User talk:W126jep

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Thanks, --Jomegat 18:11, 11 July 2014 (EDT)

Florida Honors

Do you think the Florida honors ought to be added to the honor counts? I automated that a little while back so that we would know how many honors are in what category without having to go in and manually count them. The new ones you have added are automatically added into those counts, so if you look, the Nature page now says it has over a hundred honors.

The front page says that the wiki includes honors adopted at the division level and higher. I don't mind including the FL honors here, because it's a good place to keep honors. In fact, I think the wiki would be a great place to develop new honors as well.

So far we have not added the FL honors to the category pages, nor to the main honor index. I'm not sure that we should just yet either, especially since this is an official NAD site, and the NAD has not approved these (though surely they must have been presented with the option?)

If we do not want the honors included in the counts, all we have to do is edit them and add "secondary=true" (not in quotes) after the honor patch in the honor_header template.

Thoughts?

--Jomegat 18:41, 7 August 2014 (EDT)

I was not aware that only division honors and higher were adopted onto the site. I thought the wiki would be a good place to archive all requirements from around the world. I did not add the FL honors into the category pages or main index because I myself was not sure whether they should be included. I think a simple link on the main page to the FL Conference index would suffice. They would not have to necessarily be included in the main index. I honestly don't think the FL honors have to be added into the count. There are actually still a few I have not added yet. w126jep 20:24, 7 August 2014 (EDT)

That was a decision I made back in 2005 when I started the project at Wikibooks. At the time, I was just trying to bound the problem, having no idea how many honors might be out there below the division level. I think it's great to have them here. What do you think of having a single index page for all honors adopted below the division level? We could have icons to indicate where they originated and just lump them all into one place, and then throw a link on the main page to that index. We could also put "Florida Conference" in the honor_header template to show the originating institution. That would automatically categorize them.

To be honest, I think it would be good to have them in the index on the main page, but I don't know that the NAD committees would accept that. --Jomegat 23:57, 7 August 2014 (EDT)

I think you might be onto something there. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to include them on the main index; of course, if the committee agrees. It would be ideal to have an index page with honors at conference levels. From what I've researched, only the FL Conference has a large selection of conference level honors. Other conferences might have one or two, but not as many as FL approved. It would still be nice to include them here in the wiki and it would be a great place to pilot them division or worldwide. It would be an easy way to present to the GC and pend approval. w126jep 00:12, 8 August 2014 (EDT)

I have created a tiny icon for Florida. I know that there will be a couple of conference-level honors being taught at Oshkosh next week. I'll try to snag their requirements and we can get them in the wiki as well. Maybe we should use something other than the FL_tiny icon for Florida - perhaps the Conference patch? It wouldn't scale down of course, but maybe that would be OK. The reason I suggest that is because though Florida's shape is obvious, other multi-state conferences will not be. --Jomegat 00:33, 8 August 2014 (EDT)

Maybe something more like this:

--Jomegat 00:39, 8 August 2014 (EDT)

I will be at Oshkosh also and try to snag some pictures of any new honor insignias. I have already compiled a personal list so I can know which ones I need to go check out. I will also try to record the requirements. Hopefully we can return from the trip with much to add to the wiki.

I see your point with the image. I'm not sure that last image works well for the different conference honors. Conference patches would be an excellent choice, but I don't know if we could find images for all of them. I'll ruminate and see if I can find or think up of any possible ideas. w126jep 00:53, 8 August 2014 (EDT)

Let me create one before we try to evaluate it. The basic idea is to show the states in the conference with enough context that we know what we're looking at. We might also try using a different color for conferences vs divisions. As for conference patches, we'd only need images for the conferences that have honors. I'm guessing that reduces the scope of the problem considerably. Please continue to ruminate!

If you want to meet up while at Oshkosh, send a note to me at jomegat@ my domain name which is jomegat.com. Then I'll email my phone number and we can arrange a meeting via text or voice. --Jomegat 12:02, 8 August 2014 (EDT)

How about just putting the word "LOCAL" (as a graphic) instead of a map icon. If we are going to add in the FL Honors we should put a standard section at the bottom of the honor page that says: "Important Note: To obtain this honor patch contact the Florida Conference at http://www.flpathfinderstore.com/" Is CB Radio a FL or GC honor? JadeDragon 00:45, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

I think that sounds like an excellent idea. Also, CB Radio is not FL Conf., SPD & SAD honor manuals list it as GC. --w126jep 07:10, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

I like the revision you did on the main page, right on the money. Also, when do you sleep? You're a machine! --w126jep 07:26, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

honor_desc

Thanks for repairing the damage. The 'bot instructions for the insignia field were the most difficult, and it's obvious I missed something! --Jomegat 13:27, 11 September 2014 (EDT)

honor_desc_es

When translating the honor_desc template, it might be better to leave the variable names alone (those are the words in triple curly braces, like {{{honorname}}}. When the page is viewed, the variable names should not appear at all. When a page is translated, the variable names will still appear in English, but the translator presumably knows English, so that should be OK? However, it is indeed a good idea to translate the stuff that's not in curly braces.

We should expect find find plenty of problems with the templates... --Jomegat (talk) 20:01, 2 October 2014 (EDT)

Gotcha. That way it would still show up in the correct categorical pages. This is my first time really experimenting with wiki language and tags, so I'm just trying to get the hang of it. --w126jep (talk) 20:53, 2 October 2014 (EDT)

That's about the best way to learn. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask. --Jomegat (talk) 21:05, 2 October 2014 (EDT)

I'm just trying to figure out now how to translate the part in the "Honors Sequels" that collapses and says "prerequisites". --w126jep (talk) 21:15, 2 October 2014 (EDT)

Transcluded Templates

So I'm stuck on two things really. In order for me to translate, I have to "mark" it as ready to translate. I have tried everything I know to do so but transcluded templates, such as the AY Master, do not show up in the editing portion and I have no way to mark it for translation. Secondly, the SUBPAGENAME does not properly display the page name, since it puts "es", the language extension that is at the end of the page name. I can edit and translate the page names but the SUBPAGENAME tag will refer to the original source and put the English name. I'm trying to figure out how to make that work.
Besides that, the rest is a breeze. It's pretty straightforward, just mark and translate. As soon as I know how to fix these two issues, I'll be able to start on the actual honors.
I am assuming that the IA classwork will also be translated. The NAD has official requirements in Spanish and French, and I don't see any reason to only translate the honors and not the classwork. --w126jep (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

Do you have to translate all the answers or are they machine translated and you need to fix them? When we add an answer in English does it have to be manually copied to the other languages? JadeDragon (talk) 05:42, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

There is no machine-translation - it all has to be done by humans. When we make a change to an English page that has already been translated, it marks the section that changed as needing re-translation. It does slice the content into smallish chunks though, so when a change is made to the source material, only a small piece of the translated material should need to be updated.

As for SUBPAGENAME, yeah. That's what drove honor_desc over honor_header. We need to quit using SUBPAGENAME, or find one that recognizes "oh hey, that's the language, not the subpage" and reacts accordingly. Maybe there's an extension for that. I will dig into the transcluded templates when I can (but need to work on the day job right now). --Jomegat (talk) 10:34, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

OK, I might have a fix in place for the SUBPAGENAME problem. Instead of using {{SUBPAGENAME}}, we should use {{#titleparts:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|1|3}}. The "1" means show one element of the title, and the "3" means show the third element. This assumes that we are working with the 3-tiered hierarchy. I already tried this on the Template:AY Master/es, and it seems to maybe work? Let me know! If so, all we need to do is find every place that uses subpagename. --Jomegat (talk) 18:32, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

We might also want to look at this: [1]. --Jomegat (talk) 19:14, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

There's going to be a lot more work involved in getting the Translatable template things to work. I'll work on it as time allows. --Jomegat (talk) 20:52, 3 October 2014 (EDT)

Praise God, I was able to figure out how to translate the transcluded template for AY Master/es. The coding was in the honor_desc/es template the whole time! I just had to fix the code there and voilá, it is set up for Spanish.

I'm still trying to figure out how to include the correct Spanish name in the AY Master/es. I realize now (probably because I'm getting more familiar with wiki coding) that no template based on page name will ever work, such as the basenamepage or subpagename. This is because the actual page title will never be in Spanish, since only a language code extension is added (such as /es). I'm trying to learn how to instead include either:

• the {{{honorname}}} from the honor_desc/es template into the AY Master/es template or
• the name of the honor from the translated page title

Any suggestions?

Templates come with two types of parameters (or arguments as they are called in software engineering). The first type is positional, such as {{{2}}}, which means "the second argument". The other type is a "named argument", such as {{{honorname}}}. It is a Bad Idea to mix the two in a template. Positional arguments are easier to use for simple things, and they are more compact. But when we start to want to add optional arguments, or there are a lot of them, it begins to get more difficult. You then have to remember that the second argument meant "introduction year", etc, and you can't have new required arguments following an optional argument. So I generally prefer named arguments. The AY Master template takes one or two arguments, and uses the now-discredited {{SUBPAGENAME}} variable. We could try using {{#titleparts:{{PAGENAME}}|1|3}} instead of {{SUBPAGENAME}}, or we could change the template to take three named arguments and always pass them in. I still haven't figured out what titleparts will do with a translated page - it probably takes an English name. This means we'll need to rewrite the AY Master template and then robotically replace it wherever it is used. That is what I did when we moved from honor_header to honor_desc. I renamed it so that both could exist at the same time while the robot made the edits, otherwise it would have been broken during the transition. So if you like, I could take a crack at creating a new AY_Master (Honor_Master|honorname|mastername|core_vs_optional?) and then coaxing the robot into making the replacements. --Jomegat (talk) 18:32, 13 October 2014 (EDT)

Please do! I'm just trying things here and there to see if anything makes a difference. I don't really know what kinds of repercussions my edits will have, even though I'm just trying to test different things. If it's not too much trouble to rewrite the AY Master template, and if a robot can do most of the work, I think that would be ideal. -- w126jep (talk) 18:39, 13 October 2014 (EDT)

It's underway now. The template is "Honor Master", and I am making a few test runs with the 'bot. --Jomegat (talk) 18:53, 13 October 2014 (EDT)

Is there a way to use the "Page Display Title" instead of the SubPageName? Or would it create some kind of never-ending mess of a loop? -- w126jep (talk) 19:01, 13 October 2014 (EDT)

I'm having a hard time finding info about "Page Display Title" - I found stuff on plain old "Display Title", but it has been deprecated and is fraught with peril. Is that the same thing, or did you find something else? --Jomegat (talk) 19:20, 13 October 2014 (EDT)

"Display Title" I believe is the function to change the way a title is displayed on the page. What I would like to know and find is if it is possible to use within the parameters the title that is displayed, instead of the actual page name. If there is some line of code or tag or template that references or uses the displayed title, that could be used instead of the actual page name.

I don't find any information that something like that exists, and maybe it's just idealistic, but it sure would make it easier.

I don't think it can be used that way. I'm sure someone could write an extension to do that, but that's not a small task. --Jomegat (talk) 19:33, 13 October 2014 (EDT)

The new template worked like a charm. Thanks! I'm wondering if there are any other templates that are similar and will have to be redone as well ... --w126jep (talk) 12:55, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

There are a few more. I searched for SUBPAGENAME, then clicked the "advanced" search button and limited it to templates. There aren't that many: Template:Honor variants is one. The rest will just miscategorize the honor. Not that we want that, but it's a lower priority problem. --Jomegat (talk) 14:58, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

Translated Advanced Level

So here's another nice little challenge: How do I link the Advanced option within the honor_desc/es template? I mean, how do I show the honor has an advanced level also? As is written now in the English template, the code looks to see if there is an advanced level of the honor by checking for page titles that have the "category" and "honorname" input into the template. The problem in other languages is that in the template, the translated name is used for the "category" and "honorname"; and there exist no such pages with those parameters in their titles, since the language extension is simply added at the end of the English page title.

Any ideas or suggestions on how to link basic honor levels to advanced levels in other languages? How can I get the "ifexist" function to search for advanced honor levels in different languages?

I've been giving some thought to that. I think we'll have to use the #titleparts function to grab the first three elements of the title, tack on " - Advanced", and see if that exists in English. If it does, then there is an advanced version of the honor, whether it has been translated or not. Linking to it could be another issue. Maybe if we appended "/#language" to the English name of the honor we'd have a link, and then we'd need a translated name to appear. I'll play around with it some and see what I can do. --Jomegat (talk) 20:51, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

Have you had any luck using [[Special:MyLanguage/pagename in English|pagename in Spanish]]? I've been trying it out on the wiki on my laptop with no luck. It seems promising, as it would fix the links to the advanced honors as well as the honor's category. Jomegat (talk) 22:36, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

I have heard of it. I'll see what I can find. --w126jep (talk) 22:57, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

OK, maybe it works? I changed Template:Honor desc/es, and now if I set my preferred language to Spanish and click the "Avanzado" link, it takes me to the advanced page in Spanish. If I click it while using English as my preferred language, it takes me to the English version. I also changed the link to the honor category. The MyLanguage feature will default back to English if the page has not been translated. Let me know if this is a workable solution or if you see problems with it. If it works OK, then next up... Template:ay prerequisite. --Jomegat (talk) 23:00, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

It seems to do the trick. Only that the advanced link takes me to the English version of the honor. The only honor I've translated so far with an advanced level is Adventurer for Christ. And yes, I was about to mention the AY Prerequisite Template, I was trying to figure that one out as well. --w126jep (talk) 23:08, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

Did you try it with your preferred language set to Spanish? I don't think it cares where you are when you click the link - it only cares what language you have selected up at the top of the page (or in your user preferences). I know that's not ideal, but... it might be the best we can do? --Jomegat (talk) 23:10, 14 October 2014 (EDT)

It does work with the preferred language. It's not really the ideal, is there a way we can get it to link to the PageName/es?

I made an attempt. With this change, it will take you to "AYHAB/cat/honor - Advanced/es". The link to the category is red now because there is no translation for that page yet. Is this preferable? --Jomegat (talk) 23:41, 14 October 2014 (EDT)