body:
Lightning wrote:

> Your link sends me here: if i copy and paste it, it works, good times. but
> if i click on it.....
>
> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%95_%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA
>
> the link shows up as above, but when I click on it in on OE it opens an ie
> window with the URL below. funny aint it?
> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/?.?T???T???"?T?":?o?.?'?._?'???'???T??

This sounds like a serious bug in IE, and Rotem appears to confirm this.
I'm sorry for the bad news, but the best I can recommend, then, is that
all Hebrew Wikipedians should use a browser that works ;-)

Timwi


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No new wikis

body:
On 7/18/03 6:10 PM, "tarquin" <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>> Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with lots of nice ideas that
>> all go nowhere, like the sep11.wikipedia.org (which IMHO should never have
>> been set up in the first place).
>>
>>
>>
> basically... Sep11,wikipedia.org was created to appease people
> protesting against the deletion of acticles on victims of the Sep11
> attacks who were pure nobodies and didn't belong in Wikipedia.
>
Yeah, screw them.


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Phase IV, Wikibooks.org/.com and WikimediaFoundation.org/.com
 (was Wikis and uniformity)

body:
Timwi wrote:

> However, I'm not convinced that this really matters. It would only have
> to search on the entire fulltext index if you actually wanted to search
> the entire table (an inter-language search). If you had an integer
> column that specifies the language of an article, and an index on that,
> then searching only the English text would be equal in speed to having a
> separate table for the English text.
>
> At least this is how I understand it. Of course I may well be wrong.
> I'll ask a MySQL expert later on, when he's online :-)

I have asked my friend and he confirmed by suspicion.

If you have several large tables A, B, C, ... etc. with identical
columns and types (that could, for example, be the recentchanges tables
for the different languages), you can always combine them into a big
table with an extra (indexed) integer or other fixed-length column that
specifies what original table the row came from (i.e. what language it's
in), and it won't be any slower.

Greetings,
Timwi


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: making rc smaller

body:
If you really want to reduce bandwidth and server load:
Open a new window when a user clicks a link in Recent Changes.

If a user follows a link and returns to Recent Changes MS Explorer
reloads the page (at least with default settings).

This may be lame behaviour by MSIE, yet it is a fact we have to live
with.

I brought this up once before and the reaction was: there are better
browsers so dump MSIE. My point is: MSIE is still a de facto standard,
90% of the Wp visitors use it, so we better deal with it.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Phase IV, Wikibooks.org/.com and WikimediaFoundation.org/.com (was Wikis and uniformity)

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
> > However, I'm not convinced that this really
> matters. It would only have
> > to search on the entire fulltext index if you
> actually wanted to search
> > the entire table (an inter-language search). If
> you had an integer
> > column that specifies the language of an article,
> and an index on that,
> > then searching only the English text would be
> equal in speed to having a
> > separate table for the English text.
> >
> > At least this is how I understand it. Of course I
> may well be wrong.
> > I'll ask a MySQL expert later on, when he's online
> :-)
>
> I have asked my friend and he confirmed by
> suspicion.
>
> If you have several large tables A, B, C, ... etc.
> with identical
> columns and types (that could, for example, be the
> recentchanges tables
> for the different languages), you can always combine
> them into a big
> table with an extra (indexed) integer or other
> fixed-length column that
> specifies what original table the row came from
> (i.e. what language it's
> in), and it won't be any slower.
>
> Greetings,
> Timwi

Should not this conversation be on wiki tech ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: tarquin

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!
 (Rotem Dan)

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:

>
> Ofcourse ofcourse!!! I just ripped the site as is! these are really
> small things (I actually did remove the bar on the right but then I
> didn't have a place to write some explanations, of course it shouldn't
> be there!)
>
> What I like is the great use of color and graphics, the boxes, the
> backgrounds, the great font that looks good on 800x600 resolution (not
> too big).
>
> Tasks like "Edit this page" etc. would be put as icons wherever we
> want to put them (probably on top) with very intuitive symobls.

the problem with intuitive symbols is that they usually aren't.

>
>
> just a second, I will remove the bar on the right and put that version
> on another file, It would be on:
>
> http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/Wikipedia-Vorbis-site-rip2.html
>

something wrong with your email -- you are posting in the past!
you've just replied to a 23:31 mail at 14:58


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Rotem Dan)

body:
Rotem-
> Now here's something you should see, *this* is what I call a website:
> (this really rocks the boat!)

> http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/Wikipedia-Vorbis-site-rip.html

1) We need all the screen width we can get for articles, otherwise
floating tables, images etc. won't work very well. The design contains no
navigational elements at all, BTW.
2) Having some dynamic content at the side may seem like a good idea, but
it really gets old quickly -- literally. After browsing 10 articles,
you'll be very tired of that "New articles" box.
3) The technobubbles in the table headers are inappropriate for an
encyclopedia.

Using colors intelligently for navigational and structural elements, on
the other hand, seems like a good idea.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Following comments on "Paddington", I started again from scratch.
This is what I've done today.
Most of it is subject to change.

one thing I'm happy with though is the start of the article is *very*
near the top of the page.

* The footers are still being worked on
* the elements in the sidebar could be put into boxes like in Rotem
Dan's Seinfeld example.
* i'm not too keen on the centering I put in the sidebar either!

-- tarquin
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] rc size patch

body:
* makes class='internal' default, saving lot of bytes
* changes all  to
* changes all  to
    (nobody showed actual case where it breaks something, so ...)
* a few one-byte optimalizations here and there

Improvement is not going to be big - using relative links would have
bigger effect that all these combined - but it's trivial and shouldn't
break anything.

It definitely needs testing (but I couldn't apply it to instalation at
test.wikipedia.org, as it's a bit far from CVS now), especially:
* how it changes rendering with underlining turned off.
  css code is a bit suspicions here, but results look
  fine to me.
* does changing / to / affect anything ?
  it shouldn't, and if it does we need to fix css code, not
  keep wasting bytes version.
-------------- next part --------------
diff -ruN wiki.orig/Language.php wiki/Language.php
--- wiki.orig/Language.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/Language.php	2003-07-20 21:45:23.000000000 +0200
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@
 	"hover"		=> "Show hoverbox over wiki links",
 	"underline" => "Underline links",
 	"highlightbroken" => "Format broken links like
-this (alternative: like this?).",
+this (alternative: like this?).",
 	"justify"	=> "Justify paragraphs",
 	"hideminor" => "Hide minor edits in recent changes",
 	"usenewrc" => "Enhanced recent changes (not for all browsers)",
@@ -349,7 +349,7 @@
 "redirectedfrom" => "(Redirected from $1)",
 "lastmodified"	=> "This page was last modified $1.",
 "viewcount"		=> "This page has been accessed $1 times.",
-"gnunote" => "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.",
+"gnunote" => "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.",
 "printsubtitle" => "(From http://www.wikipedia.org)",
 "protectedpage" => "Protected page",
 "administrators" => "Wikipedia:Administrators",
diff -ruN wiki.orig/OutputPage.php wiki/OutputPage.php
--- wiki.orig/OutputPage.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/OutputPage.php	2003-07-20 21:55:28.000000000 +0200
@@ -774,8 +774,8 @@
 	/* private */ function doQuotes( $pre, $text, $mode )
 	{
 		if ( preg_match( "/^(.*)''(.*)$/sU", $text, $m ) ) {
-			$m1_strong = ($m[1] == "") ? "" : "{$m[1]}";
-			$m1_em = ($m[1] == "") ? "" : "{$m[1]}";
+			$m1_strong = ($m[1] == "") ? "" : "{$m[1]}";
+			$m1_em = ($m[1] == "") ? "" : "{$m[1]}";
 			if ( substr ($m[2], 0, 1) == "'" ) {
 				$m[2] = substr ($m[2], 1);
 				if ($mode == "em") {
@@ -785,7 +785,7 @@
 				} else if (($mode == "emstrong") || ($mode == "both")) {
 					return $this->doQuotes ( "", $pre.$m1_strong.$m[2], "em" );
 				} else if ($mode == "strongem") {
-					return "{$pre}{$m1_em}" . $this->doQuotes ( "", $m[2], "em" );
+					return "{$pre}{$m1_em}" . $this->doQuotes ( "", $m[2], "em" );
 				} else {
 					return $m[1] . $this->doQuotes ( "", $m[2], "strong" );
 				}
@@ -795,7 +795,7 @@
 				} else if ($mode == "em") {
 					return $m1_em . $this->doQuotes ( "", $m[2], "" );
 				} else if ($mode == "emstrong") {
-					return "{$pre}{$m1_strong}" . $this->doQuotes ( "", $m[2], "strong" );
+					return "{$pre}{$m1_strong}" . $this->doQuotes ( "", $m[2], "strong" );
 				} else if (($mode == "strongem") || ($mode == "both")) {
 					return $this->doQuotes ( "", $pre.$m1_em.$m[2], "strong" );
 				} else {
@@ -803,8 +803,8 @@
 				}
 			}
 		} else {
-			$text_strong = ($text == "") ? "" : "{$text}";
-			$text_em = ($text == "") ? "" : "{$text}";
+			$text_strong = ($text == "") ? "" : "{$text}";
+			$text_em = ($text == "") ? "" : "{$text}";
 			if ($mode == "") {
 				return $pre . $text;
 			} else if ($mode == "em") {
@@ -812,9 +812,9 @@
 			} else if ($mode == "strong") {
 				return $pre . $text_strong;
 			} else if ($mode == "strongem") {
-				return (($pre == "") && ($text == "")) ? "" : "{$pre}{$text_em}";
+				return (($pre == "") && ($text == "")) ? "" : "{$pre}{$text_em}";
 			} else {
-				return (($pre == "") && ($text == "")) ? "" : "{$pre}{$text_strong}";
+				return (($pre == "") && ($text == "")) ? "" : "{$pre}{$text_strong}";
 			}
 		}
 	}
@@ -1470,7 +1470,7 @@
 				$text .= "ISBN $blank$x";
             } else {
 				$text .= "specialPage(
-				  "Booksources"), "isbn={$num}" ) . "\" CLASS=\"internal\">ISBN $isbn";
+				  "Booksources"), "isbn={$num}" ) . "\">ISBN $isbn";
 				$text .= $x;
 			}
 		}
diff -ruN wiki.orig/Skin.php wiki/Skin.php
--- wiki.orig/Skin.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/Skin.php	2003-07-21 02:47:00.000000000 +0200
@@ -102,8 +102,7 @@
 			# Don't override browser settings
 		} else {
 			# Force no underline
-			$s .= "a.stub, a.new, a.internal, a.external { " .
-			  "text-decoration: none; }\n";
+			$s .= "a { text-decoration: none; }";
 		}
 		if ( 1 == $wgUser->getOption( "highlightbroken" ) ) {
 			$s .= "a.new, #quickbar a.new { color: #CC2200; }\n";
@@ -179,7 +178,7 @@
 		if ( $wgOut->isPrintable() ) { $r = " class='printable'"; }
                 else if ( $broken == "stub" ) { $r = " class='stub'"; }
 		else if ( $broken == "yes" ) { $r = " class='new'"; }
-		else { $r = " class='internal'"; }
+		else { $r = ""; }

 		if ( 1 == $wgUser->getOption( "hover" ) ) {
 			$r .= " title=\"{$link}\"";
@@ -289,7 +288,7 @@
 				$lm = "
" . $this->lastModified();
 			} else { $lm = ""; }

-			$s .= "
{$rf}{$lm}\n";
+			$s .= "
{$rf}{$lm}\n";
 			return $s;
 		}
 		return $this->doAfterContent();
@@ -363,7 +362,7 @@
 				$tl = $this->makeKnownLink( $wgLang->getNsText(
 				Namespace::getTalk( Namespace::getUser() ) ) . ":{$n}",
 				wfMsg("newmessageslink") );
-				$s.=" | ". str_replace( "$1", $tl, wfMsg("newmessages") ) . "";
+				$s.=" | ". str_replace( "$1", $tl, wfMsg("newmessages") ) . "";
 			}
 		}
 		return $s;
@@ -511,7 +510,7 @@

 		$s = "";
 		if ( $wgOut->isArticle() ) {
-			$s .= "" . $this->editThisPage() . "";
+			$s .= "" . $this->editThisPage() . "";
 			if ( 0 != $wgUser->getID() ) {
 				$s .= $sep . $this->watchThisPage();
 			}
@@ -612,7 +611,7 @@
 		if ( $wgOut->isArticle() || $action =="edit" || $action =="history" || $wpPreview) {

 			if($wgOut->isArticle()) {
-				$s .= "" . $this->editThisPage() . "";
+				$s .= "" . $this->editThisPage() . "";
 			} else { # backlink to the article in edit or history mode

 				if($articleExists){ # no backlink if no article
@@ -654,7 +653,7 @@
 				} elseif( $wgTitle->getNamespace() != Namespace::getSpecial() ) {
 					# we just throw in a "New page" text to tell the user that he's in edit mode,
 					# and to avoid messing with the separator that is prepended to the next item
-					$s .= "" . wfMsg("newpage") . "";
+					$s .= "" . wfMsg("newpage") . "";
 				}

 			}
@@ -1231,7 +1230,7 @@

 		if ( "" == $alt ) { $alt = $name; }
 		$u = wfEscapeHTML( $url );
-		$s = "{$alt}";
+		$s = "{$alt}";
 		return $s;
 	}

@@ -1329,11 +1328,11 @@
 		$s .= "({$curlink}) (!OLDID!{$oid}!) . .";

 		$M = wfMsg( "minoreditletter" );
-		if ( $isminor ) { $s .= " {$M}"; }
+		if ( $isminor ) { $s .= " {$M}"; }
 		$s .= " {$link} . . {$ul}";

-		if ( "" != $c && "*" != $c ) { $s .= " (" . wfEscapeHTML($c) . ")"; }
-		$s .= "
\n";
+		if ( "" != $c && "*" != $c ) { $s .= " (" . wfEscapeHTML($c) . ")"; }
+		$s .= "
";

 		$this->lastline = $s;
 		return $ret;
@@ -1354,7 +1353,7 @@
 		$r .= " ".$y->timestamp." " ;
 		$r .= "</tt>" ;
 		$link = $y->link ;
-		if ( $y->watched ) $link = "{$link}" ;
+		if ( $y->watched ) $link = "{$link}" ;
 		$r .= $link ;

 		$r .= " (" ;
@@ -1365,7 +1364,7 @@
 		$r .= ") . . ".$y->userlink ;
 		$r .= $y->usertalklink ;
 		if ( $y->usercomment != "" )
-			$r .= " (".wfEscapeHTML($y->usercomment).")" ;
+			$r .= " (".wfEscapeHTML($y->usercomment).")" ;
 		$r .= "
\n" ;
 		return $r ;
 		}
@@ -1419,7 +1418,7 @@
 		$r .= "</tt>" ;

 		$link = $e->link ;
-		if ( $e->watched ) $link = "{$link}" ;
+		if ( $e->watched ) $link = "{$link}" ;
 		$r .= $link ;

 		if ( !$e->islog ) {
@@ -1461,7 +1460,7 @@
 			$r .= ") . . ".$x->userlink ;
 			$r .= $x->usertalklink ;
 			if ( $x->usercomment != "" )
-				$r .= " (".wfEscapeHTML($x->usercomment).")" ;
+				$r .= " (".wfEscapeHTML($x->usercomment).")" ;
 			$r .= "
\n" ;
 			}
 		$r .= "
\n" ;
@@ -1516,7 +1515,7 @@
 		$nt = Title::newFromText( $t );

 		if ( $watched ) {
-			$clink = "{$clink}";
+			$clink = "{$clink}";
 		}
 		$hlink = $this->makeKnownLink( $t, wfMsg( "hist" ), "action=history" );
 		if ( $isnew || $nt->isLog() ) {
@@ -1536,11 +1535,11 @@
 		$utl= $this->makeLink($utns . ":{$ut}", $talkname );
 		$cr = wfMsg( "currentrev" );

-		$s .= "
 ({$dlink}) ({$hlink}) . .";
+		$s .= "
({$dlink}) ({$hlink}) . .";
 		$M = wfMsg( "minoreditletter" );
 		$N = wfMsg( "newpageletter" );
-		if ( $isminor ) { $s .= " {$M}"; }
-		if ( $isnew ) { $s .= "{$N}"; }
+		if ( $isminor ) { $s .= " {$M}"; }
+		if ( $isnew ) { $s .= "{$N}"; }
 		$s .= " {$clink}; {$h} . . {$ul}";

 		$blink="";
@@ -1557,9 +1556,9 @@
 		$s.=" {$utl}";

 		if ( "" != $c && "*" != $c ) {
-			$s .= " (" . wfEscapeHTML( $c ) . ")";
+			$s .= " (" . wfEscapeHTML( $c ) . ")";
 		}
-		$s .= "
\n";
+		$s .= "
";

 		return $s;
 	}
@@ -1683,13 +1682,13 @@
 		$nb = str_replace( "$1", $size, wfMsg( "nbytes" ) );
 		$style = $this->getInternalLinkAttributes( $url, $dt );

-		$s = "
 ({$dlink}) ({$rlink}) {$dt}"
+		$s = "
({$dlink}) ({$rlink}) {$dt}"
 		  . " . . {$ul} ({$nb})";

 		if ( "" != $c && "*" != $c ) {
-			$s .= " (" . wfEscapeHTML( $c ) . ")";
+			$s .= " (" . wfEscapeHTML( $c ) . ")";
 		}
-		$s .= "
\n";
+		$s .= "
";
 		return $s;
 	}

@@ -1710,11 +1709,11 @@

 		if($level) {

-			return "".$tocline."
\n";
+			return "".$tocline."
\n";
 		} else {

 			return "
\n".
-			"".$tocline."
\n".
+			"".$tocline."
\n".
 			"
\n";
 		}

diff -ruN wiki.orig/SpecialAsksql.php wiki/SpecialAsksql.php
--- wiki.orig/SpecialAsksql.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/SpecialAsksql.php	2003-07-20 21:48:26.000000000 +0200
@@ -103,7 +103,7 @@
 						if( $x == "old_title" ) $namespace = $y->old_namespace;
 						if( $x == "rc_title" ) $namespace = $y->rc_namespace;
 						if( $namespace ) $o = $wgLang->getNsText( $namespace ) . ":" . $o;
-						$o = "" .
+						$o = "" .
 						  htmlspecialchars( $y->$x ) . "" ;
 						} else {
 						$o = htmlspecialchars( $o );
diff -ruN wiki.orig/SpecialIntl.php wiki/SpecialIntl.php
--- wiki.orig/SpecialIntl.php	2003-07-19 21:14:48.000000000 +0200
+++ wiki/SpecialIntl.php	2003-07-20 21:49:19.000000000 +0200
@@ -80,12 +80,12 @@

 function getArticleLink ( $title , $lang = "" ) {
 	global $wgLanguageCode ;
-	$cl = "external" ;
+	$cl = " class='external'" ;
 	if ( $lang == "" ) $lang = $wgLanguageCode ;
-	if ( $lang == $wgLanguageCode ) $cl = "internal" ;
+	if ( $lang == $wgLanguageCode ) $cl = "" ;
 	$nt = Title::newFromText ( $title ) ;
 	$link = "http://".$lang.".wikipedia.org/wiki/".$title ;
-	$link = "".$nt->getText()."" ;
+	$link = "".$nt->getText()."" ;
 	return $link ;
 	}


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV layout engine based on a new CMS

body:
On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 11:32, Timwi wrote:

> > I am starting to work on designing (and creating) a completely new,
> > professional layout engine for all wikimedia websites that should be
> > launched with phase IV of the software.

I like the start. We definitely need a new look for the front-end.
Whether or not that's accompanied by back-end software changes is a
separate issue, and indeed I'm inclined to keep the two apart to
take advantage of our diversity of talents: coders generally aren't
good artists, and vice versa.

I'm still working on cleaning up the wikitext syntax before I'd consider
doing any major back-end work.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Erik wrote:
>...
>and the background color for non-article pages
>(special pages) has been changed to a light metallic blue.

Please change that back. The metallic blue is ugly (the page looks dirty) and
we have used light yellow so long it has become part of our unique
look/trademark. There is /no/ need to make an arbitrary change like this -
without the yellow it doesn't look like Wikipedia.

I like most of the changes though (don't know about the ugly box around the
footer though...)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Changes in cVS

body:
In CVS:

1) Stylesheet changes:
   - smaller headlines in standard skin
   - slightly smaller font for menu links
   - headlines have thin gray underline
   - thinner borders
   - footer in blue box
2) Skin changes:
   - changed default color for non-article pages
   - removed "Special pages" dropdown -- takes space,
     causes display bugs and is hardly used
3) Preferences:
   - put all checkbox prefs in a table so they are
     properly aligned
4) Section editing:
   - new option for editing sections by right clicking
     titles (onContextMenu); works in Mozilla & IE
   - new functionality for appending text to pages, currently
     displayed only for Talk pages as "Post a comment"
     (summary field becomes comment subject)
5) Table of contents:
   - moved table properties to stylesheet
   - modified Brion's JavaScript so that instead of
     [show/hide], show link is shown when table invisible,
     hide link is shown when table visible
   - changed table color, centered headline
   - __NOTOC__ (not case sensitive) in article body
     suppresses TOC display

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] rc size patch

body:
Tomasz-
> * makes class='internal' default, saving lot of bytes
> * changes all <em> to <i>
> * changes all <strong> to <b>
>     (nobody showed actual case where it breaks something, so ...)
> * a few one-byte optimalizations here and there

Hmm - so you have access to the server, but no CVS access? That doesn't
make sense. I suggest asking Brion or Lee for CVS access so you can commit
changes yourself.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia logo

in_reply_to: <3F1A5C49.5010007@planetunreal.com>; from tarquin@planetunreal.com on Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 10:09:29AM +0100

body:
IMHO, we don't need a logo so much as we need a logo concept.  I think
that there should be something constant about the logo, but that there
should also be an element that can change.  For instance, Google's
logo changes for the holidays (though this is not necessarily my intent).

I like the open book idea.  I also like the idea that the logo should
lend itself to the goals of Wikipedia.  I think it would be a good
idea to have a basic "opened book" avilable to the public, from which
anyone might base a logo.  I like the numbers, too.  Maybe they could
stay.

I envision all kinds of things standing on the opened book, writing
something on the page.  Monkeys, men, women, etc.

My $0.02

Jason

tarquin wrote:

>
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >Lightning-
> >
> >
> >>hey, I had like an idea, so i ripped offo ne of the logo's I saw on the
> >>hebrew wikipedia, which i figured was OK because its GFDL, and I did a
> >>little change to it... you can all see it here:
> >>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lightning
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Looks nice, but:
> >
> >1) There should be a "WikipediA" (with the letters between the W and A in
> >small caps) text below the logo, at least for the Latin Wikipedias.
> >
> I think it would be better if the logo has no text. Then the same
> graphic can be used on all sites without any conversion.
>
> I like it by the way :-)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
The test.wiki at

        http://test.wikipedia.org

has now a bunch of improvements/changes:

1) The default skin has been somewhat modified. I made the borders
thinner, and added a box around the footer to separate it from the article
contents. The font size of navigational links is also somewhat smaller,
and the background color for non-article pages (special pages) has been
changed to a light metallic blue.

2) You now get a "Post a comment" link on discussion pages. This takes you
to an empty edit screen with a subject line. The subject line is used as
an edit summary and is added as a ==headline== on top of the edit. The
edit is appended to the current page.

3) There's now a cool way to edit sections: Instead of having ugly [edit]
links next to each one, you can enable a user preference whereby you can
edit sections by right-clicking on them. This only works in Mozilla and IE
to my knowledge.

4) The Table of Contents can now be suppressed by adding the text
"__NOTOC__" anywhere on a page. Note also that Brion and I wrote a
JavaScript that allows you to dynamically show/hide the TOC on the page.
The TOC itself has been slightly changed, with smaller font and a centered
headline.

Please report any bugs or objections, otherwise the current version of the
code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis soon.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 11:23:05AM +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
> On 21 Jul 2003 00:31:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
> utterance to the following:
>
> >Rotem-
> >>Now here's something you should see, *this* is what I call a website:
> >>(this really rocks the boat!)
> >
> >>http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/Wikipedia-Vorbis-site-rip.html
> >
> >1) We need all the screen width we can get for articles, otherwise
> >floating tables, images etc. won't work very well. The design contains no
> >
> While maintaining a max-width on the article space (max-width, however, is
> not supported by MSIE/Win) that is not too wide for optimal reading. (about
> 40-45em is usually good)
>

I drafted a compromise design:

http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/

The right side is used to place the floats, while the left side uses some 60%
of the screen width for the article. On my 1024x768 screen this results in
about 50 em text width.

Navigational items have been added to the top of the design. Vorbis's images
were replaced by our old-fashioned topbar.

Note the "edit..."-links at the top of each float. Those should ideally be
editable on its own. A new box can be added using the toolbox containing
all the edit links.

I kept the donations box in place, it could be a blue box to the right, too.

TODOs: Page looks OK in Mozilla and Opera. MSIE has to big fonts.
 Font face is mixed, some texts are sans-serif, some are serif.
 This is fine tuning, I think one can get the concept nevertheless.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On 21 Jul 2003 00:31:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> Rotem-
>> Now here's something you should see, *this* is what I call a website:
>> (this really rocks the boat!)
>
>> http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/Wikipedia-Vorbis-site-rip.html
>
> 1) We need all the screen width we can get for articles, otherwise
> floating tables, images etc. won't work very well. The design contains no
>
While maintaining a max-width on the article space (max-width, however, is
not supported by MSIE/Win) that is not too wide for optimal reading. (about
40-45em is usually good)

--
Richard Grevers
Computers don't laugh at a three-and-a-half-inch floppy


from_name: Lightning

body:
Montparnasse - pass 1hey.... i like it

Lightning
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: tarquin
  To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
  Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 10:11 AM
  Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Rotem Dan)

  Taking on board the boxed from the Vorbis design ...

  is this better?

  (note the footers still are in rough form!)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia - English
  Main Page - Recent changes - Random page - Current events - Login - You have new messages!
  Gare Montparnasse
  Printable version | Edit this page | Page history

  The train station of Montparnasse (Gare Montparnasse) in Paris, France opened in 1840. A second new station was built between 1848-1852 and was completely rebuilt after World War II and renovated completely in 1969.

  Turn-of-the-century Montparnasse defined the term "starving artist" as virtually penniless painters, sculptors, writers, poets and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere and for the cheap rent at artist communes such as La Ruche. Living without running water, in damp, unheated "studios" often as not overrun by rats, many sold their works for a few francs just to buy food. Jean Cocteau once said that poverty was a luxury in Montparnasse. First promoted by art dealers such as Henry Kahnweiler, today, works by those desperately poor artists sell in the millions of dollars.

  It is most famous for a few incidents:
    a.. the derailment on October 22, 1895 of the Granville-Paris Express that overran the buffer stop. The engine careened across almost 100 feet (30 meters) of the station concourse, crashed through a two-foot thick wall, shot across a terrace and sailed out of the station, plummeting onto the Place de Rennes 30 feet (10 meters) below where it stood on its nose.
    b.. The old train station is also the place where, on August 25, 1944, the German military governor of Paris, General Von Choltitz, surrendered his garrison to the French General Leclerc after disobeying an insane Adolf Hitler's direct order to destroy the city.
  Today, the station is used for the trains to Brittany, and the TGV to Tours, Bordeaux. There is also a metro station. There is a high-speed travelator on trial.

  placeholder for a logo
  This article in other languages
  Dansk | Deutsch | Espa?ol | Esperanto | Fran?ais | Italiano | ??? (Nihongo) | Latina | Nederlands | Polski | Portugu?s | ??????? (Russkij) | Svenska | ?? (Zhongwen)
  Site links
  Main Page
  Recent changes
  Random page
  Current events
  Personal tools
  My user page
  My talk page
  My watchlist
  My contributions
  Search Wikipedia

  Article Tools
  Edit this page | Watch this page | Discuss this page | Page history | What links here | Related changes
  Delete this page | Protect this page | Move this page
  This page was last modified 03:20 8 Dec 2002. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  body.encyclopedia { background: white }
  body.meta    { background: #ffffdd }
  body {
  margin: 0px;
  padding:0px;
  }
  #topbar {
  background: #6688AA; /* from ColBlue */
  background: #8ad; /* light blue */
  color:white;
  color:#fff;
  border:none; /* for NN4 */
  width:100%;
  margin: 0px;
  }

  #topbar h1 {
  font-size: 160%;
  margin: 0px;
  padding:1px 2px;
  }
  #topbar h1 span {
  font-size: 65%;
  }
  #topbar span#alert {
  color:#f80;
  font-weight:bold;
  }
  #topbar div {
  background: #ddd;
  font-size: 90%;
  color:black;
  padding:1px;
  }
  /* ================= article */
  #article {
  padding:0.5em;
  margin-left:0.5em;
  margin-right:15em; /* sidebar margin */
  }
  h1.pagetitle {
  font-size: 150%;
  padding-top: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; margin-bottom: 0;
  }
  p.subtitle , p.languages , p.actions {
  padding: 0em 1em;
  margin: 0em ;
  font-size: 90%;
  color:#723;
  }
  /* ================= sidebar */
  #main {
  position:relative;
  /* only needed if sidebar sits below masthead */
  }

  #sidebar {
  position:absolute;
  top:0px;
  right:0px;
  width:11em;
  padding:0.5em;
  /*border-left: solid 2px #8ad; /* light blue */;
  text-align:center;
  }
  #dummylogo {
  width:100px;
  height:100px;
  background: #ddd;
  margin:0px auto;
  font-size:75%;

  }
  #sidebar h2 {
  margin: 4px 0px 0px;
  padding: 0px;
  font-size:100%;
  background: #8ad;
  }
  #sidebar div {
  border: solid 2px #8ad;
  padding: 0.5em 1em;
  margin: 0em ;
  font-size: 90%;
  }
  #sidebar #dummylogo {
  margin:0px auto ;
  width:100px;
  height:100px;
  }

  /* ================= sidebar */
  #footer {
  padding:2px;
  margin-left:0.5em;
  margin-right:12em; /* sidebar margin */
  /*
  border-top: solid 2px #8ad; /* light blue */;

  }
  #footer div {
  padding:0px;
  margin:4px 2px 0px;
  background: #eee;
  }
  #footer h2 {
  margin: 2px 0px 1px;
  padding: 0px;
  font-size:120%;

  }

  /* ================= hacks */
  /* Feed these styles only to NS4.... */
  /*/*/ /*/
  h1.pagetitle {
  margin-top: -30px;
  color:red;
  }
  p.actions {
  margin-top: -20px;
  }
  /* Okay, we can let the others back in.... */

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Erik wrote:
>... I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
>yellow, though,

Then reduce the saturation of the yellow - like the
fill color used in the "Community" box on en.wiki's
Main Page. But the metallic blue seems really cold and
looks more like a monitor glitch than a fill color
(eeek! my monitor is going dark!). We should have one
color and stick with it - changing the one we already
have to another hue is arbitrary. If you think it is
obnoxious then try different variations of the same
hue - please don't change hues.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikis and uniformity

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> "Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen" wrote:
>
> > Wiki syntax is essential to the purity of the content. And the purity
> > of the content is essential to most Wiki sites. Especially to
> > Wikipedia, where we want the content to be ready to use in print, on
> > PDAs, for blind people, etc.
>
> If this is your agenda, SGML/XML would be the way to go.  The so called
> wiki syntax without HTML extentions is to limited and worse, it is
> mostly layout oriented, and with HTML extentions it is the usual chaos.
>
> Don't take me wrong, chaos isn't necessarily bad ;)

I don't think we want to force every contributor to learn SGML or XML.
Our list of Wikipedians would shrink rather dramatically.

For the record, someone from the Linux Documentation Project wrote a
little utility to convert Wikipedia syntax to DocBook. He orginally wrote
it to export wiki documents, but he found it also was much easier to
write new documents in wiki syntax and convert them rather than starting
with straight DocBook.

Stephen G.


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Side note: IMO, "MediaWiki" would be a good name for our officially nameless
> software. "PediaWiki" never worked for me since the software is used in at
> least several non-encyclopedia contexts and will likely be used by many more
> in the next several years.

I still like "Phase IV Wiki" myself. Although I agree that "MediaWiki" is
better than "PediaWiki".

Stephen G.


subject: [Wikitech-l] rc size patch

body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 09:48:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
> > * makes class='internal' default, saving lot of bytes
> > * changes all <em> to <i>
> > * changes all <strong> to <b>
> >     (nobody showed actual case where it breaks something, so ...)
> > * a few one-byte optimalizations here and there
>
> Hmm - so you have access to the server, but no CVS access? That doesn't
> make sense. I suggest asking Brion or Lee for CVS access so you can commit
> changes yourself.

Yeah, I needed access to test.wikipedia.org for texvc testing, but
didn't care about CVS then :). And now Brion's on vacation.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Daniel-
>
>>Please change that back.
>>
>
>I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
>yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other feedback before doing so.
>
The yellow *should* be a little obnoxious - after all, if you're
looking at a yellow page, you're neither reading nor writing
articles and should be encouraged to get back to the main business
as soon as possible!

One could even go further and make talk pages start flashing red
and yellow after two minutes... :-)

Stan


from_name: Creative Chemistry

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
Not bad, i like it too...

I dont see language links...
I dont see the needs for wimimedia, wikitionary.......
Seinfeld is never in a big header. the title should be bigger, so we can
tell its the title. It just needs to be bigger

i dont like the talk page there.....

Lightning

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rotem Dan" <rotem_dan at yahoo.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 12:41 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

> I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
> dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.
>
> http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-concept-demo.htm
>
> NOTE: please view with Mozilla (tested on 1.4), IE doesn't display the
> widths correctly (though it does work somehow) and the transperant logo.
> I haven't had the time to tweak it for IE yet.
>
> Regards,
> Rotem
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


references: <8qH1lKHCpVB@erik_moeller> <oprsmtwrkwzs1r4a@localhost> <20030721090840.GB1945@jeluf.mine.nu> <3F1BF0A6.7050803@planetunreal.com> <3F1BF491.10803@planetunreal.com> <20030721152505.GC1945@jeluf.mine.nu> <3F1C0AA3.7010806@planetunreal.com> <3F1C1065.9080500@planetunreal.com>

body:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/4/46/Montparnasse-2.html
>
> complete with styled footers & a bit more colour.

the right nav bar needs to be a little bitwider in my opinion
just a couple more pixels...

change Article in other languages to
"Also available in..."
you could uven use a bulleted list for that, that'd be cool

Lightning


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] server access and performance  (was: rc size patch)

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> Yeah, I needed access to test.wikipedia.org for texvc testing, but
> didn't care about CVS then :). And now Brion's on vacation.

Could someone set up a page on meta with a list of people who have
access to the server, and how much (what they can/could do)? I think
this is important information, so we should be a bit more transparent here.

BTW, Wikipedia is unuseable since about two hours, but you all know
that. So, could someone please post the admin password to all the
mailinglists and we can fix those problems "the wiki way"? I'm just
kidding (though the idea is thrilling :-) ), but there was no reaction
after Jimbo said
> I'd like to approve Erik, Magnus, and Tarquin for server access, if
> that is something they'd like to do, and if that's something that we
> think would be useful.

Erik, Magnus, Tarquin, do you have access now? Do you want it?

If someone with access would like to test some performance tweak, but is
  afraid this might take the 'pedia down for some time, I'd say let's
try it. It can't get any worser.

Or could we host one of the bigger wikis at ibiblio until we have
another server (which will be very very soon, of course, but you never
know ...)

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] server access and performance

body:
Kurt-

> BTW, Wikipedia is unuseable since about two hours, but you all know
> that.

??? I don't. Works fine for me, both on Larousse and Pliny. The version
running on test.wiki has some performance tweaks that should help, as soon
as that's properly tested it will go live on all wikis. I still think we
should disable all sysop queries because there have been runaway queries
several times that bogged the wiki down for hours. Maybe I should just do
it while Brion is away :)

> Erik, Magnus, Tarquin, do you have access now? Do you want it?

I do. I'm not a SourceForge project admin, though. Only those can hand out
CVS access. These are Lee, Magnus, Brion and two people I don't know:
Michael Dill and Valerio Santinelli. They probably were there very early.

> Or could we host one of the bigger wikis at ibiblio until we have
> another server (which will be very very soon, of course, but you never
> know ...)

I don't think it's as urgent as you say -- since Brion turned the fulltext
search off on en:, I had pretty decent speed whenever I used wiki.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>  there was no reaction after Jimbo said
>
>> I'd like to approve Erik, Magnus, and Tarquin for server access, if
>> that is something they'd like to do, and if that's something that we
>> think would be useful.
>
>
> Erik, Magnus, Tarquin, do you have access now? Do you want it?
>
I would like  to be able to put CSS and layout files on the server, and
also to help with uploading language files.
Things beyond that are out of my league.
I don't know what sort of access I need for those things.

Once I put a new version of a file on CVS -- what do I do next?


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

>In this case the javascript changes from one CSS file to another. That
>is too complicated too maintain. Instead all preferences could be
>applied on the go by javascript iself.
>
>
I'm no expert in this field, but that strikes me as an odd choice.  I
thought the whole point of factoring UI design stuff to a CSS file was
to make it _easier_ to maintain?  Isn't writing UI layout/design code
into JavaScript a lot uglier?

-Mark


body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>I drafted a compromise design:
>
>http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/
>
>The right side is used to place the floats,
>

Those are not floats! It's still table-based.

>while the left side uses some 60%
>of the screen width for the article. On my 1024x768 screen this results in
>about 50 em text width.
>
There are still many 460x480 screens out there! A default skin must
cater to those.

>Note the "edit..."-links at the top of each float. Those should ideally be
>editable on its own. A new box can be added using the toolbox containing
>all the edit links.
>
It's interesting the way that "interior" elements such as the images and
the statistics table are placed above the "system" elements. How would
that be achieved? What if the stats are not the same width as the system
elements? And I'm not sure it's a good idea to mix system stuff with
article content.


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Kurt-
>
>>BTW, Wikipedia is unuseable since about two hours, but you all know
>>that.
>
> ??? I don't. Works fine for me, both on Larousse and Pliny.

Hmm, the server didn't respond many times (more than usual), and I had
to wait for ages for the other pages. Maybe a provider problem, but I
had the impression others had the same problems after looking at the
German RecentChanges. English Wikipedia was also slow to me, but I
didn't look at rc.

> The version
> running on test.wiki has some performance tweaks that should help, as soon
> as that's properly tested it will go live on all wikis.

Great!

> I still think we
> should disable all sysop queries because there have been runaway queries
> several times that bogged the wiki down for hours. Maybe I should just do
> it while Brion is away :)

Meinen Segen hast Du.
("you got my blessings", proper English translation?)

>>Or could we host one of the bigger wikis at ibiblio until we have
>>another server (which will be very very soon, of course, but you never
>>know ...)
>
> I don't think it's as urgent as you say -- since Brion turned the fulltext
> search off on en:, I had pretty decent speed whenever I used wiki.

Hmm, I had much of variation the last days. And I wouldn't want to miss
the fulltext search on the German 'pedia. This should only be an interim
solution.

Kurt


body:
Taking on board the boxed from the Vorbis design ...

is this better?

(note the footers still are in rough form!)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Storing "source code" for diagrams in the Wikipedia?

body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 11:18:33PM +1000, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> I've been working on creating diagrams for the playing arenas of various
> sports (for instance see
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football), using sodipodi
> (an SVG editor) and then exporting to PNG.
>
> It seems to me that it would be useful for the purposes of future editing
> if people had access to my SVG files.  At the moment, if people want
> to change the diagram they either have to ask me to make the changes, mail
> me for a copy of the SVG, or try the hack of modifying the exported bitmap
> on the site.
>
> Obviously, I could upload the SVG source, but is this appropriate (we don't do
> this for any other type of file because of the bandwidth and storage issues)
> but where would be an appropriate place to put it?
>
> So, basically, I'm raising the topic of whether and how we should handle
> "source files" for media we place in the Wikipedia.

Actually, I upload "source files" to wikipedia and link them from the
generated PNG's. I think this matches the WikiWay best and is best in
the spirit of the GFDL.

Bandwidth usage will not be very high. Not many people will download the source.
Storage might become an issue, but SVGs can be stored gzipped and are not very
big when compressed.

And of course, sometimes in the future, we will support SVG natively without
having to convert to PNG first. Would be a pity not to have your files at
hands, wouldn't it?

Regards,

	JeLuF


body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 03:52:32PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> And of course, sometimes in the future, we will support SVG natively without
> having to convert to PNG first. Would be a pity not to have your files at
> hands, wouldn't it?

We must do this if we want to have decent print quality,
so someone some day will implement that.
But don't hold your breath.


body:
Robert-
> Obviously, I could upload the SVG source,

Just do it and link to it from the image page using a [[media:]] link.
Bandwidth and storage are not an issue.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Daniel-
> > Please change that back.
>
> I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick
> of the obnoxious
> yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other
> feedback before doing so.
> We can also experiment with other colors. Perhaps it
> should be a user
> preference (then again, perhaps we should just
> support user-defined
> stylesheets ..).

Feed back

I like the new blue color.

I don't like either the strong yellow of talk pages,
so I would not mind it being changed. However, I think
it important that colors distinguish between talk page
and article page. A much lighter yellow would be fine.
Or a light green perhaps. I shall not push for pink :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>
>For those who can't read HTML embedded in Mails, this is tarquins
>page:
>	http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/montparnasse-2.html
>
I assumed people could just save the files to their HD and open it in a
browser -- sorry.

>
>Regarding the page: Much to long lines. Amazingly many people
>nowadays have screen sizes of 19" and 1600x1200 pixels. Lines
>become very long and it's hard to find the beginning of the
>next line.
>
But the default screen size is *still* 640x480. People still surf the
web with this.
If the lines are too long, *make your window narrower*
People with small screens cannot make *their* wider!

>
>Your design is very conservative. Few colors, text mainly.
>
yes. Because we need a default skin that everyone can agree on.

>I hacked in some ugly colors, mainly to show alternatives.
>You can find them at
>	http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/milan.html
>It's just a quick an dirty approach. Not tested in anything
>but Mozilla.
>
Those llok good. But I'm not sure about having a background grey and
then the article white in front of it. It makes the page look smaller --
less space.

>
>I'm not very happy about the language box. It looks so crowded.
>I think I'll blame the | for it.
>
Good point.

>
>In a good old tradition, the footer is still left untouched.
>
>
;-)
I'll work on that now.


references: <8qH1lKHCpVB@erik_moeller> <oprsmtwrkwzs1r4a@localhost> <20030721090840.GB1945@jeluf.mine.nu> <3F1BF0A6.7050803@planetunreal.com> <3F1BF491.10803@planetunreal.com> <20030721152505.GC1945@jeluf.mine.nu> <3F1C0AA3.7010806@planetunreal.com>

body:
tarquin wrote:

>>
>> In a good old tradition, the footer is still left untouched.
>>
>>
> ;-)
> I'll work on that now.
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/4/46/Montparnasse-2.html

complete with styled footers & a bit more colour.


body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 03:11:29PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
> Taking on board the boxed from the Vorbis design ...
>
> is this better?
>
> (note the footers still are in rough form!)

For those who can't read HTML embedded in Mails, this is tarquins
page:
	http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/montparnasse-2.html

Regarding the page: Much to long lines. Amazingly many people
nowadays have screen sizes of 19" and 1600x1200 pixels. Lines
become very long and it's hard to find the beginning of the
next line.

Really, go to the kiosk down the road and buy any newspaper.
It is printing text in multiple columns. Even the encyclopedias
I own do so. Why is this? Basically two reasons: It's easy to
read, the eye easily finds the beginning of the next line. And
in print it's very space efficient.

Your design is very conservative. Few colors, text mainly.
I hacked in some ugly colors, mainly to show alternatives.
You can find them at
	http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/milan.html
It's just a quick an dirty approach. Not tested in anything
but Mozilla.

I'm not very happy about the language box. It looks so crowded.
I think I'll blame the | for it.

In a good old tradition, the footer is still left untouched.

Regards,

	JeLuF


body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 02:54:46PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
>
>
> Jens Frank wrote:
>
> >I drafted a compromise design:
> >
> >http://jeluf.mine.nu/jf/kiribati/
> >
> >The right side is used to place the floats,
> >
>
> Those are not floats! It's still table-based.

OK, misnomer. Floats from the article's point of view, in contrast to
inlined images. Elements that don't have to have a fixed position to
the article but can be freely placed by the designer.

> >while the left side uses some 60%
> >of the screen width for the article. On my 1024x768 screen this results in
> >about 50 em text width.
> >
> There are still many 460x480 screens out there! A default skin must
> cater to those.

On 640x480, the text is fully readable, you have to scroll horizontally
to read the sidebars. Since those are independent contextual strings,
this seems acceptable to me.

> >Note the "edit..."-links at the top of each float. Those should ideally be
> >editable on its own. A new box can be added using the toolbox containing
> >all the edit links.
> >
> It's interesting the way that "interior" elements such as the images and
> the statistics table are placed above the "system" elements. How would
> that be achieved? What if the stats are not the same width as the system
> elements? And I'm not sure it's a good idea to mix system stuff with
> article content.

The stats and the system elements have been forced to have the same width.
This should be possible for almost any of our factsheets. The few exceptions
should be rendered inline anyway, they are probably to wide to be a good
floats, anyway.
Else you
will get
text like
this when
using
640x480
text
resoluti
on.

Taking the stats out of the article is probably only feasible by completly
changing the way we handle them. Currenty they are inlined into the wiki,
ugly since it's hard core HTML. Going to a design like Kiribati would
be easiest when "sidebar elements" become wikipedia articles of its own.
That's also why they have an edit link.

Regarding mixing: Perhaps the colour code should be changed, e.g. gray
background for all the system stuff, white for the article, the sidebar
could be either blue (making it a thing of its own) or white (showing it's
part of the article). For me those don't strictly belong to the article,
that's why I made them blue.

BTW, I'm not sure this is a good approach, too. I just try to be bold
because I think the current design is a little bit old fashioned.

Regards,

	JeLuF


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Erik wrote:
>Here is an alternative (4 levels) without reverting
>to those oversized fonts:
>
>http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Temp/HeaderSizes2.png

I very much like this alternative - if an article needs more than 4 heading
levels after H1 then their is something really wrong with the organization of
that article.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Jules writes:
> I looked at the last comments that RK said he removed
> from his talk page.  Although the one from E of T was
> a bit inflammatory, it seemed to be a response to one
> of Roberts own "attacks" -- I infer a typically
> one-sided and less than tactful comment he made about
> someone else's work.  If my inference or
> characterization are incorrect, I apologise.

Jules, I really wish you had made an effort to ascertain
the truth; as it turns out, your idea is totally off base.
In point of fact, I was writing comments about creationism,
evolution, speciation, genetics and cooperating with others
on classifying our Gaia theory articles. These are science
issues.

I ask you: What kind of people see such mundane science
discussions as appropriate for denunciations of my
perceived views on the Israeki-Palestinian issue?

What kind of obsessed person thinks the appropriate
response to a discussion on genetics is something like "But
you Zionists should stop oppressing Palestinians".

Am I mistaken here? Is evolution now "anti-Arab"?  Is Gaia
theory now pro-Zionist?   Come off it.  Let's talk about
speciation and transitional fossils, as I was doing on
Wikipedia.  Wait!  Doesn't this call for remarks about the
Palestinians?

No.

At least, not to someone who doesn't have a grudge against
a Wikipedia contributor, because he is Jewish.

No matter what topic I write about, certain people simply
ignore the topic, and drag the Zionists (i.e. the Jews)
into this.  They are not trying to produce encyclopedia
quality work; they are out to score points, hurt people,
and make themselves feel "liberal".

> The comment made by Pizza Puzzle may have been
*personally* offensive to
> Robert, but it is simply a statement of PP's own opinion
on the
> situation.  I may not be popular, but he is entitled to
it.

No, he is not entitled to keep harassing me on my own
personal User page about his political views, especially
when I am trying to work with others on some science
articles.

> Presumably user talk pages are meant to be places where
we communicate with
> each other in public -- so I don't see why there is a
problem.

So if you are white, then white-haters can taunt you
repeatedly on your User page, and you won't have a problem
with it?

Zoe is gone due to similar harassment. A few of my other
Jewish friends visited (teachers, PhD.s, etc.)...and left
quickly, sensing a bit too much self-righteous left-wing
animosity towards Jews. (And those same Jews were
themselves rather left wing.)  They think I am nuts for
staying here.

> If RK doesn't like a comment, he can erase it -- as he
did -- but
> it's a pain in the arse to have to look it up in the
history.

No, I can't! You totally missed the point. When I tried to
erase the comment, I was slandered as an Arabophobe.

That, by the way, is untrue.  I happen to have lived for
two years with a Muslim Arab from Morocco, and had Muslim
Palestinian friends in graduate school, and I also happen
to support Israeli political parties that are to the left
of the current government.  I also have particiapted on
numerous occasions with interfaith Muslim-Jewish prayer
groups, and my synagogue is considered somewhat progressive
for precisely this sort of thing.

I am, however, opposed to what the U.S. State Department
condemns as Palestinian terrorism...and this last fact
alone has caused me to be repeatedly slandered as a bigot,
as a racist, etc. And no one on Wikipedia objects to these
false characterizations of me.  But what this has to do
with speciation, creationism and evolution, I'll never
know!

It seems pretty clear to me that many people on Wikipedia
do not care if one is pro-tolerance and pro-Arab or not.
Facts don't matter one whit to one whose conclusions are
based only in prejudice.  All that many Wikipedians care
about is constant proving how evil the Zionist (read:
"Jewish") position is, even if they haven't the slightest
fucking idea what I actually do or believe.

> But my disagreement is less that RK is phobic of Arabs,
but instead
> is overly sensitive, perhaps even paranoid, about
anything that isn't
> vehemently pro-Israeli/pro-Zionist.

Sorry, Jules, but I disagree. GENETICS AND SPECIATION ARE
NOT PRO-ZIONIST.  Sorry for shouting, please look at the
topics I was working on, and compare them to the comments.
Do you see any relation?  Of course not; there isn't one.
People are lashing out at me simply because I am a Jew.
That is not paranoia.  It is, however, unacceptable.

I thus ask you to reconsider your comments.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 05:10:13PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
> tarquin wrote:
>
> >>
> >>In a good old tradition, the footer is still left untouched.
> >>
> >>
> >;-)
> >I'll work on that now.
> >
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/4/46/Montparnasse-2.html
>
> complete with styled footers & a bit more colour.
>
Hyphens are much better. Perhaps make a   between language
and hyphen so that hyphens only appear at the end of the line,
not at its beginning.

Personally, I would place only one searchbox. I prefer the
one below the not-yet-there logo.

BTW, the Milan page is not wider or smaller than the Montparnasse
one. You just notice the wide gap betweeen article and sidebar
better when it is grey.

When having stubs, can we ensure that the article tools are
''at least'' below the personal tools? The turquoise bar on the
middle of the page looks misplaced.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Rotem Dan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.

http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-concept-demo.htm

NOTE: please view with Mozilla (tested on 1.4), IE doesn't display the
widths correctly (though it does work somehow) and the transperant logo.
I haven't had the time to tweak it for IE yet.

Regards,
Rotem


from_name: Benjamin Esham

body:
On Monday, July 21, 2003, at 05:38  PM, Erik Zachte wrote:

> What about giving the reader more control over things like font type
> and
> size ?
>
> This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
> font size, style and colour.

This sounds like a great idea.  K5 does something similar, and it's
nice to be able to select your own fonts.

> The choices would be stored in a cookie
> (ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
> through javascript after the page has loaded. So, minimal overhead for
> the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
> user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
> formatting options might be added to the preferences page.

Hmm... One of the things I've learned while designing websites is that
you should never count on any two user's JavaScript implementations
doing the same thing.  That's probably a cynical point of view, but
still -- the differences between JavaScript implementations can vary
quite a lot.  I'm not sure that's really the way to go.  (OTOH, I don't
have any better ideas -- embedding a tiny piece of CSS in each page
served to a registered user would be nice, but most likely way too
server-intensive.)

--
Benjamin D. Esham      {      http://bdesham.net
bdesham at iname.com      }      AIM: bdesham 1 2 8


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
Creative Chemistry wrote:
> Not bad, i like it too...
>
> I dont see language links...
> I dont see the needs for wimimedia, wikitionary.......
> Seinfeld is never in a big header. the title should be bigger, so we can
> tell its the title. It just needs to be bigger
>
> i dont like the talk page there.....
>
> Lightning

I will make the header bigger. I also forgot to put "From wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia".

This is just to show the concept of the dynamic boxes, XHTML, CSS and
complete content-layout separation using CSS classes (Content Management
System style), so I didn't have time to put the language links (and many
other features). And as for the talk page, theoretically, it would
disappear if press the [X] button on its top right corner :-)

I haven't given much though for the design yet. You can always rip the
page and improve the style if you want (the wiki way ;-) )

Rotem


from_name: Timwi

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:
> I am starting to work on designing (and creating) a completely new,
> professional layout engine for all wikimedia websites that should be
> launched with phase IV of the software.
>
> First, from what I understand, the main idea for phase IV is that all
> wikipedias sit on a single software installation (and that's great!), I
> will add: (Just to give the general direction to tease you up)

I'm totally confused now. Phase IV? I thought we're going to stick with
the current PHP code and only improve it over time. When I suggested to
write a Phase-IV software to take care of problems such as single-login
and better integration, everyone objected and told me it wasn't worth it.

So, what exactly is going on? What are the plans?

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikis and uniformity

in_reply_to:
<MPG.1985e0be5a1fd55111e1a305@smtp.nbnet.nb.ca> (Stephen
 Gilbert's message of "Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:37:06 -0300")

body:
Stephen Gilbert <sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca> writes:

> I don't think we want to force every contributor to learn SGML or XML.
> Our list of Wikipedians would shrink rather dramatically.

You cannot prove that claim.  HTML is SGML and there are quite some HTML
writers.  Using SGML is easy.  They can separate paragraphs by <p> and
they are done.  More advanced users can use more tags.

_Many_ editors isn't a good thing per se; we should rather go for _good_
editors.

> He orginally wrote it to export wiki documents, but he found it also
> was much easier to write new documents in wiki syntax and convert them
> rather than starting with straight DocBook.

It isn't easier, but he is lazy ;) And he obviously enjoys using a
cryptic markup language.  Cf. my User page.  Aditionally, you will never
know whether wikipedia software accepts your HTML elements or not.

Lately we discussed fragment idetifiers and I was told they are
supported; what must I write to make then work?

[[Garten#Geschichte]] does not seem to do the trick to point to
something like <a name="Geschichte"> in the article "Garten".

If someone is seriously interested in uniformity, he should vote for
SGML/XML; ignoring using a proper markup language is just a waste of
human resources: without a DTD we are force to edit or adjust articles
again and again.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
Timwi wrote:

> I'm totally confused now. Phase IV? I thought we're going to stick with
> the current PHP code and only improve it over time. When I suggested to
> write a Phase-IV software to take care of problems such as single-login
> and better integration, everyone objected and told me it wasn't worth it.
>
> So, what exactly is going on? What are the plans?
>
> Thanks,
> Timwi

OK, I arbitrarily announced it as phase IV, you can call it phase III,
V, VI whatever :-) , it doesn't matter really, as long as I find the
time to code it..

Rotem


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia logo

body:
Jason-
> I envision all kinds of things standing on the opened book, writing
> something on the page.  Monkeys

Definitely monkeys. Monkeys rule.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Daniel-
> Please change that back.

I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other feedback before doing so.
We can also experiment with other colors. Perhaps it should be a user
preference (then again, perhaps we should just support user-defined
stylesheets ..).

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 12:37 PM 7/22/03 +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
>On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:38:06 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl>
>gave utterance to the following:
>
>>What about giving the reader more control over things like font type and
>>size ?
>>
>>This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
>>font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
>>(ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
>>through javascript after the page has loaded.

No thank you. Javascript is a security risk; Wikipedia doesn't need it
and shouldn't ask me to use it.

>>So, minimal overhead for
>>the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
>>user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
>>formatting options might be added to the preferences page.
>
>There's really no need to do any of the above. One gives the reader full
>control over font size and face simply by not specifying them in the HTML
>or stylesheet. They are then rendered in the user's preferred default
>which they set in their browser.

Most of us set defaults for common things like "visited link", not for unusual
ones like "Wikipedia talk page".

>(Any user who seriously cares about optimizing readability will probably
>be using a browser other than IE where the size control options are rather
>limited)

Ninety-six percent of Internet users are on IE these days. I'm in the other
four percent,
but we need to design for the typical user, not drive most people away with
religious
wars.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> The test.wiki at
>         http://test.wikipedia.org
> has now a bunch of improvements/changes:

Like Daniel, I agree to most of the changes and would like to thank you
and whoever worked on it.

However, I object to your changes to the standard skin. Why do we *have*
a skin system that allows users to select different skins? If you want a
different skin, please make a new one. I don't mind a five-pages-long
list of skins to select from on the preferences page (though others
might), but please keep the current standard the way it is because
people are used to it. Please.

I liked the thick borders because they showed very clearly where the
actual article is. (I have slightly bad vision.) I also think the
article heading is too small now. I thought you were only going to
reduce the size of H2 onwards. I don't like the border around the footer
because the previous way was cleaner and more consistent with the look
of the rest (the top for instance). I don't like the light-blue colour
of the bottom box because it looks bad in contrast to the yellow
background of discussion pages.

All in all, please change the skin back.

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
Rotem-
> I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
> dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.

When you say coded, do you mean coded, or written? Is there any actual PHP
code? I prefer to use "code" for code only, and "write" for HTML/CSS.

Having the page-specific elements "attached" to the page like this is kind
of neat. This also applies to delete, protect, watch etc. Putting
discussion and content on the same page looks interesting, but won't work
well for very long pages. Perhaps there should be a maximum length at
which the discussion is linked to instead of embedded.

The search box lacks a go button equivalent. Perhaps something like
Everything2's "[ ] ignore exact" could be used.

The discussion background is too dark in this demo, and the table
separators are too thick.

The meaning of the [+] is not intuitively clear to me. And what would the
[X] for the article display window do?

Please try to think of good ways to integrate the features that are
currently running on test.wikipedia.org, namely
- section editing
- table of contents
- appending to the bottom of a page on talk pages ("Post a comment")

Regards,

Erik


body:
Rotem Dan wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I'm totally confused now. Phase IV? I thought we're going to stick
>> with the current PHP code and only improve it over time. When I
>> suggested to write a Phase-IV software to take care of problems such
>> as single-login and better integration, everyone objected and told me
>> it wasn't worth it.
>>
>> So, what exactly is going on? What are the plans?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Timwi
>
> OK, I arbitrarily announced it as phase IV, you can call it phase III,
> V, VI whatever :-) , it doesn't matter really, as long as I find the
> time to code it..

Code what? Phase IV would mean to me you're re-writing the entire
Wikipedia software. From your demo, it seems you are only coding, as you
call it, a content-management system. Is that right?

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Daniel-
>
>>Please change that back.
>
> I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
> yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other feedback before doing so.

I hated the yellow right from the start, and I still can't believe that
people like the new colors of the English MainPage. It really gives me
shivers. (Maybe my monitor is miscalibrated?)

The metallic blue looks good, IMHO.

Kurt


body:
Timwi-
> However, I object to your changes to the standard skin.

Well, the whole point is optimizing the defaults, not giving users yet
another choice for what are miniscule variations -- most of the changes
are in the stylesheets, not in the skin code. However, each change can be
easily reverted if it upsets too many users.

> I liked the thick borders because they showed very clearly where the
> actual article is. (I have slightly bad vision.)

That should be easier now because the navigational elements use a
different font size from the main article.

> I also think the
> article heading is too small now.

I think that's just an initial impression because the original headings
were quite huge. In reality, I only changed each heading size to the next
smaller level.

> I don't like the border around the footer

I'm not completely happy with it either. I had problems getting the same
box around the top table, because that table is much more complex. I'll
fiddle some more with it and if I can't make it work I'll remove the box.

> because the previous way was cleaner and more consistent with the look
> of the rest (the top for instance). I don't like the light-blue colour
> of the bottom box because it looks bad in contrast to the yellow
> background of discussion pages.

There is no yellow background of discussion pages ;-). The fact that the
strong contrast between yellow and white makes it hard to come up with a
global color scheme for things like TOC, boxes etc. is one of the reasons
to change it. Note that if you're not logged in, you'll probably view a
few cached copies.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
Daniel-
> Erik wrote:
>> ... I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
>> yellow, though,

> Then reduce the saturation of the yellow

Fair enough. I'll play around with it some more.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] New layout engine based on a new CMS

references: <bfgapb$3dn$1@main.gmane.org> <3F1C31D9.1000601@gmx.net> <bfhcqu$2kf$1@main.gmane.org> <bfhegn$8st$2@main.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
>
> Code what? Phase IV would mean to me you're re-writing the entire
> Wikipedia software. From your demo, it seems you are only coding, as you
> call it, a content-management system. Is that right?
>
> Greetings,
> Timwi

Yep, a content mangement system means that
1. No more hardcoded HTML inside the PHP script. Instead the CMS gets
templates like XML, Smarty etc. (I really need to investigate this more)
2. Special pages, talk pages, and the whole interface are no more
hardcoded as "stand-alone" pages, but imported classes that return
templates the CMS decides to lay however wherever it wants on the
generated page.

For example, the demo I did had an Article, a talk page and a small
recent changes box that can be enlarged on the same page. (and of course
more is possible)

Basically taking the CVS code as is and drastically abstracting it + new
layout manager, from a "conservative" viewpoint,  I would call it a new
"phase" because it introduces more bugs. However most of the SQL
queries, diffs, wiki syntax parser, RC etc. "Business Logic" stays the same.

I will elaborate more as I'll be drown into the code... :-)

Rotem


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Rotem-
>
>>I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
>>dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.
>
>
> When you say coded, do you mean coded, or written? Is there any actual PHP
> code? I prefer to use "code" for code only, and "write" for HTML/CSS.
>
> Having the page-specific elements "attached" to the page like this is kind
> of neat. This also applies to delete, protect, watch etc. Putting
> discussion and content on the same page looks interesting, but won't work
> well for very long pages. Perhaps there should be a maximum length at
> which the discussion is linked to instead of embedded.
>
> The search box lacks a go button equivalent. Perhaps something like
> Everything2's "[ ] ignore exact" could be used.
>
> The discussion background is too dark in this demo, and the table
> separators are too thick.
>
> The meaning of the [+] is not intuitively clear to me. And what would the
> [X] for the article display window do?
>
> Please try to think of good ways to integrate the features that are
> currently running on test.wikipedia.org, namely
> - section editing
> - table of contents
> - appending to the bottom of a page on talk pages ("Post a comment")
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

This is static, hard-coded XHTML :-) you are right, "written" is more
precise... My usual answer: ofcourse ofcourse ofcourse.. yes limiting
dicussion length is good, button for search, interlanguage links, TOC,
section editing, change damn ugly discussion background, "add a new
message", bigger titles, mysetrious [+], yada yada yada. good good good
will be all changed. I just don't have time, will work on it later this
week!! :-)

Rotem DAN


body:
At 02:34 PM 7/22/03 +1200, you wrote:
>On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:08:01 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> gave
>utterance to the following:
>
>>At 12:37 PM 7/22/03 +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
>>>On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:38:06 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl>
>>>gave utterance to the following:
>>>
>>>>What about giving the reader more control over things like font type and
>>>>size ?
>>>>
>>>>This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
>>>>font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
>>>>(ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
>>>>through javascript after the page has loaded.
>>
>>No thank you. Javascript is a security risk; Wikipedia doesn't need it
>>and shouldn't ask me to use it.
>>
>>>>So, minimal overhead for
>>>>the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
>>>>user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
>>>>formatting options might be added to the preferences page.
>>>
>>>There's really no need to do any of the above. One gives the reader full
>>>control over font size and face simply by not specifying them in the
>>>HTML or stylesheet. They are then rendered in the user's preferred
>>>default which they set in their browser.
>>
>>Most of us set defaults for common things like "visited link", not for
>>unusual
>>ones like "Wikipedia talk page".
>
>Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button on the first
>panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on Web pages and documents
>which do not have a specified text font" - it's generic as can be. And I
>have 13pt Trebuchet selected in every browser.

We're not just discussing fonts, though. The current questions include how to
best use different background colors to distinguish between *kinds of Wikipedia
page*. "Default font for everything" is common;
specific-to-a-single-Website things
will be set by few people.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Phase IV concept demo

body:
Rotem Dan wrote:

> I have hand-coded from scratch a concept demo of the phase IV new
> dynamic layout I'm thinking of. This should be XHTML 1.1/CSS compatible.
>
> http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/phase4-concept-demo.htm
>
> NOTE: please view with Mozilla (tested on 1.4), IE doesn't display the
> widths correctly (though it does work somehow) and the transperant
> logo. I haven't had the time to tweak it for IE yet.
>
It could be great as an optional skin.
But the default skin must be usable in:
* Netscape 4
* text browser
* speech browsers

Without the [x] and [+] which are confusing, and without the overly
ambitious ideas for dynamic stuff, it could be good as a default layout
if coded carefully.... this is *STILL* made with tables :-(
(and it needs to be a bit lighter -- it's very dark and "heavy" at the
moment)


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

body:
I've been working on creating diagrams for the playing arenas of various
sports (for instance see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football), using sodipodi
(an SVG editor) and then exporting to PNG.

It seems to me that it would be useful for the purposes of future editing
if people had access to my SVG files.  At the moment, if people want
to change the diagram they either have to ask me to make the changes, mail
me for a copy of the SVG, or try the hack of modifying the exported bitmap
on the site.

Obviously, I could upload the SVG source, but is this appropriate (we don't do
this for any other type of file because of the bandwidth and storage issues)
but where would be an appropriate place to put it?

So, basically, I'm raising the topic of whether and how we should handle
"source files" for media we place in the Wikipedia.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                          rgmerk at mira.net
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
                -- Albert Einstein
They laughed at Einstein.  They laughed at the Wright Brothers.  But they
also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
                -- Carl Sagan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!

body:
May I suggest we use a non-serif font for the headers (sans-serif or
Arial or Verdana or whatever).

Serif has been invented to facilitate the reader in following a line of
text without hopping from one line to another inadvertently.

It is a compromise at best on monitors because it really needs a fine
resolution for all nifty details. Non-serif fonts generally give a less
crowded appearance. Since the 'skipping a line' arguments does not hold
for headers one often sees a combination of body text in serif, headers
in sans-serif.

Of course it is also a matter of taste and what one is used to. Speaking
of taste: sans-serif tends to be seen as slightly more modern. I bet the
Times will be the last to abandon Times Roman, even for headers. :-)

Erik Zachte


body:
What about giving the reader more control over things like font type and
size ?

This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
(ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
through javascript after the page has loaded. So, minimal overhead for
the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
formatting options might be added to the preferences page.

See for an example of font type switching this service page: (it is in
Dutch but choices are obvious):

http://www.gemm.nl/webgemms/service.html

In this case the javascript changes from one CSS file to another. That
is too complicated too maintain. Instead all preferences could be
applied on the go by javascript iself.

For example my Wikipedia statistics pages remembers table font size:
http://www.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics

Erik Zachte


references: <8qH1lKHCpVB@erik_moeller> <oprsmtwrkwzs1r4a@localhost> <20030721090840.GB1945@jeluf.mine.nu> <3F1BF0A6.7050803@planetunreal.com> <3F1BF491.10803@planetunreal.com> <20030721152505.GC1945@jeluf.mine.nu> <3F1C0AA3.7010806@planetunreal.com> <3F1C1065.9080500@planetunreal.com> <20030721163117.GF1945@jeluf.mine.nu>

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>Hyphens are much better. Perhaps make a   between language
>and hyphen so that hyphens only appear at the end of the line,
>not at its beginning.
>
Ok. But that's up to the rendering rather than the designer :)

>Personally, I would place only one searchbox. I prefer the
>one below the not-yet-there logo.
>
It would be nice to have the namespace checkboxes in the footer version.
At the foot of the page they are out of the way so they don't scare newbies.
At the moment, to do a namespace search I have to do one "fake" search
just to get to the controls -- bad for server load!

>BTW, the Milan page is not wider or smaller than the Montparnasse
>one. You just notice the wide gap betweeen article and sidebar
>better when it is grey.
>
More white makes the page more restful. I've been wondering how to move
away from the "two sides boxed off" look we have at the moment:

-------------
|
|    -----------
|    | (article is trapped here)
|    |

Having the sidebar elements in separate boxes, placed on the same
background as the rest of the page is a neat way round that. Thank you
Vorbis layout for that idea! :)

>When having stubs, can we ensure that the article tools are
>''at least'' below the personal tools? The turquoise bar on the
>middle of the page looks misplaced.
>
Limitation of CSS, sadly :(  -- see
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=FooterBeneathSidebar


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPR has run a story on Wikis and Wikipedia ; great promo link for Wikis and Wikipedia

body:
National Public Radio in the United States has run a story on how Wikis are
being used on the Internet and within corporations to collaboratively create
documents. There is a very prominent mention of Wikipedia in this story (in
fact about half the segment is about Wikipedia).

Please email this link to your boss and co-workers!

http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/segment.jhtml?wfId=1344426

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

> May I suggest we use a non-serif font for the headers (sans-serif or
> Arial or Verdana or whatever).

I would like to suggest we keep it the way it is now on the EN
Wikipedia, which doesn't specify any font. This way I can specify my own
fonts in my browser without having to create an own custom stylesheet.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
I have the feeling your changes are only gradually taking effect on
test.wikipedia.org. When I wrote my previous e-mail about this, I still
saw yellow on the discussion pages, and only the line separating the top
bar was thinner (not the one for the left bar). Now, with both lines
thin, I have to admit I like it even less :(

Erik Moeller wrote:

> Timwi-
>
>>However, I object to your changes to the standard skin.
>
> Well, the whole point is optimizing the defaults, not giving users yet
> another choice for what are miniscule variations

I know. But I don't see your current changes as optimisations. Sorry.
Maybe I'm just short-sighted (no pun intended).

>>I liked the thick borders because they showed very clearly where the
>>actual article is. (I have slightly bad vision.)
>
> That should be easier now because the navigational elements use a
> different font size from the main article.

I'm not seeing this change, so I'll look back at it tomorrow, but I
don't think this will convince me. It still won't be as clear a
separation as thicker borders were.

>>I also think the article heading is too small now.
>
> I think that's just an initial impression because the original headings
> were quite huge.

Well, actually the previous heading appeared bolder to me than the
current one does. However, this is due to the particular font I've set
in my browser (Verdana) and its habit of suddenly getting quite a bit
fatter from one point size to the next. I understand most people use
Times New Roman instead. However, if it doesn't upset too many people,
if you could change it just slightly from 125% to 130%? Just to achieve
this little effect for Verdana users like me?... That would be great :-)

> In reality, I only changed each heading size to the next
> smaller level.

Unfortunately, the H6 heading is now smaller than the normal text. I'm
not sure it's really supposed to be. But since H6 doesn't occur too
often, I don't really care about this. The new dotted line, which I
really like by the way, shows clearly enough that it is a heading.

>>I don't like the border around the footer
>
> I'm not completely happy with it either. I had problems getting the same
> box around the top table, because that table is much more complex. I'll
> fiddle some more with it and if I can't make it work I'll remove the box.

Actually, I don't think I'd like two of those boxes better than one ;-)

>>because the previous way was cleaner and more consistent with the look
>>of the rest (the top for instance). I don't like the light-blue colour
>>of the bottom box because it looks bad in contrast to the yellow
>>background of discussion pages.
>
> There is no yellow background of discussion pages ;-).

Yeah, sorry. At the time I still had the yellow backgrounds. I see the
new colour now, and to be honest, it's too light for me to distinguish
directly from the pure white of real articles (I'm on an LCD). You'd
therefore have to make it darker, and to satisfy Daniel Mayer you'd also
have to change it back to a yellowish hue, so maybe in the end you'll
just end up with the same original colour again. :)

> The fact that the
> strong contrast between yellow and white makes it hard to come up with a
> global color scheme for things like TOC, boxes etc. is one of the reasons
> to change it.

What about the simple grey meta uses? But then again, it'd be
indistinguishable from meta.

Maybe the actual page text should always be on a white background to
avoid colour scheme problems, and only the top and left bars should have
a different background to distinguish article pages from other pages. Or
a differently-colours thick border around the page text ;-)

Greetings,
Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout!

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Erik Zachte wrote:
>
>> In this case the javascript changes from one CSS file to another. That
>> is too complicated too maintain. Instead all preferences could be
>> applied on the go by javascript iself.
>
> I'm no expert in this field, but that strikes me as an odd choice.  I
> thought the whole point of factoring UI design stuff to a CSS file was
> to make it _easier_ to maintain?  Isn't writing UI layout/design code
> into JavaScript a lot uglier?

Yes, it is. If at all, this should be a preference option (not a
separate Special Page) and it should affect the style sheet. But that
makes it more complicated again, because currently the style sheets are
static.

Timwi


body:
Since display of the test wiki is probably browser dependant I have a
here a MSIE screen shot

http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Temp/HeaderSizes.png

Can you spot without an eye blink which header is ==, which === and
which ==== ?

Here is an alternative (4 levels) without reverting to those oversized
fonts:

http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Temp/HeaderSizes2.png

Erik Zachte


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour

body:
Robert,

You are correct. However misguided and offensive your "science" perspective
is; it has nothing to do with your being Jewish or having whatever opinions
you may have on Zionism, etc.  However you got trapped into having to defend
yourself is irrelevant.

They are picking on you and should stop. Anti-Semitism is indeed
unacceptable behaviour whatever excuse may be found for it.

I do wish you had picked someone besides Jules to straighten out though.
She's just about had it too.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 18:21:11 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unacceptable behaviour
>
> Jules writes:
>> I looked at the last comments that RK said he removed
>> from his talk page.  Although the one from E of T was
>> a bit inflammatory, it seemed to be a response to one
>> of Roberts own "attacks" -- I infer a typically
>> one-sided and less than tactful comment he made about
>> someone else's work.  If my inference or
>> characterization are incorrect, I apologise.
>
> Jules, I really wish you had made an effort to ascertain
> the truth; as it turns out, your idea is totally off base.
> In point of fact, I was writing comments about creationism,
> evolution, speciation, genetics and cooperating with others
> on classifying our Gaia theory articles. These are science
> issues.
>
> I ask you: What kind of people see such mundane science
> discussions as appropriate for denunciations of my
> perceived views on the Israeki-Palestinian issue?
>
> What kind of obsessed person thinks the appropriate
> response to a discussion on genetics is something like "But
> you Zionists should stop oppressing Palestinians".
>
> Am I mistaken here? Is evolution now "anti-Arab"?  Is Gaia
> theory now pro-Zionist?   Come off it.  Let's talk about
> speciation and transitional fossils, as I was doing on
> Wikipedia.  Wait!  Doesn't this call for remarks about the
> Palestinians?
>
> No.
>
> At least, not to someone who doesn't have a grudge against
> a Wikipedia contributor, because he is Jewish.
>
> No matter what topic I write about, certain people simply
> ignore the topic, and drag the Zionists (i.e. the Jews)
> into this.  They are not trying to produce encyclopedia
> quality work; they are out to score points, hurt people,
> and make themselves feel "liberal".
>
>
>> The comment made by Pizza Puzzle may have been
> *personally* offensive to
>> Robert, but it is simply a statement of PP's own opinion
> on the
>> situation.  I may not be popular, but he is entitled to
> it.
>
> No, he is not entitled to keep harassing me on my own
> personal User page about his political views, especially
> when I am trying to work with others on some science
> articles.
>
>
>> Presumably user talk pages are meant to be places where
> we communicate with
>> each other in public -- so I don't see why there is a
> problem.
>
> So if you are white, then white-haters can taunt you
> repeatedly on your User page, and you won't have a problem
> with it?
>
> Zoe is gone due to similar harassment. A few of my other
> Jewish friends visited (teachers, PhD.s, etc.)...and left
> quickly, sensing a bit too much self-righteous left-wing
> animosity towards Jews. (And those same Jews were
> themselves rather left wing.)  They think I am nuts for
> staying here.
>
>
>> If RK doesn't like a comment, he can erase it -- as he
> did -- but
>> it's a pain in the arse to have to look it up in the
> history.
>
> No, I can't! You totally missed the point. When I tried to
> erase the comment, I was slandered as an Arabophobe.
>
> That, by the way, is untrue.  I happen to have lived for
> two years with a Muslim Arab from Morocco, and had Muslim
> Palestinian friends in graduate school, and I also happen
> to support Israeli political parties that are to the left
> of the current government.  I also have particiapted on
> numerous occasions with interfaith Muslim-Jewish prayer
> groups, and my synagogue is considered somewhat progressive
> for precisely this sort of thing.
>
> I am, however, opposed to what the U.S. State Department
> condemns as Palestinian terrorism...and this last fact
> alone has caused me to be repeatedly slandered as a bigot,
> as a racist, etc. And no one on Wikipedia objects to these
> false characterizations of me.  But what this has to do
> with speciation, creationism and evolution, I'll never
> know!
>
> It seems pretty clear to me that many people on Wikipedia
> do not care if one is pro-tolerance and pro-Arab or not.
> Facts don't matter one whit to one whose conclusions are
> based only in prejudice.  All that many Wikipedians care
> about is constant proving how evil the Zionist (read:
> "Jewish") position is, even if they haven't the slightest
> fucking idea what I actually do or believe.
>
>
>> But my disagreement is less that RK is phobic of Arabs,
> but instead
>> is overly sensitive, perhaps even paranoid, about
> anything that isn't
>> vehemently pro-Israeli/pro-Zionist.
>
> Sorry, Jules, but I disagree. GENETICS AND SPECIATION ARE
> NOT PRO-ZIONIST.  Sorry for shouting, please look at the
> topics I was working on, and compare them to the comments.
> Do you see any relation?  Of course not; there isn't one.
> People are lashing out at me simply because I am a Jew.
> That is not paranoia.  It is, however, unacceptable.
>
> I thus ask you to reconsider your comments.
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> __________________________________
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> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
On 21-07-2003, Anthere wrote thusly :
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Daniel-
> > > Please change that back.
> >
> > I thought you'd say this. I'm personally quite sick
> > of the obnoxious
> > yellow, though, so I'd like to hear some other
> > feedback before doing so.
> > We can also experiment with other colors. Perhaps it
> > should be a user
> > preference (then again, perhaps we should just
> > support user-defined
> > stylesheets ..).
>
>
> Feed back
>
> I like the new blue color.
I don't like the new blue colour.
>
> I don't like either the strong yellow of talk pages,
> so I would not mind it being changed. However, I think
> it important that colors distinguish between talk page
> and article page. A much lighter yellow would be fine.
> Or a light green perhaps. I shall not push for pink :-)
I've got used to this shade of yellow but I wouldn't object
to a change for a lighter one.

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New stuff on test.wiki

body:
On 21 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Please report any bugs or objections, otherwise the current version of
> the code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis
> soon.

1. Linking with the use of anchors is a Bad Thing, as previously
discussed, and therefore should be disabled. Doesn't the "Table of
contents" feature remove the perceived need for them anyway?

2. The size of the article titles was fine as it was, and should not be
made smaller, because then it's hard to tell that it *is* a title.
Similarly for the headings within pages.

3. There seem to be faint horizontal rules below the headings. They look
like the result of a strange bug, but I'm guessing that they're not. They
look ugly to me, and I don't see the point of them, except to distinguish
headings from ordinary bold text. However, this should be done by making
the headings bigger. (See above.)

4. The talk pages should stay yellow, because we're all used to them like
that! (But no, I'll *never* get used to that new Main Page... Can we
change it back now?)

5. I don't get the point of the "Post a comment" feature. It seems an
unnecessary complication, providing no more functionality than normal
editing. Most comments on talk pages will be replies to others, and so
don't require their own headings. I think there are quite enough links in
the navigation section already.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+