Module talk:Lang-zh

Zh-xx consolidation dicussion (copy)

The more I look, the more I feel the mess at Category:Chinese multilingual support templates is out of control. There seems to be a lot of redundancy with all these templates...redundancy in of itself isn't bad, but it causes problems when one template is updated (like I recently did), since there are like a hundred others that need to be updated as well, and it can't necessarily be done with AWB.

So, to that end, I just created User:Rjanag/zh, a template that I believe has the functionality of all of these templates. The only difference is that you have to use named parameters, not numbered...but I think most of these template calls used named parameters anyway (ie, {{zh-cp|c=某|p=something}}, rather than {{zh-cp|某|something}}). When making it, I was careful to make sure that I didn't lose any of the functionalities contained in any of the other templates. Ideally, this template could be moved to {{zh}} and then all articles could just use that one, and display the relevant Chinese and romanizations based on what templates are used (for example, some would use {{zh|c=something|p=something|l=something}}, while others might use {{zh|s=something|t=something|p=something}}, the difference being that the second one gives both simplified and traditional). Currently, though, {{zh}} is a redirect to {{zh icon}} and a lot of pages seem to use it; it might be used in other ways, too, because its WhatLinksHere says it's included in some random pages (for instance, Quiznos) but I can't find it in the wikitext, suggesting that it's a transclusion within a transclusion....

Anyway, I'm thinking that if it's possible some day for me to go through and manually replace the {{zh}}s with {{zh icon}}s, then I can move this new template to there and slowly start replacing specific templates (like {{zh-cp}}) with this one, in all the articles where they're used. Do you have any thoughts on this? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:35, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, a lot of work. You might want to put your template in mainspace under "zh-testing" or s.t., redirect a common zh-xx template to it, and wait for the complaints to flood in if you've missed s.t., then try another, etc., until you're confident you've got it right, meanwhile migrating from zh to zh icon with AWB (preparse?). Of course, it might not be possible to rd some of the zh-xx templates until the individual articles have named parameters; that could be done with AWB and regex, though I don't know if I'm up to that kind of complexity in regex--I can't get some things to work that look simple on paper. Anyway, no point in editing the individual articles (except for named parameters) until you've redirected all the templates and they're working well. I wouldn't spend my time on it even then; there are bots that can automate the task. kwami (talk) 07:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Impressive, having a template where Cantonese is nor forced to Jyutping would be really good! Akerbeltz (talk) 22:47, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One comment: first=t puts Tongyong before Hanyu, but since Taiwan's switched to Hanyu, do we want them linked like that? Would it be possible to have a generic n=x, where n is any ordinal, and x is any parameter, and repeatable (1=t, 2=s, 3=p, etc.)? kwami (talk) 06:35, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I didn't think about that. I could just get rid of the Tongyong-before-Hanyu bit...the important thing is allowing trad. to go before simp., but I'm not so concerned about the different Pinyin styles. I also considered adding something like first=j to allow Jyutping to go before Pinyin (for Cantonese-related articles), but then again I'm not sure how widely accepted/used Jyutping is as compared to others.

As for an n=x setup, it should be possible, it would just require lots of messy code—as you can see with the trad./simp. characters, the only way I really know to do it so far is to repeat the code over and over again in different parts of the template. Another option would be to divide the templates into core and shell templates...ie, put all the messy code for displaying simplified characters (for example) into {{zh-s}} (after usurping that...or I could just give it a new name), do that for everything, and then make {{zh}} itself be nothing more than a shell template that has a big #switch statement deciding which thing to show and when. It sounds like something I can play around with in my userspace for a while...these things always seem to work out better in my head than they do in actual code!

If enough functionality gets added to that, it might even be better to divide this across two templates, the current {{zh}} template left more or less as-is to be used in most cases (where people aren't concerned about ordering and the current version is sufficient), and something new, like {{zh-full}} or something, which would have extended functionality but also more parameters and more complicated syntax. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:12, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The people behind Jyutping are just pushy (off Wiki I mean); it has flaws, especially for an English speaking audience, especially the j for [j] and c for [tʃ] thing. Is it not possible to have the ordering flexible, as in, that if you move one above the other manually, they display that way? I must confess to a high degree of ignorance regarding templates. Akerbeltz (talk) 18:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't foresee too much need for flexibility apart from traditional before simplified. Actually, I'd think we'd want that as the default, with "first=s" as an option. After all, traditional is the international form, with simplified being restricted to mainland China (and maybe Singapore?). kwami (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps...although at this point it will be difficult to change. I didn't notice your message before I started replacing, and now I've basically gone through and replaced many of the traditional-first templates with {{zh | ....... | first=t}}, and many of the simplified-first with just {{zh}} (but I haven't done all of them...there are still several thousand more, so rather than trying to do them by hand I'm starting to fiddle with bot stuff). So things that already have first=t won't be changed if I update the template, but things that don't (i.e., any articles about mainland China stuff) will be changed, unless a simple way can be found to go and insert first=s into all of them. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:19, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AWB can insert first=s into templates which do not contain first=t, and I assume other bots could easily do the same. It should be ignored unless and until it's defined. kwami (talk) 07:02, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would have to be done by a bot, since there are over 6,000 articles that would need to be edited.

Also, about the suggetsion above for a template with more flexibility... I threw together a mock-up at User:Rjanag/zh-full (with an example in my sandbox), which gives the user full control (I think) over the order in which they display things. In most cases that much control isn't necessary (and indeed, the vast majority of combinations would be illogical...for instance, you would never put the literal translation or any of the romanizations before the Chinese characters), but after some more tweaks I could probably put it into mainspace in the off-chance that anyone wants more control (over, for example, the order in which various romanizations are displayed in a given article). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if it's easy to do and not code intensive, why not. But you might wait until there is an actual demand for a particular option - it might never materialize, or materialize in a way we didn't expect. kwami (talk) 22:37, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]