Thinking about the "Standard" skin naming issue brought to mind my
least favourite piece of text in the whole MediaWiki interface:
"Recommended for modern browsers".
It's not a note attached to an option somewhere, it is the entire text
of one of the options for "Rendering math" (maybe one day I'll be able
to customize that to "maths"...).
What exactly is a "modern browser"? How "modern" is "modern"? Does
that include modern text-based browsers, such as ELinks? I doubt it!
What happens in a few years time, when "modern" browsers become able
to do far fancier tricks (and what's now "modern" will be "older")?
And who is recommending this, and why? And if you're about to answer
that question, hold on to it for a bit; if we have to give an
explanation beyond the text that appears, we might as well just call
it "use this one".
Looking at the options, some of the others aren't too great either -
and they're a right mish-mash. Currently, we have:
(0) "Always render PNG"
(1) "HTML if very simple or else PNG"
(2) "HTML if possible or else PNG"
(3) "Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)"
(4) "Recommended for modern browsers"
(5) "MathML if possible (experimental)"
This order seems somewhat bizarre, for a start, but that's alright -
we can just redefine the values the constants are defined with in
Language.php (correct me if I'm wrong). For clarity, I'll use the
numbers in brackets (their current position/value) in my proposal
below.
Basically, what we want to communicate here is: a)roughly what
behaviour the option activates; b)what circumstances/browsers/etc that
will be useful for. So why not standardise the descriptions, e.g.:
(3) "Leave it as TeX (useful for text-based browsers, screen reader software)"
(0) "Always produce a PNG image (*)"
(1) "Produce HTML if very simple, otherwise a PNG (*)"
(4) "HTML for many cases, but PNG for the most complex (*)"
(2) "HTML wherever possible, otherwise PNG (may not display well in
existing browsers|*)"
(5) "MathML wherever possible, otherwise PNG [EXPERIMENTAL]"
Now, all we need to do is what to replace those *s with - some
scenarios or example browsers for each case. Now, as I say, I don't
know what "modern browser" means, but maybe "e.g. IE >=5.0, Netscape
>=4.0, Mozilla" for option (4), and the corresponding less-thans for
option (1)? And can anyone think of a specific situation for option
(0) - just "if other options do not display well" perhaps? As for (2)
and (5), we can add example browsers in when/if they come into
existence...
(Of course, all these will then have to be translated too!)
What does anyone think?
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]