I have been working on making sure that pages containing IPA characters can be viewed as easily as possible. However, it seems there is something about the default skin that makes it impossible to render IPA characters correctly in Internet Explorer. It seems no matter what fonts I choose in Tools->Internet Options...->Fonts... the IPA characters always appear as boxes. See this example page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_of_disputed_pronunciation
When I view that page after logging in and selecting a different skin, such as Classic, the font preferences seem to kick in and the characters display fine. I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it is, due to the complex CSS that spans several files.
Can anyone else replicate this problem? I want to write a help page to link to in the {{IPA}} template so that IE users can set their browsers to view the characters with a minimum of fuss. At the moment, the amount of fuss required to view the characters in IE is not minimal.
- David [[User:Nohat]]
P.S. I have been running into lots and lots of font tags that make our output invalid XHTML but would be valid if they were span tags, but of course can't be span tags because span tags are forbidden. Can we PLEASE allow span tags so that we can begin the process of making Wikipedia pages be valid XHTML?
On Dec 22, 2004, at 1:48 PM, David Friedland wrote:
P.S. I have been running into lots and lots of font tags that make our output invalid XHTML but would be valid if they were span tags, but of course can't be span tags because span tags are forbidden. Can we PLEASE allow span tags so that we can begin the process of making Wikipedia pages be valid XHTML?
1) Can you please check in the w3c validator and confirm that they are invalid?
2) We're not adding new HTML tags, we already have too many. We hope to reduce the number in the future but have other things to do.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Dec 22, 2004, at 1:48 PM, David Friedland wrote:
P.S. I have been running into lots and lots of font tags that make our output invalid XHTML but would be valid if they were span tags, but of course can't be span tags because span tags are forbidden. Can we PLEASE allow span tags so that we can begin the process of making Wikipedia pages be valid XHTML?
- Can you please check in the w3c validator and confirm that they are
invalid?
It's not valid XHTML 1.0-Strict. It's valid XHTML 1.0-Transitional, but that's not a markup standard that properly separates semantic from presentational markup.
- We're not adding new HTML tags, we already have too many. We hope to
reduce the number in the future but have other things to do.
OK. I'll throw in <hr>, <em>, <strong>, <i>, and <b> in addition to <font> for <span>. We don't have _any_ legitimate use for those tags because we already have wikimarkup for them--feel free to disable them. We do have legitimate use for <span> though. That's a reduction of 5 useless tags for 1 useful one. What a deal! If you really twist my arm, we can get rid of <code>, <cite>, and <h1> to <h6>--I haven't seen any legitimate uses of them either.
At the very least, there should be some kind of explanation or justification for why the current tags are allowed and why the disabled tags aren't allowed. As it stands, it's arbitrary and maddening, especially considering that people have been asking for normalization of permitted HTML tags for more than a year and no one who can has been willing to do _anything_.
Sometimes it seems like only things that the current developers are interested in get done. And you can't become a developer unless you work on things that the developers are interested in, because otherwise your contributions get ignored (see e.g. http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224). And if you dare to criticize them, they just trot out the "we're just volunteers and only have to work on what we want to work on" argument.
Perhaps a lesson from Spiderman is in order: with great power comes great responsibility.
- David
P.S. Still can't view IPA in IE using Monobook.
I guess it's not the long-term solution you want, but this is the first thing I did after the switch to monobook. Create a User:YourUserName/monobook.css file with this content:
/* Unicode capable fonts please */
body { font-family: "Arial Unicode MS" }
On the subject of tags, it would be really neat to get rid of the tags you suggest and actually some which are useful such as <ipa>kuːl n(j)uː aɪ piː eɪ</ipa>
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:41:01 -0800, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Dec 22, 2004, at 1:48 PM, David Friedland wrote:
P.S. I have been running into lots and lots of font tags that make our output invalid XHTML but would be valid if they were span tags, but of course can't be span tags because span tags are forbidden. Can we PLEASE allow span tags so that we can begin the process of making Wikipedia pages be valid XHTML?
- Can you please check in the w3c validator and confirm that they are
invalid?
It's not valid XHTML 1.0-Strict. It's valid XHTML 1.0-Transitional, but that's not a markup standard that properly separates semantic from presentational markup.
- We're not adding new HTML tags, we already have too many. We hope to
reduce the number in the future but have other things to do.
OK. I'll throw in <hr>, <em>, <strong>, <i>, and <b> in addition to <font> for <span>. We don't have _any_ legitimate use for those tags because we already have wikimarkup for them--feel free to disable them. We do have legitimate use for <span> though. That's a reduction of 5 useless tags for 1 useful one. What a deal! If you really twist my arm, we can get rid of <code>, <cite>, and <h1> to <h6>--I haven't seen any legitimate uses of them either.
At the very least, there should be some kind of explanation or justification for why the current tags are allowed and why the disabled tags aren't allowed. As it stands, it's arbitrary and maddening, especially considering that people have been asking for normalization of permitted HTML tags for more than a year and no one who can has been willing to do _anything_.
Sometimes it seems like only things that the current developers are interested in get done. And you can't become a developer unless you work on things that the developers are interested in, because otherwise your contributions get ignored (see e.g. http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224). And if you dare to criticize them, they just trot out the "we're just volunteers and only have to work on what we want to work on" argument.
Perhaps a lesson from Spiderman is in order: with great power comes great responsibility.
- David
P.S. Still can't view IPA in IE using Monobook.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Andrew Dunbar wrote:
I guess it's not the long-term solution you want, but this is the first thing I did after the switch to monobook. Create a User:YourUserName/monobook.css file with this content:
/* Unicode capable fonts please */
body { font-family: "Arial Unicode MS" }
Not exactly a minimal-effort IE config change for anon IE users, but I guess if that's what has to be done in the current setup, then that's what I'll put on the help page.
On the subject of tags, it would be really neat to get rid of the tags you suggest and actually some which are useful such as <ipa>kuːl n(j)uː aɪ piː eɪ</ipa>
Yep, that's what my extension does (including converting from X-SAMPA to Unicode IPA).
Thanks.
- David
On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:14:25 -0800, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
Andrew Dunbar wrote:
I guess it's not the long-term solution you want, but this is the first thing I did after the switch to monobook. Create a User:YourUserName/monobook.css file with this content:
/* Unicode capable fonts please */
body { font-family: "Arial Unicode MS" }
Not exactly a minimal-effort IE config change for anon IE users, but I guess if that's what has to be done in the current setup, then that's what I'll put on the help page.
There may well be a better solution than mine (:
On the subject of tags, it would be really neat to get rid of the tags you suggest and actually some which are useful such as <ipa>kuːl n(j)uː aɪ piː eɪ</ipa>
Yep, that's what my extension does (including converting from X-SAMPA to Unicode IPA).
Is your extension installed on any of the active wikis? Where can I try it?
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
Thanks.
- David
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Andrew Dunbar wrote:
On the subject of tags, it would be really neat to get rid of the tags you suggest and actually some which are useful such as <ipa>kuːl n(j)uː aɪ piː eɪ</ipa>
Yep, that's what my extension does (including converting from X-SAMPA to Unicode IPA).
Is your extension installed on any of the active wikis? Where can I try it?
No, it is only installed on the wiki on my personal machine. It was never committed to the MediaWiki CVS because no one who has permissions to do that cared enough to look at it and do it or tell me what needs to be fixed before they do.
- David
David Friedland wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Dec 22, 2004, at 1:48 PM, David Friedland wrote:
P.S. I have been running into lots and lots of font tags that make our output invalid XHTML but would be valid if they were span tags, but of course can't be span tags because span tags are forbidden. Can we PLEASE allow span tags so that we can begin the process of making Wikipedia pages be valid XHTML?
- Can you please check in the w3c validator and confirm that they
are invalid?
It's not valid XHTML 1.0-Strict. It's valid XHTML 1.0-Transitional, but that's not a markup standard that properly separates semantic from presentational markup.
- We're not adding new HTML tags, we already have too many. We hope
to reduce the number in the future but have other things to do.
OK. I'll throw in <hr>, <em>, <strong>, <i>, and <b> in addition to <font> for <span>. We don't have _any_ legitimate use for those tags because we already have wikimarkup for them--feel free to disable them. We do have legitimate use for <span> though. That's a reduction of 5 useless tags for 1 useful one. What a deal! If you really twist my arm, we can get rid of <code>, <cite>, and <h1> to <h6>--I haven't seen any legitimate uses of them either.
Do not twist MY arm by getting rid of hi to h6 they provide headings WITHOUT it comming in the table of contents. Usefull in some particular instances. thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Do not twist MY arm by getting rid of hi to h6 they provide headings WITHOUT it comming in the table of contents. Usefull in some particular instances. thanks, GerardM
If something is a heading, then it should go in the table of contents. If it's not a heading, then it shouldn't be marked up with a heading tag, wiki or otherwise.
I guess the importance of separating semantic markup from presentational markup is lost on more people than I thought.
- David
David Friedland wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Do not twist MY arm by getting rid of hi to h6 they provide headings WITHOUT it comming in the table of contents. Usefull in some particular instances. thanks, GerardM
If something is a heading, then it should go in the table of contents. If it's not a heading, then it shouldn't be marked up with a heading tag, wiki or otherwise.
I guess the importance of separating semantic markup from presentational markup is lost on more people than I thought.
Huh? I would guess that the difference is that the semantic markups are the ones that you want to appear in the TOC, and the presentational ones are those that you don't want there. In Wikisource I've certainly run into texts where some headings should not be in the TOC.
Ec
If the thing is a heading it should be in the TOC, if it is not a heading, only emphisised text, it should use bold/italic/whatever else to provide emphisis to the text, but NOT the h1/2/3/4/5/6 tags because they are only for headings.
paz y amor, rjs
On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 12:36:33 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Huh? I would guess that the difference is that the semantic markups are the ones that you want to appear in the TOC, and the presentational ones are those that you don't want there. In Wikisource I've certainly run into texts where some headings should not be in the TOC.
Ec
Robin Shannon wrote:
If the thing is a heading it should be in the TOC, if it is not a heading, only emphisised text, it should use bold/italic/whatever else to provide emphisis to the text, but NOT the h1/2/3/4/5/6 tags because they are only for headings.
paz y amor, rjs
On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 12:36:33 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Huh? I would guess that the difference is that the semantic markups are the ones that you want to appear in the TOC, and the presentational ones are those that you don't want there. In Wikisource I've certainly run into texts where some headings should not be in the TOC.
Ec
Robin, There are two types of headings; there are the mediawiki headings and there are the h1 etc thingies. They behave differently. We are happy that they behave differently. We are happy to have the ability to specify headings in two ways. The mediawiki way adds the headings in the table of contents, the h1 etc do not.
What is your problem? They are two different things and we cherish the difference :)
PS http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
Thanks, GerardM
Kaixo!
On Fri, Dec 24, 2004 at 11:05:04AM +1100, Robin Shannon wrote:
If the thing is a heading it should be in the TOC, if it is not a heading, only emphisised text, it should use bold/italic/whatever else to provide emphisis to the text, but NOT the h1/2/3/4/5/6 tags because they are only for headings.
There is one case in which those are useful: in the help page explaining the wikiwords; ofen there is a side by side table with "what you type" and "what you see"; but as the "what you see" is inside a table the use of a real ==wiki title== will break completly the TOC (that is particularly annoying when editing the page), plus, in this case, the samples should not be displayed on the TOC.
It is the only legitimate case I see, however.
(a way to avoid some titles appearing on the TOC would be nice too; or maybe a way to restrict the titles on the TOC to only a given depth)
I chatted a bit about <span> with Tim and others on IRC, and there's no general objection to it. My original objection was that at the time it was requested there was no way to set up style sheet classes through the wiki, making it a semantically void element no better than the hated <font>. <span style="font-face:'Arial'"> isn't any better in any legitimate sense than <font face="Arial">.
However since then we _have_ added a way to add to the global stylesheets in the wiki (at least for the main skins), so I withdraw this objection. It could be easier, clearer, and more cohesive than it is (doesn't apply to all skins etc), but it's a start.
<span> is now added to the whitelist for 1.4.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org