) are missing useful links.

Clearly something needs to be fixed, and quickly. I'd revert the change above, but I'm not sure that having a link= argument to PhysicsParticle is really the right approach in the first place. Are there situations where {{PhysicsParticle|link=pagename|...}} is supposed to behave differently than [[pagename|{{PhysicsParticle|...}}]]? If not, it seems both simpler and more efficient to let the caller of PhysicsParticle (which will almost always be another template, such as {{SimpleNuclide}}) create the link directly, instead of passing the request off to PhysicsParticle. Hqb (talk) 19:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It makes sense to have the link be made by the caller - I don't recall why I added it in the first place. I will revert the changes now to restore proper links. Then later I will modify all callers to stop using the link parameter and add their links themselves. I'll check to make SURE that nobody's using it before I remove it again.     — SkyLined {talkcontribs 05:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)