JeLuF wrote:
One of the tables I like in wikipedia is this one: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Beryllium
I think this is a very apropriate way to present the
information,
some kind of fact sheet. tarquin's proposal needs to
get some
kind of markup to mark the labels (which are then
rastered with
background color according to selected skin).
Thank you. Although I think that particular implementation is a bit fat -- it takes up nearly half of the text area on low res screens. I am in fact far more proud of the taxonomy tables that I helped develop -- which use nested tables with invisible borders, have embedded images, heading fill color and a list in the final cell to make adding taxon group members easy (see: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Typical_owl for an example)
But here is the rub; any wiki syntax that is enacted will need to have nested tables, the ability to have embedded images, lists and heading color fill or I won't be able to use or promote them for the element articles, taxonomy tables or even the country tables (I'm involved with all three projects and considering helping with the US Presidents tables). The colors for the elements and taxonomy tables have specific meanings associated with them and the nested tables are needed to present different types of information (I guess this can be replicated without nesting, but in HTML at least that requires a /more/ complicated table). In my view then, the goal of any wiki table mark-up should be to recreate the typical owl table in the most easy to learn and code wiki markup possible. The details on how to do this are not as important to me as the results.
--mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
But here is the rub; any wiki syntax that is enacted will need to have nested tables, the ability to have embedded images, lists and heading color fill To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
That nested sub-table on Owl could be done with some clever CSS, I should think, with row-group setting no borders and some colspan properties. Nesting images would be a case of letting the parser read a link to the image inside the markup -- it would be expected to read '' and ''' so not much extra there. Colours and fills: CSS again. If the format of that species table is always going to be the same -- same number of rows and columns, the CSS can set all those things. The wiki markup just needs a way of identifying the table type: [[table:species]].
If the sub-table part might need a different number of lines, then some sort of marker within the table would be needed. However, it would be better to have abstract markers, ie [[row:Genera]], leaving the specifics of *what* the colour is, etc, for the [[table:species]] page to define.
The potential problem with CSS is browser support. :-(
On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 12:27:19PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
In my view then, the goal of any wiki table mark-up should be to recreate the typical owl table in the most easy to learn and code wiki markup possible. The details on how to do this are not as important to me as the results.
Here goes:
[br=1,cs=0,al=r,cp=2|| [al=c,bc=pink| ''Owls''' |] [| [[image:Northern_Spotted_Owl.USFWS-thumb.jpg]] |] [al=c| Northern spotted owl |] [al=c,bc=pink| '''[[Scientific classification]]''' |] [| [al=c|| [| [[Kingdom (biology)|Kingdom]]: || [[Animalia]] |] [| [[Phylum]]: || [[Chordata]] |] [| [[Class (biology)|Class]]: || [[Aves]] |] [| [[Order (biology)|Order]]: || '''Strigiformes''' |] ||] |] [al=c,bc=pink| '''[[family (biology)|Families]]''' |] [| [|| [| [[Barn owl|Tytonidae]] - Barn owls |] [| [[Typical owl|Strigidae]] - Typical owls |] ||] |] ||]
Basic principles: - [%arg%|| ... ||] indicates a table (can be omitted if no arguments) - [%arg%| ... |] indicates a row, arguments hold for first cell - |%arg%| indicates beginning of next cell, arguments hold for this cell
Arguments: - table: al=align, bc=background-color, br=border, wd=width, cp=cellpadding, cs=cellspacing - cell: al=align, bc=background-color, cs=col-span, rs=rowspan, va=valign, wd=width - table rule: - no arguments -
It's lay-out independent so it can also be written Tarquin's cell-per-row format. It may look quite complicated but a simple table still looks like this:
[| a simple table || with two columns |] [| and two || rows |]
and even nested tables don't need to be difficult:
[| first a row with a single line |] [| [| then a || nested table |] [| with two || lines and two columns |] |] [| and finally again a single line |]
Any questions?
-- Jan Hidders
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