On 7/24/06, habj <sweetadelaide(a)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