Module talk:Lang-zh/Archive 4: Difference between revisions

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I've been working on merging {{tl|zh-full}} into this one. The motivation is that where possible it makes sense to replace instances of {{tl|zh-full}} with {{tl|zh}}, as the recent work on this template has improved its output significantly. Where not possible, so where {{zh-full}} was used because of the features it provides over this one, then it should be possible to add the features to this. In particular the ability to list things in an arbitrary order is something that was pretty much impossible before but can be easily done in Lua.

As a first step I've been going through articles using {{{tl|zh-full}} and replacing them with {{tl|zh}} where possible. I've only been doing this as there are good editorial reasons: this template provides better output (proper language tagging, consistent italicisation), handles special cases better such as t and s being the same, handles empty fields properly, avoids redirects in its links, and is much shorter and easier to type. I've did other cleanup as I went, in particular of Chinese language.

===Cantonese first issues===

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: I had thought of that before: doing it based on region rather than a single switch, first=t. The problem is it's quite disruptive – all existing instances of first=t would have to be found and updated, changed to region=tw or region=hk based on the article, and I don't know how you'd find them. Or you leave both first=t and region=xx in the template which introduces redundancy as with Cantonese=first, and seems overkill for something that there's no obvious need for - the only instances of {{tl|zh-full}} with ordering unsupported by {{tl|zh}} were with Jyutping first.

: The editor specifying the order is another way of doing it. The way it would work is with an extra option, ordered=no. If the module detects this it doesn't use a fixed order but the order is the same as the parameters passed to the template. Essentially the same as how {{tlzhtl|zh-full}} works but done in code not templates within templates as for that. It also introduces redundancy but can be thought of as two levels: a switch for simple cases, an option to use any order for more specialised cases.

: I don't think replacing labels is a good idea. It would make the template much more complex and be little used (it wasn't used at all within {{tl|zh-full}}). If editors need that degree of control over labels, links, formatting they need not use the template, or can use it for some languages but use {{tl|lang}} with their own labels and formatting for those they want customised.--<small>[[User:JohnBlackburne|JohnBlackburne]]</small>^{[[User_talk:JohnBlackburne|words]]}<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">[[Special:Contributions/JohnBlackburne|deeds]]</sub> 16:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

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--<small>[[User:JohnBlackburne|JohnBlackburne]]</small>^{[[User_talk:JohnBlackburne|words]]}<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">[[Special:Contributions/JohnBlackburne|deeds]]</sub> 19:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

:There is a complication with how zh-IPA works in that it accepts a second field to switch between different types of IPA such as Mandarin and Cantonese IPA or others. I notice that {{tl|Chinese}} has two fields mi and ci but no others. Are there any other IPA types that could be used? In {{tl|Nihongo}} there is a blank extra field which if added to this module could work something like <code>{{zh|c=北京|extra={{zh-IPA|zh|/pɐk˥kɪŋ˥/||ipatype=yue}}{{zh-IPA|zh|/beɪˈdʒɪŋ/||ipatype=cmn}}}}</code> however I don't see any advantage of this when you could have just done <code>{{zh|c=北京}}; {{zh-IPA|zh|/pɐk˥kɪŋ˥/||ipatype=yue}}; {{zh-IPA|zh|/beɪˈdʒɪŋ/||ipatype=cmn}}</code>. It would probably be easier just to add mi and ci fields the same as {{tl|Chinese}} has done. [[User:Rincewind42|Rincewind42]] ([[User talk:Rincewind42|talk]]) 15:29, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

:: Having looked at it a bit more the IPA situation's a bit of a mess. There's a template for general IPA, {{tl|IPA-all}}; {{tl|IPA-wuu}} for Shanghainese/Wu is a redirect to it; there's a separate template for Cantonese/Yue, {{tl|IPA-yue}}; there is none for Mandarin that I can see. There is though {{tl|IPAc-cmn}} which converts pinyin to IPA ('cmn' is the IANA code for Chinese Mandarin; we use 'zh' for legacy reasons).

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== Language tagging for pinyin yet again ==

I know this has come up before ([[Module talk{{TALKSPACE}}:Zh{{ROOTPAGENAME}}/Archive 3#Font?|here]], for example) but I want to readdress the issue of the language tagging and that the chosen fonts render very poorly when using Firefox. Here's an example from the [[Xinpi]] article:

[[File:Xinpi page image.jpg|none]]

As you can see, the tones are barely legible even after increasing the font size and ''cf'' the Pe̍h-ōe-jī text which renders just fine.

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From previous discussions, I understand that this is a Firefox bug but the problem has been festering for quite a while. Any chance anything can be done on the Wikipedia end? Firefox is a major browser and asking users to edit style sheets or change browsers is a bit excessive. — [[User talk:AjaxSmack|<span style="border:1px solid #000073;background:#4D4DA6;padding:2px;color:#F9FFFF;text-shadow:black 0.2em 0.2em 0.3em"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">&nbsp;'''AjaxSmack'''&nbsp;</span></span>]] 23:27, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

: Had a look myself with Firefox and it looks OK. It's not just a problem with the browser but with the browser and a certain intersection of user settings. I think you need to specify fonts other than the defaults for Chinese, or that's what I recall when it last came up. See [[{{TALKSPACE}}:{{ROOTPAGENAME}}/Archive 3#Latn problem|Module talk:Zh/Archive 3#Latn problem]]. It's disappointing it's still not fixed. I submitted a patch for it to Firefox, and I know it's been looked at by other people since but it seems not a priority for Firefox's devs.

: I'd be very reluctant to remove this from the template. Firefox users are only a minority of users ([[Usage share of web browsers#ummarySummary table|17% of Wikimedia]]), and I assume only a minority of them are experiencing problems. And it would not just be this template, as the same HTML/CSS is output by other templates, such as {{tl|lang}}. The logical fix would be in the site CSS to catch all these instances, but then do we also do it for all the other languages that are rendered incorrectly by Firefox's horribly broken code? Better I think to recommend to users they fix it themselves, by editing their CSS, changing settings, switching browsers or even patching Firefox. Some users might even find it the incorrect version acceptable, depending which fonts it uses (yours seems to be using a bitmap font which is particularly illegible but is not a feature of most modern OSes).--<small>[[User:JohnBlackburne|JohnBlackburne]]</small>^{[[User_talk:JohnBlackburne|words]]}<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">[[Special:Contributions/JohnBlackburne|deeds]]</sub> 00:31, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

== Pe̍h-ōe-jī ==

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: What you may be seeing is some difference due to the different fonts your system is using for simplified and traditional. That is I think uncommon though. I do not see it here or on de.wp, and I suspect the same will be true for the vast majority of en.wp users. It will only users with particular settings for e.g. traditional and simplified Characters that will notice any difference, and then the difference will only be in the rendering not the underlying characters. You can change your settings, or use a style sheet to control the rendering of particular page elements here. See [[User:JohnBlackburne/common.css]] for some examples.--<small>[[User:JohnBlackburne|JohnBlackburne]]</small>^{[[User_talk:JohnBlackburne|words]]}<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">[[Special:Contributions/JohnBlackburne|deeds]]</sub> 14:01, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

::Well, the difference I see is certainly not just due to different fonts; I actually use the [[Source Han Sans]] font family for ''all'' CJK locales, so I see exactly the same glyphs when there should be no difference, and different glyphs when there should be one. Nowadays all major browsers seem to define different locales for at least simplified and traditional Chinese characters (and usually also distinguish between traditional TW and HK, as occasionally even these very similar locales use different glyphs; see [http://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~irg/irg/irg44/IRGN2074C.pdf here]). A lot of East Asian readers are extremely fussy about glyphic differences, and at times (though rarely) they even fail to recognize a Han character rendered in a shape that is uncommon to them. In my case, the traditional and simplified glyphs for the character {{lang|zh-Hant|蔡}}/{{lang|zh-Hans|蔡}} differ in each and all of its four components {{lang|zh|艹⺼又示}}, esp. {{lang|zh|艹⺼示}}. Why not give the readers the information that they ''are'' different? — Besides, you can’t really rely on Unicode’s (or rather, the [[Ideographic Rapporteur Group|IRG]]’s) unificaton scheme, which often seems quite random. For example {{lang|zh-Hans|禅}} and {{lang|ja|禅}} are unified (=one Unicode character) while {{lang|zh-Hans|单}} and {{lang|jpja|単}}, which show exactly the same glyphic difference, are not. Unicode’s Han unification is known to be a disputed matter, and even according to the Unicode Standard locale markup is indispensable in cases like these. — P.S.: I already use stylesheets to see whatever ''I'' want to see. What I would like to achieve though is that ''any user'' gets what they deserve: 100% reliable information. [[User:LiliCharlie|LiliCharlie]] ([[User talk:LiliCharlie|talk]]) 15:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

::: The problem is that you are not giving readers that information, that they are different. If it displays both simplified and traditional and they look the same, as they are the same characters, then probably most users will not notice the duplication (most do not read Chinese) but those who do will be confused over why the same characters appear twice although they are the same, unlike on other pages. I’ve looked at it with three browsers on two different OSes and the simplified and traditional characters look the same. [[wikt:蔡]] says simplified and traditional are the same. That your browser displays them differently must be down to your browser and OS settings. I suspect very few readers of the English WP have similar settings, though it would be very hard to find out. It is not something that can really be addressed in the template/module as it would break how it appears on many other pages, though how many I do not know.--<small>[[User:JohnBlackburne|JohnBlackburne]]</small>^{[[User_talk:JohnBlackburne|words]]}<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">[[Special:Contributions/JohnBlackburne|deeds]]</sub> 16:46, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

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* <nowiki> {{Zh/sandbox |t=蔡英文|s=蔡英文|p=Cài Yīngwén|nomerge="y"}}</nowiki> gives:

**{{Zh/sandbox |t=蔡英文|s=蔡英文|p=Cài Yīngwén|nomerge="y"}}

Clearer than using obscure markup but with the same effect. In particular it does not change any existing uses. Have a look at the module sandbox [[Special:Permalink/700347236|Module:Zh/sandbox]] for the particular changes. If this seems OK to other editors we can go ahead and add it to the main template.--<small>[[User:JohnBlackburne|JohnBlackburne]]</small>^{[[User_talk:JohnBlackburne|words]]}<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">[[Special:Contributions/JohnBlackburne|deeds]]</sub> 23:52, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

:What is the purpose of this template? I think it is to convey the Chinese name of the person, book, etc that is the subject of article, for readers who understand characters. It's not to give lessons in typography to people who don't understand hanzi – we have specialist articles for that. In a proper setup, zh-Hant should yield traditional forms, zh-Hans simplified ones and zh the reader's preference between these. (Of course, both fonts will have to do something artificial if they cover all the non-unified variants.) So if the reader sees unified characters in their preferred form, they will know which characters are meant, and the template's job is done. In such cases (and Han unification is rather conservative) the other variant is unnecessary, and this template already produces distracting clutter. However, this doesn't apply to {{tlx|infobox Chinese}}, which has more room. [[User talk:Kanguole|Kanguole]] 01:18, 18 January 2016 (UTC)