Template talk:IPA

Template:IPA is for IPA characters only!
 * For polytonic Greek script, please use Template:Polytonic [talk&#93;.
 * For other languages or symbols, please use Template:Unicode [talk&#93;.

Template:IPA fixes broken display of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) characters in MS Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. In other web browsers, it doesn't affect font display at all.

It also allows all registered Wikipedia users to specify styles for IPA text by editing their monobook.css style sheet.

An example, placing a phonetic rendering of the word characters in Template:IPA:

The result will be a span with a style attribute, like this:

/&amp;#712;k&amp;aelig;.&amp;#633;&amp;#601;k&amp;#716;t&amp;#601;(&amp;#633;)z/

Which appears in your browser as:



Without template:IPA:


 * /&#712;k&aelig;.&#633;&#601;k&#716;t&#601;(&#633;)z/

[The last two should only look different if you are using Internet Explorer on Windows.]

Please place all IPA text into Template:IPA, even if it doesn't have any special IPA characters, like this:. This will allow users to format all examples of IPA text consistently, with their choice of fonts, colours, etc.

Technical details
The  attribute exists so that Wikipedia users can apply their own style sheets to text in Template:IPA. See, below.

The first declaration  actually lives in a sub-template at Template:IPA fonts. It lists a series of fonts that are known to contain IPA characters.

The second style declaration  overrides the preceding font declaration, and tells the text in Template:IPA to use the default font inherited from its surroundings, in every browser except MSIE 6.0. The empty comment placed just in the right spot confuses MSIE 6 and prevents it from applying this declaration. This is a documented way of hiding CSS from MSIE 6. 

Editing Template:IPA
The font list is at Template:IPA fonts [edit&#093;. Remember that Template:IPA is intended to display IPA characters. Criteria for selecting fonts:


 * Full IPA character set.
 * Normal and bold weights, for emphasis.
 * Sans-serif, matching Wikipedia's default font.

Less important criteria:


 * Having a wide range of other international characters.
 * Having italics.

Do not surround font names with single quotes, because Wikipedia's software will escape them with backslashes. CSS recommends single quotes around font names with spaces, but doesn't require them.

About the fonts
Arial Unicode MS
 * sans-serif
 * regular only, but automatically generated bold & slanted works in Windows
 * comes with MS Office for PC and Mac
 * is not available for Linux through, but is available through distribution-specific methods (ie. YaST)
 * places double combining modifiers too far to the left by 1 em

Code2000
 * serif
 * shareware font from James Kass

Doulos SIL
 * serif
 * free font from SIL
 * regular only

Gentium
 * serif
 * free font from SIL
 * regular and italic only

Lucida Grande
 * sans-serif
 * comes with Mac OS X
 * regular and bold only

Lucida Sans Unicode
 * sans-serif
 * comes with Windows XP
 * doesn't include some IPA characters
 * double combining inverted breve
 * [what others?]

Applying custom styles to IPA text
You can apply your own custom styles using the .IPA class selector in your local style sheet. If you are a registered Wikipedia member, you can put custom styles into your monobook.css style sheet.

Try this: place the following text into User:XXX/monobook.css, where XXX is your username.

.IPA { color: green; }