It is a pure pipe dream to think that tables are going to go away because they are so damn useful and visually appealing to the great majority of our readers. Heck, we need /more/ not fewer tables because Wikipedia is filled with tabular/almanac data that isn't at all well-suited to prose.
Think of how difficult it would be to find the thermal conductivity of lithium if there wasn't a table with that information in it. Having this information in a very predictable place for a themed set of articles is a very good thing. But it is ugly in the wikicode code, so;
tarquin wrote:
One simple option would be to put the code for the table on another page, and import it -- much like we do with images. We could agree on nicer table syntax at a later date too.
Which is something I suggested some time ago. A table:namespace would be most useful here. The outside border could be clickable so that a user can navigate to the table namespace page.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I lost track of my WikiKarma somewhere in Death Valley - I'm sure I had some left.
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Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com writes:
Heck, we need /more/ not fewer tables because Wikipedia is filled with tabular/almanac data that isn't at all well-suited to prose.
This is not the truth. Most of this data stuff is lists of labeled items (in HTML talk it's definition lists):
<dl> <dt>Official language</dt> <dd>Arabic</dd>
<dt>Capital</dt> <dd>Baghdad</dd>
... </dl>
Please, don't turn those data into tables. Offering tables as an alternate view might be okay.
BTW, rendering tables takes CPU power; probably this isn't an issue for you and me, but in some parts of the world modern PCs are simply "not available".
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
(in HTML talk it's definition lists):
<dl> <dt>Official language</dt> <dd>Arabic</dd>
<dt>Capital</dt> <dd>Baghdad</dd>
...
</dl>
And in Wiki markup it's just ; foo : bar ; foo2 : bar2
Great for stuff that needs only 2 columns. Eg the Nobel Prize lists. But for more complex data, Mav is right - tables are vital. Move them out of the article source text & we're all happy :-) * readers get clear tables * easily-scared n00bs get no evil table HTML in source code * anyone who wants to edit the article text doesn't have to scroll down through pages and pages of table code
(and as for text-only browsers... <table> has been around for a LONG time. Surely text-only browsers have some sort of system for coping with them?)
tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com writes:
<dl> <dt>Official language</dt> <dd>Arabic</dd>
<dt>Capital</dt> <dd>Baghdad</dd>
...
</dl>
And in Wiki markup it's just ; foo : bar ; foo2 : bar2
Sure. Please allow "|" as an alternate term delimiter, BTW; ":" often is part of the term (URLs!!) and thus you cannot use it without "<nowiki>" tricks.
Great for stuff that needs only 2 columns. Eg the Nobel Prize lists. But for more complex data, Mav is right - tables are vital. Move them out of the article source text & we're all happy :-)
- readers get clear tables
- easily-scared n00bs get no evil table HTML in source code
- anyone who wants to edit the article text doesn't have to scroll down through pages and pages of table code
It's of no use to talk about such a strategie without referring to existing articles ;) Let's modify the Kuwait article accordingly...
Also you must not use table for navigation bars.
(and as for text-only browsers... <table> has been around for a LONG time. Surely text-only browsers have some sort of system for coping with them?)
No, not really. w3m is advanced, but I cannot use it for various reasons (e.g., UTF-8 support it's flaky) and tables in general will not work as long as you cannot use a wide xterm (80 chars are often not enough).
Another drawback concerning tables is, that when printed they often don't look that good.
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com writes:
And in Wiki markup it's just ; foo : bar ; foo2 : bar2
Sure. Please allow "|" as an alternate term delimiter, BTW; ":" often is part of the term (URLs!!) and thus you cannot use it without "<nowiki>" tricks.
"|" will probably be used for wiki table syntax, if it ever comes about - better reserve it for that. ";:" is fairly standard across wikis for DLs. There shouldn't be a clash, as only the first ":" has a meaning - why would you put a URL in the DT?
tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com writes:
"|" will probably be used for wiki table syntax, if it ever comes about
- better reserve it for that.
If you will even go for it, please do it properly. Make use of well defined SGML features (shortref and usemap) -- you will be surprised how smart this could be (QWERTZ and linuxdoc are examples for such features).
";:" is fairly standard across wikis for DLs. There shouldn't be a clash, as only the first ":" has a meaning - why would you put a URL in the DT?
It isn't that important.
(and as for text-only browsers... <table> has been around for a LONG time. Surely text-only browsers have some sort of system for coping with them?)
Yes they do, and some of them are quite good at it. Lynx is worst (it does the right-alignment Karl describes), w3m is acceptable and links even puts nice little borders around the cells. Links can even handle frames, it is really quite impressive. There is also a graphical version of Links: http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/links/
The CPU usage is negligible in text browsers and most graphical browsers, the only common browser that sometimes has problems with complex tables is Netscape 4. Some people have a strange affection towards it, but it really must die as soon as possible. Phoenix, Galeon etc. use the Mozilla engine without the bloat and provide much faster rendering than Netscape 4.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Yes they do, and some of them are quite good at it. Lynx is worst (it does the right-alignment Karl describes), w3m is acceptable and links even puts nice little borders around the cells.
Putting borders around cells is even worse. This way you waste precious horizontal space. Another ugly issue is, the formatting/displaying of the tables happen "on-the-fly"; thus often you cannot start reading a partially downloaded page because elments are flipping around...
BTW, rule of thumb: if you cannot read a page using lynx, it is not worth reading at all ;)
The CPU usage is negligible in text browsers and most graphical browsers,
Don't forget that many a lot "low end" notebooks are stil in use; on them using Galeon or Mozilla often isn't an option (on 233MHz, 64MB RAM and a 800x600 display I refuse to run it).
CPU usage isn't the strongest argument, but it sums up together with all the other arguments and leads to the conclusion that table usage is of dubious value for the reader.
The nicer a page looks the less info it carries. But people seems to ask for it and they get it...
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