User talk:Adrignola/2009/06

Programming categories
I think we should use "X programming language" for the category names to reduce ambiguity. Take python, ruby, cocoa, and java as examples. Python is also the name of a snake. Ruby is also the name of gemstone,, cocoa is also the name of a drink or the seed extract of the cocoa bean, and java is a type of coffee. Oh also why have you decided to abandon the paradigm approach? --dark lama  11:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * On paradigms, I'm seeing what Panic stated a while back: "'Can't be correctly implemented since several languages do cover several paradigms (some don't). Simple examples C evolved from an imperative programming language model but today it supports objects. C++ is by definition a multiparadigm language so to be rightly classified it would have to be present in most categories even as a functional programming language. Going that way will be painfully hard.'." The languages, from what I've seen, have evolved from one type to another, and so seeing their presence under one paradigm you'd have to wonder "at what time in the lifespan of the language does this apply?".  Also, since most are multiparadigm, you end up with the multiparadigm category having nearly as many subcategories as Category:Programming languages by family has right now.  In addition, categorizing them will be difficult, as Wikipedia does not have consistency.  List of programming languages by category doesn't often match what the pages for the individual programming languages say, making it hard to determine which is correct.  And most people looking for a book will have a specific language in mind, the way I look at it.  I do believe your other idea on categorizing by operating system would be more useful to those newer programmers and it would be less ambiguous as well, if anything other than families is implemented at all.  If you were really set on paradigms, I could reverse that, but the above constitutes the line of thinking I've been on since the idea was first proposed.


 * I can recategorize the books into X programming languages later today. I was just matching the existing subcategories for families for consistency, but I can go the other way because you make a good argument. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:54, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * By operating system would have similar problems, but I do think there needs to be ways to compare languages to help new users make an informed decision when deciding what programming language(s) to learn without having to do a lot of research first. By operating system would be more friendly for new users than paradigms. By family was really intended to identify languages with a common ancestry. Like there are many variants of the Basic programming language that share a common history despite being widely different from each other. There are also variants of Lisp. Each architecture has its own assembly language but tend to share some common history as well. OTOH languages like C, C++, and Java while having similar grammar aren't really part of the same language family. Looking at Comparison of programming languages, I'm thinking maybe "by operating system", "by intended use" and "by standards" could be useful to a general audience in addition to "by family" which is likely more useful for an intermediate or advanced audience. So if you plan to substitute "by paradigm" with something else I can accept its deletion, just keep in mind the alternatives may not be any better or worse then it. --dark lama  14:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure speedy-delete is the right thing?
I'm not a regular anymore, but won't deleting a page turn all the links to the ACT-test page into red-links and someone will have to manually fix all the broken links? Isn't a merge-tag better suited? I don't have any experience with wikibooks, but just wanted to comment since i'm one of the few who contribute to the content geared for high schoolers. I just don't want anybody to be unaware that the page is moved, since it will come up as having been deleted. Doesn't move and redirect work better for this? 70.185.120.125 (talk) 04:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I nominated Category:ACT for deletion because I filed the books in Category:ACT test. The ACT book was moved to ACT Study Guide and so won't need it for a book category and no pages link to the category of the same name.  No pages link to Subject:ACT either.  Unless you're talking about something else. -- Adrignola talk contribs 04:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

BookCat
I've noticed that you use rather than. Any particular reason? --Pi zero (talk) 14:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You're not the first person to ask that. BookCat evaluates whether it's placed on a subpage or not to determine what code is used to categorize.  Since the main book page is automatically put in the book's category when  is used, BookCat should never be used in a situation where it's on the main book page.  I know they have that additional code in there just in case, but I feel there's no need to involve parser functions on the page when I can just paste in the code that BookCat would evaluate to anyways and save some processing when the page is viewed.  is only linked to from Using Wikibooks/Cleanup and Maintenance and it says "'If you do not know what book category to use, or how to use it, tag every page in the book with . This will automatically add the book pages to the proper categories.'" It's commonly transcluded and not substituted.  But, if I follow guidelines and substitute it, I'll have all the code in the template put on the page.  As I said above, it has more than is needed when I'm aware of the page I'm working on, so pasting in  also saves length as compared to the documented method of using it via substitution. -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * That's very helpful perspective; thanks. The suggestion from Whiteknight to use subst with BookCat is certainly based on a different set of priorities from mine; one of the things I always liked about BookCat is that it simplifies administrative code on content pages, which is only true if it's transcluded.  Of course, I actually don't use it directly in the book I mainly contribute to, because I've built it into the Navlist /Top and /Bottom templates &mdash; but then again, the Navlist templates are themselves a pretty spectacular exercise in preferring intensive transclusion over visible content-page complexity.  --Pi zero (talk) 15:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Help
My partner (Secondguess) and I have gone through several revisions of a section. Can you see if my new one makes sense, and maybe grammar check the book? Unlingv&auml; Li Alfibeti/Syllables--Finaloffer (talk) 23:07, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure thing. I'll look it over and make changes as needed. -- Adrignola talk contribs 00:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Effective Student Organization
Thanks for creating Category:Effective Student Organization for our course project book. Any ideas of higher order categories it may fit within? --Paul James (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You are quite welcome. I'm doing quite a bit of categorizing lately. Both your book's main page and the category of the same name are filed in Category:School life, which is a category in Category:Education, which is a category in Category:Social sciences, which is a category in Category:Books by subject.  Rather than filing a book at every level of the hierarchy, books have been filed at the lowest level possible given their subject matter.


 * It sounds and appears that your book is a class project, so I'll also put it in Category:Class projects, which is a category in Category:Standard curricula, which is a category in Category:Books by subject. I hadn't done so at first because you are doing well in designing the book to be accessible to a general audience as opposed to students at any particular school.  I've only categorized a few other class projects in areas other than class projects for that very reason, so you should take pride in your work. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:14, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Cats
Great work and a huge patience... Some requests for consideration:
 * Simplify Computer programming (and others like Console game programming into the same category Programming).
 * Simplify Computer software as Software (move open source as a sub-category there).
 * Simplify Computer science and Computer engineering as Computing (this can be tricky but will simplify overall categorization without a specific loss of metadata information, I understand that it attempts to classify some areas as scientific but the classification is not as exact when dealing in computation).
 * I miss the Programming category, for instance "Algorithms and data structure" or "Software reverse engineering" would best fit there. The clean/small title and specific languages categories is also very much missed. (in a Programming languages as a subcategory). --Panic (talk) 19:35, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, the move towards longer category titles makes it so that two-word category titles that are sentence case will avoid conflicts with two-word books that are title case. Merging Computer science and Computer engineering in Computing would be problematic.  Right now Computing is a top-level category, so that would cause it to become very large with all the books currently in those two categories. That move would have to be part of a larger reorganization to be successful. You can find programming language categories in Category:Programming languages by family.  And the longer names in there were created because things like Cocoa, Java, and Ruby, can reference things other than programming languages.


 * As for Programming, this revision of it should prove that it was actually Darklama who initiated the move to Category:Computer programming and Category:Computer engineering. I just followed through to make that happen.  Darklama's area of expertise is computer science/programming and has made several changes under Computing.  Even if Programming would be better than Computer programming, it'd be contrary to the direction Darklama wanted to go in and things work more smoothly when we work together.


 * I am certainly open to suggestions and do not intend for anyone to think the current organization is firm, but since Darklama has played such a key role in shaping how Computing looks today, he needs to be brought in on this discussion before any massive changes can be made. I see from both your user pages that you are both interested in computer science/programming, so I think discussions would more fruitful involving you two primarily. I'll leave him a note asking for input on your ideas, so stay tuned. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually Whiteknight first started Computer Engineering in 2006, I merely moved it to a lowercase name to be consistent with other subject categories. I don't think the categories should be simplified. First the longer names can reduce the possibility of conflicting with book titles. Second if people do a search using "computer" they can find the engineering, programming, software, etc. categories with the longer names, but not with the shorter names. Third computer science and computer engineering shouldn't be merged into computing because there distinctly separate fields. Fourth if you look at Category:Computing you can see that computer science, computer programming and computer software are already listed as related categories so there is no need to merge the categories. Software reverse engineering right now is in computer engineering, but at some point I hope to make a Software engineering category. Algorithms and data structure are in a related category link to from the computer programming category. I thought I had put computer engineering into computing but apparently I didn't that is one change I can make to improve that situation. Category:Computer programming languages replaces the programming languages category. I would also like to replace the console game programming category with an electronic games programming category to compliment Category:Electronic games, which brings up another point. Fifth "programming" can also refer to television programming, radio programming, music programming, and other sorts of programming that has nothing to do with computers. Sixth a subject page can be created to list books from the many categories to compensate for these changes, while combining categories would result in a loss of useful information. --dark lama  21:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Administrator
Hi Adrignola,

If I were to nominate you for admin rights, would you accept? The work you've done here has clearly demonstrated your thoughtfulness, attention to detail, and general knowledge not only of the MediaWiki software, but also of how the Wikibooks community operates. Having you as an admin here would do nothing but enhance this project. --Jomegat (talk) 13:08, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I am pleased that you think so highly of me. I have a website I operate for an open-source game being developed where had I set up and now manage the MediaWiki installation there so I had a certain amount of knowledge of MediaWiki before I started becoming active here.  However, that site is quite inactive because the game is not finished yet, so it's been a learning experience seeing it in action here.  Wikibooks does feel like a community and that gave me the inspiration and confidence to attempt the significant categorization effort you've no doubt noticed.  I can't think of any reason not to accept, so yes, I would accept.  I hope my efforts so far and efforts to come will benefit the project, regardless of the outcome. -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll put up the nomination shortly. --Jomegat (talk) 14:39, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, it's up at Requests for permissions. The next step is for you to accept, and then voting can begin. --Jomegat (talk) 14:44, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Enhancing subject pages
I've been working on and off in my userspace on ways to improve subject pages. User:Darklama/Subject has what I've been working on. I plan to eventually turn it into several templates. I think this sort of thing would be good for the computer programming, education and languages subject pages and with some changes for a lot of other pages too. Any thoughts? --dark lama  23:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think some might be disappointed that featured books aren't shown on the page. Recategorizing would be more difficult. Right now you only have to change the subject and category of the same name.  This layout requires you to change all the parent subjects that include that subject you're recategorizing on the same page as the books filed into the parent subject itself. Then there's the question of what sub-subjects get top billing on the top-level subject page.  For instance, computer science isn't listed on the page for Computing.  And what if someone's interested in computer programming libraries but sees the pages listed under the computer programming heading and thinks that's all there is, when libraries are actually filed in a subcategory of computer programming?


 * Those are constructive criticisms. Some things I especially like are the use of color beyond purple and the elimination of collections, which I've yet to see done for any books and of which I've yet to fully grasp the use of.  I wasn't involved in the decision to move to subjects, so I don't know if there were any additional goals beyond the dynamic listing of books in a subject to know how close the current subjects are to their vision. I do believe there's room for improvement and so I encourage experimentation since creative design is not a strong point of mine. -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:25, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I plan to include featured books in it, just haven't yet. This layout is only intended for some subject pages. For most subject pages there would be one list of books like now. I know some people prefer the layout of the Languages bookshelf over the Languages subject page, which is where the idea of using multiple book listing comes into play for some subject pages.
 * Beyond moving toward a more flexible system than bookshelves and departments there aren't really any specific community goals or visions for the subject pages. Experimentation is suppose to be fine. For myself I prefer to think of the subject pages as a web rather then as a hierarchy and how I'd like other people to see it if I can. Which is part of why I replaced "Subtopics" with "Related Subjects" at one point in Whiteknight's template. Another part of that goal that isn't apparent from my subject page is that instead of using back links, subject pages like Subject:Computing would also be categorized in each of its related categories too, so that it would show up in the related subjects list, resulting in a more dynamic two way link between subject pages that requires even fewer changes to update.
 * Collections are intended to provide an easy way to generate PDF files for books, so might eventually replace the PDF list. Collections can also be printed and generate other formats, so they might also eventually replace the print versions books have as well. --dark lama  00:14, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Categorizing pages that don't have their own identities
There are three pages in the Conlang book that are effectively sections of the book's main page. Each of them manifests as part of the main page and can be edited via an edit button in that part of the main page &mdash; and each of them should not be edited or viewed outside of that context. I deliberately didn't categorize them because I didn't want any categories pointing to these inherently non-independent pages. As part of your heroic efforts at cleaning up categorization, though, you added the usual book-category code to each of them. Rather than knee-jerk decategorizing them again, I thought I'd check with you first. Is there some additional factor that interferes with my reason for not categorizing them? --Pi zero (talk) 06:34, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Having a category on them prevents them from showing up in Special:UncategorizedPages, allowing for easier viewing of new books/pages and also double-checking to make sure new pages weren't accidentally created as standalone instead of subpages. Could we put the pages you mention in, say, Category:Conlang/Structural (or your choice), where that category is filed in Category:Conlang and holds all the pages that are structural and not content-related? I do that for books with a lot of templates using Bookname/Templates or images using Bookname/Images. -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:33, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * A very solid additional factor. I'll give it some thought, and meanwhile the book category will do to keep Special:UncategorizedPages happy.  Thanks.  --Pi zero (talk) 15:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Using Wikibooks
Hi Adrignola,

I was wondering if I could interest you in writing a section of Using Wikibooks covering subjects and categories and their proper use. It could answer questions like: I'm sure you can think of other aspects that elude me ATM. If you're ambitious, you could even help us catch the clue train about DDC and LOC. My thinking is that the better people understand what you're doing and what the logic is, the smaller the messes they will make and the better off the project will be. --Jomegat (talk) 01:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * What's the difference between subjects and categories?
 * What subject should I file a book under, and how do I do that?
 * What sort of subcategories should a book have?
 * Well, sure. I ought to be something of an expert on all that by now. I'll try not to duplicate CCO Resources or Help:Categories by taking a different tack. -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've taken a crack at it, Jomegat. If you could be so kind as to do a peer review? Using Wikibooks/Subjects, Categories, and Classifications. -- Adrignola talk contribs 05:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I did make one change to Using Wikibooks/Subjects, Categories, and Classifications to hopefully clarify the text.  You should definitely fact-check it though. --Jomegat (talk) 13:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations on your RFA
Feel free to ask if the buttons present any mysteries :-). -- SB_Johnny  talk 20:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Congrats from me too, and hoorays! --Jomegat (talk) 20:52, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your support. -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

creating books?
Please help me if you can. Thanks --WokHush (talk) 00:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to the team, admin!
Thanks for agreeing to help with project maintenance. There are several scripts you may be interested in using to make common administrative tasks easier. All can be enabled on the Gadgets tab of my preferences:
 * Twinkle Speedy
 * Range and wildcard contributions
 * Modify rollback
 * AJAX patrolling
 * Clean delete reasons
 * Autodelete links

As well, you may wish to join us in IRC at #wikibooks for work and play, or on the mailing list textbook-l. If you need help with the tools, feel free to leave a message on my talk page. Congrats again & I look forward to working with you. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 15:29, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the welcome. I've done some tagging of unlicensed images with Twinkle already and warning/welcoming of users with other gadgets. It is a very convenient tool. I subscribed to the mailing list and I've registered a nickname and am working on a cloak for IRC chats. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Uncreated "book" category of template-space pages
My Template:Navlist suite has an accidental, uncreated, sporadically populated "book" category, Category:Template:Navlist &mdash; which comes about because some templates in the suite invoke BookCat to automatically categorize the calling page, and some pages in the suite invoke those templates. Is this category as-is apt to cause some sort of problem down the road, or is it harmless as-is? --Pi zero (talk) 20:55, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It will make the category appear in Special:WantedCategories, but other than that, I don't see a problem, as long as your pages have other categories on them that do exist (so they'll appear somewhere). -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:57, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Should all template-space pages be categorized (that is, generic ones, not affiliated with a particular book)? --Pi zero (talk) 22:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would say that they should, given the existence of Category:Templates. (I've not gone through that category, yet, so it's probably messy.). -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd probably eventually get to going through Special:UncategorizedTemplates, so templates that are categorized will help out there. -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps then I will create and systematically populate Category:Template:Navlist, and put it in Category:Navigational templates. (Good luck if you do tackle template space; it looks like about two thousand out of four thousand pages there are uncategorized.)  --Pi zero (talk) 23:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sometimes I wonder if I'm somewhat masochistic... -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:08, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

A quick question
I ran across something I thought was odd and I thought I would ask you what to think about it. Some pages (I'll take as an example Functional_Analysis/Hilbert_spaces) place themselves in the Category corresponding to the book by having a tag like. This is a bit different then things I have usually seen and I was curious if it had undesired results. But before I started reading the template to figure out exactly what it would do I thought I would ask someone a bit more knowledgeable then myself. Thenub314 (talk) 09:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Just as is intended for subpages, but will alter what it does if accidentally placed on the main page of a book,  is intended for the main page of a book, but will alter what it does if placed on a subpage of a book. Someone cleverly designed the code so that, no, there are no unintended consequences. It does leave at least three different methods to categorize a book's subpages:, , and  . Which one to use really depends on personal preference, since they produce the same result. -- Adrignola talk contribs 11:55, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * A bot could parse uses of the subjects template on subpages for its own purposes, making there use on subpages a form of meta data. Of course that potential benefit is a personal preference too. --dark lama  12:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Categories of non-mainspace pages
I'm trying to suss out some grand-scale issues in arrangement of categories of non-mainspace pages; most of this I've been thinking about just recently with regard to template space, but one part of it I've also been mulling over for some time with regard to Wikijunior. (I do apologize for springing this on you when you've already got more than enough on your plate already; but it seemed like a good idea to try to clear these broad issues out of the way sooner rather than later.)

You'll recall that since BookCat was being incidentally applied to several pages in my Template:Navlist suite anyway, I categorized all of them by simply adding BookCat to the rest and creating Category:Template:Navlist. I had initially worried that it would seem anomalous to have a category whose name begins with "Template:", but in the event it seems to me to work out well, because when you look at Category:Navigational templates, this way everything belonging to it starts with "<tt>Template:</tt>" &mdash; both member category and member pages.

Now, the vast majority (I think) of template-space pages are actually specific to particular books; and in your Using Wikibooks write-up, you've recommended putting such templates in a subcategory of the book category called <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>. But, logically, should all pages in template space be somewhere under Category:Templates? Because if they should, then these template subcategories of book categories should have a place in the hierarchy depending from <tt>Category:Templates</tt>. (And if not, then <tt>Category:Templates</tt> should probably be called something else, like <tt>Category:Generic templates</tt>.)


 * (A side problem at this point is where in the hierarchy to put them that won't swamp the existing categories of generic templates. For example, there are probably a lot of book-specific navbox templates, but putting them directly in  <tt>Category:Navigational templates</tt>  would make the generics hard to find.  Perhaps one could just throw all the subcategories of book categories into a  <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>?  If more precision is needed, one could also have subcategories like  <tt>Category:Book-specific navigational templates</tt>, though that seems liable to get out of hand.)

There seems to be at least some merit, though, to giving these book-specific categories names starting with "<tt>Template:<tt>", thus <tt>Category:Template:My Book</tt>  rather than  <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>. Besides the straightforwardness of prefixing space-specific category names with the name-prefix of the space, this also means that if the book-specific templates for <tt>My Book</tt> are given names of the form <tt>Template:My Book/Some template</tt>, then generic categorization techniques such as BookCat could be used. Were we to go with the <tt>Category:Template:</tt> form, we'd want to recommend the <tt>Template:My Book/Some template</tt> form. (I might actually have seen a semi-recommendation of that naming scheme, somewhere or other.)

A similar situation exists with Wikijunior pages: the book categories there, that I've seen, always have to be written out manually because they are prefixed with <tt>Wikijunior_</tt> rather than <tt>Wikijunior:</tt>, e.g. Category:Wikijunior The Elements rather than Category:Wikijunior:The Elements, so that techniques like BookCat cannot be used.

Looking over all that, there seem to be three distinct possibilities raised.
 * Put book-specific templates in a catch-all <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>.
 * Give template subcategories of book categories names of the form <tt>Cagetory:Template:My Book</tt>.
 * Give Wikijunior book categories names of the form <tt>Category:Wikijunior:My Book</tt>.

Thoughts? --Pi zero (talk) 15:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I noticed that with Wikijunior. Historically the categories matched the books' names &mdash; they were moved to the Wikijunior namespace later when it was created. I'd have to recategorize all the Wikijunior pages to correct that (though it wouldn't be any more work than categorizing an uncategorized page). I would agree with the effort to create new Wikijunior categories and correct their books' pages' categories.


 * I would prefer book-specific templates be filed in their book's category, regardless of what the name of their container category is. The generic category would get too cluttered otherwise.


 * Supporting the above, I would agree that Category:Templates needs to have a name change. Wikipedia has w:Category:Wikipedia templates, so the top-level category for generic templates on Wikibooks can be Category:Wikibooks templates. It's blue because it's a redirect to Category:Templates. (That should be reversed).


 * I do agree that using the form <tt>Template:My Book/Template Blah</tt> would enable easier categorizing using . The container category would be <tt>Category:Template:My Book</tt>, yes. You'd have to manually specify your book's category when filing your template category, still. That would differ from using <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt> where you have to manually specify the category on the templates and the template category. I happen to like the look of <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>, though, but since it's something unique to each book, authors can use whatever they feel is best. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree the Wikijunior categories should be renamed to Category:Wikijunior:Book. I also don't like a catch-all category for all book-specific templates. Keeping track of templates would become more difficult. Personally I think a lot of book-specific templates don't need to be book-specific. I think the only templates that need to be book specific are templates that provide navigation between pages, and even that isn't really necessary for books that only care to have back, forward, and table of content links. Books are required by policy to use the <tt>Book/Page</tt> form for any pages of the book, and I think sticking with that form for any templates and categories for the book creates consistency and is a good idea. Other forms have been discussed in the past on the talk pages for Naming convention, Hierarchy and Naming policy, and rejected by the community. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  16:55, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>  was a daft idea; it would serve no useful organizational purpose.  Renaming  <tt>Catetory:Templates</tt>  to <tt>Category:Wikibooks templates</tt>  appeals to me.


 * I agree, actually, about the look/uniformity of <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>.  Also, because we are only filing this category under the book category, and not at all under the  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>  hierarchy, mnemonic sense is all for prefixing the category name with the book name rather than with  <tt>Template:</tt>.  It occurs to me that if the templates are called  <tt>Template:My Book/Template Blah</tt>, one could exploit that naming scheme with a template alternative to  <tt>Template:BookCat</tt>, call it  <tt>Template:BookTemplateCat</tt>, that would automatically add  <tt>Template:My Book/Template Blah</tt>  to  <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>.


 * I too think that most book-specific templates don't have to be book-specific, but categorizing what we already have seems both simpler than, and a facilitator to, thoughtfully reforming detailed template tactics across the whole of Wikibooks. Sufficient unto the day is the colossal task thereof.  --Pi zero (talk) 17:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I knew I forgot to comment on something. <tt>Category:Wikibooks templates</tt> could be mistaken for templates used in the Wikibooks namespace only. <tt>Category:Generic templates</tt> or <tt>Category:General templates</tt> could be confused for templates for generic or general uses rather than a root/top category for all templates. Why does the category name need to be any more specific? --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  18:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't have my heart set one way or the other. Keeping it as it is means less work recategorizing. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, Category:Templates is (whatever one calls it) the common ancestor of all non-book-specific categories of templates. It isn't the root category of all templates, because some book-specific templates will not belong to it or any descendant of it.  It isn't a category only of generic templates, because some book-specific templates will belong to various subcategories of it (such as Category:Exclude in print, or Category:Intricate templates).  --Pi zero (talk) 18:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Not that its likely to make a difference, but I meant common ancestor for all templates and template categories. Some book specific templates will be listed somewhere within Category:Templates because they are categorized by other means too. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  20:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Under the current plan, there will be both templates, and categories of templates, that are not descended in any degree from <tt>Category:Templates</tt>.  This is because  <tt>Template:My Book/Template Blah</tt>  might belong directly only to  <tt>Category:My Book/Templates<tt>, which in turn belongs directly only to  <tt>Category:My Book</tt>, which is not a descendant of  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>.  It would be different if we also filed each  <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>  in a catch-all  <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>, which would itself belong to  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>  &mdash; but unless we do that, some templates and categories of templates will not be descended from  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>.  Indeed, I'm now thinking I was too hasty in withdrawing my proposal for  <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>.  It would perform two moderately useful functions, by  (1) clarifying that those templates are book-specific, and  (2) causing  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>  to be, indeed, the root/top category of all templates.  Function (1) would be especially useful, because systematically identifying all book-specific templates would make them easy to target in a later campaign to drastically reduce the number of book-specific templates.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

(reset)

I don't focus on Category:Templates as the root. I see Category:Categories as the root. If you want an alphabetical index to search for a specific book's templates, wouldn't Special:PrefixIndex with the template namespace do? If filing template categories in <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt> would result in a category tree like that for the subject categories that books are put in, in order to organize them, then why not leave them filed in their book's category, which is itself part of the main category tree and allows the templates to move with the book if the book is refiled? I'd need more information on how <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt> won't simply duplicate Category:Books by subject. -- Adrignola talk contribs 04:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Here is the arrangement I'm now talking about.
 * Each book-specific template has a name of the form <tt>Template:My Book/Blah</tt>, and contains markup    <tt>  </tt> (which might be generated by a template call  <tt>  </tt>).  Presumably, calls to this template from within the book would have the form  <tt> </tt>.
 * <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt> contains markup    <tt>  </tt>    <tt>  </tt> (which might be generated by a template call, perhaps  <tt>  </tt>).
 * <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt> contains markup    <tt>  </tt>
 * As an alternative for a given book, if one didn't want to have a separate <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>, one could have each  <tt>Template:My Book/Blah</tt>  call  <tt>  </tt>, instead of  <tt>  </tt>.  (These may not be the ideal names for the two categorizing templates, after all...)
 * It would also be possible for book-specific templates that don't conform to the naming convention to manually put themselves into the appropriate category(-ies). Wikijunior book-specific templates would probably always be non-conformant; I don't see any natural way to extend the book-specific-template naming convention to cover Wikijunior.
 * Under this arrangement,
 * Every book-specific template would belong either directly to its book category, or to a child of its book category. This is just as in the flat- and deep-filing arrangements you recommended in Using Wikibooks, so I assume that this would be fine when renaming a book.
 * Every book-specific template would belong either directly to <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>, or to a child of that category.  This would not clutter the pre-existing categories of templates, because all the book-specific templates and book-specific template categories would be tucked away under  <tt>Category:Book-specific templates</tt>; the only effect on  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>  would be the addition of one child category, and there would be no effect at all on any of the other pre-existing categories of templates.  It would provide us with a convenient way of finding all book-specific templates; it would clarify the status of these templates as book-specific; and it would guarantee that, to the extent that everything is conformant, <tt>Category:Templates</tt> is the root/top of all templates and categories of templates &mdash; that is, every template-space page, and every category of only template-space pages, occurs somewhere in the hierarchy of categories descending from  <tt>Category:Templates</tt>.
 * --Pi zero (talk) 15:48, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've created that puts a book's templates in their book's template category and also puts book template categories in their book's category and Category:Book-specific templates. See it in action at Template:FHSST Physics/Units and Category:FHSST Physics/Templates. -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:49, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Very clean.
 * Do I take it you're inclined, then, to always have a <tt>Category:My Book/Templates</tt>  when there are book-specific templates, rather than only when a given book has a lot of them?  I admit I'd prefer that uniformity myself.  --Pi zero (talk) 18:12, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I am inclined. I find that if an author has made one template or uploaded one image, they'll likely make/upload more.  Also, it's easier to explain things in one standard way than to make exceptions and try to deal with things like how many templates a book must have before it has a /Templates category. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Darklama had the great idea of adding the code to to have one template to rule them all. It's done, so replace all instances of BookTemplateCat above with BookCat. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:38, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It is a great idea... for Wikibooks. Go team.


 * It does make a mess out of my categorization of the Template:Navlist suite, whose book category should not be called Category:Navlist/Templates since it is not a category of book-specific templates for a book called <tt>Navlist</tt>.  I tried (hoping against hope) creating a redirect from Category:Navlist/Templates to Category:Template:Navlist, but the member pages are left behind in the category with the wrong name.  I suppose I'll probably create a special template just for use by the suite, that checks to see whether the client page has bookname  <tt>Template:Navlist</tt>, and does  <tt> </tt>  if so,  <tt> </tt>  otherwise.  Sigh.  --Pi zero (talk) 22:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. It does sound like custom code will be the way to go. What's a bit more custom code for your suite?  To continue your analogy above, thanks for "taking one for the team". -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:58, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Undefined FULLCHAPTERNAME variable
There are two problems I see with your placement of chapter names as part of the category system, and that is for most of these older books, FULLCHAPTERNAME is not defined, and also, the way you are using the category command is not the way it wants to be used. The Category command does not take two fields the way it is written so that even if you did, have a valid variable it would not result in a change in the category. The way I have managed to get chapter to work is to put it after a / character then you get Bookname/Chaptername as its category. I hope this helps --Graeme E. Smith (talk) 18:39, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm not understanding where you're having a problem. Do you have a book or one of its pages that you're not getting the code on Wikibooks' documentation pages to work with? -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:01, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps there is some failure of communication about what the markup is meant to do?


 * Piping a category link provides a sort key that is applied when listing the page in the category. That is,  <tt> | </tt>  on a page  <tt>Conlang/Beginner</tt>  would cause that page to be added to  <tt>Category:Conlang</tt>, and appear in that category alphabetically under <tt>B</tt> (for <tt>Beginner</tt>) rather than <tt>C</tt> (for <tt>Conlang/Beginner</tt>).  FULLCHAPTERNAME is a template that strips the book name off the front of the page name, unless the page is the main page of its book.  --Pi zero (talk) 19:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Well color me embarrassed. See I thought it should show up in the Category listing at the bottom of the page, but never thought about the category listing at the category site. Now I've got to find the one I changed and change it back! Silly Me--Graeme E. Smith (talk) 23:37, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Featured Books
A user User:Triwikanto seems to have added a very new book to the featured books list. I have removed it, but thought I should let an admin know. Thenub314 (talk) 14:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC) Never mind, I think Darklama is on top if it. Thenub314 (talk) 14:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Happy I could help. :P -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Moved Pages
I noticed you moved some pages into the Computer Programming Principles book. Troubleshooting Software has nothing to do with Error Handing in the context of this book. While a functional programming language may be helpful for a functional approach to software development its by no means the same thing. Ditto for Procedural. Debugging was probably the only chapter moved into the book so far that makes sense. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  17:11, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I hoped to give the book content to start with and simultaneously eliminate some of the pages of the Computer Programming book that is up for deletion, but that's fine if they aren't helpful. Figuring out what to do with the pages of that book will be a chore. -- Adrignola talk contribs 17:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think a lot of them need to be merged into Programming Languages, but I suggest you use and  to give time for discussion before moving this time in case anyone sees a problem with doing that. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  18:02, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Most the pages of that book haven't had content (moves don't count) added to them in years from a spot-check. Would the above really be necessary? -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I only see two pages to merge, though. Computer Programming/Imperative programming and Computer Programming/Aspect oriented programming. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If the book really haven't had any contributions in years then trying to initiate discussion isn't really necessary, but it can't hurt any either. I think Computer Programming/Functional programming and Computer Programming/Procedural programming can also go there, just would require a history merge. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  18:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

BookCat
What would you think of the following changes to ?


 * When called from a template with no slash in its name (such as <tt>Template:Wikijunior:Languages</tt>), the sort key would be " " (same sort key as when called from the main page of a book).  This is what got me started thinking about changes to BookCat, when I saw how Template:Wikijunior:Languages was sorted in Category:Wikijunior:Languages/Templates.


 * When called from a category whose name has a slash in it but is not of the form <tt> Category:/Templates </tt>, would put that category into the category named by removing the last part of the name (from the last slash on).  Thus,  <tt>Category:Book/Images</tt>  would be put into  <tt>Category:Book</tt>, while  <tt>Category:Book/Chapter/Section</tt>  would be put into  <tt>Category:Book/Chapter</tt>.
 * I considered adding a <tt> filing=deep </tt>  option, but wasn't sure whether it would be worth it.  Presumably it would change the behavior everywhere except in category space, where there might be a  <tt> filing=flat </tt>  option.


 * When called from a category with no slash in its name, would do nothing (hence, no harm).

I've set up a version of BookCat with these changes (and my attempt at appropriately modified documentation) at User:Pi zero/BookCat, and tested all the cases I could think of off hand (I thought of thirty six cases, 6x3x2). --Pi zero (talk) 23:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think those are great changes, like you made the template the way it always should have been. Your code's in now. -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:18, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Categorizing Goodbook templates
Should the Goodbook templates that advertise featured books,

belong to the book categories of the books they advertise? Or, for that matter, to their books' template categories? I wouldn't have put them in the <tt>/Templates</tt> categories, because they aren't book-specific &mdash; they are used outside their books and not inside those books. As templates that aren't book-specific, I wouldn't have put them in the book categories at all; but it looks like about ten out of eighty of them have been individually added to their book categories (e.g., Template:Goodbook/Ada Programming).

I've been crafting a surgical change to Goodbook that would automatically add all of the Goodbook templates to Category:Wikibooks featured-book templates/Goodbook. (Not without trepidation; beside the sensitivity of Goodbook itself, I'm paranoid about my own absent-mindedness.) The change could be modified to automatically add them to their book categories as well (or instead), if the Wikijunior ones are renamed from  <tt>Template:Goodbook/Wikijunior My Book</tt>  to  <tt>Template:Goodbook/Wikijunior:My Book</tt>.

As is, the change is right at the interface between the <tt>includeonly</tt> and <tt>noinclude</tt> blocks; it would replace
 * <tt> </tt>

with
 * <tt> </tt>

--Pi zero (talk) 03:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't that be <tt> </tt> (extra pipe to put category in false evaluation)? Otherwise I think not having them in the books' categories is fine. The featured book template on the books' main pages has a link to the goodbook template if someone wants to edit it. -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * No, you want it in the true evaluation, so that it will apply just to those pages that transclude Goodbook and, additionally, have names that start with "<tt>Template:Goodbook</tt>". That's Goodbook itself and all its subpages.  Otherwise, it wouldn't categorize any of those pages, but it would put (for example) the Main Page into the /Goodbook category since Goodbook does get transcluded there (which is why Goodbook falls under the cascading protection of the Main Page).  --Pi zero (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand your logic, and also see why you couldn't put the code in the template yourself (cascading protection). I've added your code to the template. Since the majority are not put in the books' categories, I think that none of them should be put in the books' categories. Looks like all the goodbook templates need null edits to show up in your category. -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikijunior categories
Question (but at least it's a well-defined one this time).

When naming a book-specific template associated with a Wikijunior book, it would be messy to call it <tt>Template:Wikijunior:My Book/Blah</tt>, because then you'd always have to include the  <tt>Template:</tt>  prefix when calling it, i.e., <tt> </tt>  rather than <tt> </tt>  (because the latter looks in Wikijunior space instead of template space).

Should we, perhaps, use a slash in place of the internal colon, thus <tt>Template:Wikijunior/My Book/Blah</tt> ? This could be detected and compensated for by BookCat.

If we do that, we might also want to apply the same transformation to the category names (more work for BookCat). That is, <tt>Category:Wikijunior/My Book</tt> and  <tt>Category:Wikijunior/My Book/Templates</tt>. That would be in the spirit of the Naming policy. --Pi zero (talk) 14:01, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * To be clear: I'm actually of two minds about this, myself. Maybe having to specify  <tt>Template:</tt>  when calling a book-specific template isn't too high a price to pay for uniformity.  Maybe...  --Pi zero (talk) 14:49, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Take a look at and see what you think. If you have <tt>Wikijunior:My Book</tt> and want to use <tt>Template:Wikijunior:My Book</tt>, place  on the page. For the same book, if you want to use <tt>Template:Wikijunior:My Book/Blah</tt>, place  on the page. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:57, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Try this: rename it from  <tt>Template:Wjt</tt>  to  <tt>Template:Wbt</tt>  (or something), and in the markup, use  <tt> Template: </tt>  instead of  <tt> Template:Wikijunior: </tt>.  Then it should work for mainspace books as well as Wikijunior books.  --Pi zero (talk) 16:42, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Yes_check.svg|15px| ]] Done -- Adrignola talk contribs 17:23, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've never cared for abbreviations since they can be hard to remember. Why not call it or  ? --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  17:46, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You know, I know what you mean. But one might say "Add what?", "Include what?". How about a partner to ? I've named it . Too long? Just right? -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:34, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * For my part, <tt>BookTemplate</tt> is not too long, is nicely parallel to  <tt>BookCat</tt>  (as you point out), and there's no obvious way to shorten it while keeping that style.  <tt>BookTemp</tt>  would evoke  <tt>Temporary</tt>  rather than  <tt>Template</tt>.


 * Speaking of initialisms, am I alone in feeling that LOC and DDC are just gratuitous? I mean, they're only used once per book!   Like it would kill us to write out  <tt> </tt>  and  <tt> </tt>  (or even add  <tt>classification</tt>  to those), just once?  --Pi zero (talk) 19:58, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Personal I'd like to go with . --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  20:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * --Pi zero (talk) 20:46, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

BookTemplate should support passing parameters through to the book's template; I noticed this when, in field testing it on Wikijunior:Languages, I encountered Template:Wikijunior:Languages/Box. How about

This works for passing parameters to the book's main template as well, via <tt> </tt>. --Pi zero (talk) 13:20, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Yes_check.svg|15px| ]] Done -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:34, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Alas. Looks like BookTemplate needs to support a larger number of parameters; I'd suggest going all the way up to |, to be safe. I thought I was being cautious by providing for 4. --Pi zero (talk) 14:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * BookTemplate. Now with more parameters! -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:22, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Thanks.  --Pi zero (talk) 20:34, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

ROOTBOOKNAME
I've created a template ROOTBOOKNAME.
 * I suggest BookTemplate should use ROOTBOOKNAME instead of FULLBOOKNAME (in both the documentation and the code). This would allow BookTemplate to work right when viewing book templates that use it, and when using those book templates on talk pages, and when using it to call book templates from talk pages.
 * It could also be used in documenting book and book-template categories, as in
 * <tt> This category contains templates used in the book. </tt>

--Pi zero (talk) 18:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure there isn't a better name than ROOTBOOKNAME, that I'm just not thinking of.
 * I don't think there are any other cases that ROOTBOOKNAME should handle separately.


 * Taken care of. I protected at the same level as  to prevent a security hole from opening. You think of nearly everything, so I doubt you've missed anything. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Seeds
This guy is persistent isn't (s)he? My theory is that he's working on earning the honor and wants to print out "his" answers and turn them in to his instructor. Dunno if that's the case or not, but it wouldn't be the first time. I left him a note. --Jomegat (talk) 20:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed. I felt like we were tag-teaming on that one. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * New target: Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Outreach/Family Life. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:05, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I left a more stern message this time. Seems to have calmed down a bit. --Jomegat (talk) 20:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Limitations of BookTemplate
Although I do think ROOTBOOKNAME is primordial enough that it's The Right Thing, this might not be true of BookTemplate. Maybe it isn't actually the Wrong Thing, but it may be only a tool for the majority of light applications, with a second, heavy-duty tool needed for special occasions. In field-testing (on the seriously stressful case of False Friends of the Slavist), I'm now looking at a book-specific template with 171 unnamed parameters and 9 named parameters (False Friends of the Slavist/MapConstructor). That deserves some careful thought before acting.

Here's an idea I'm mulling over: a higher-order template that generates as output the name of a book template, i.e., <tt> Template: </tt>. For example, if its name were <tt>bt</tt>, one would write  <tt>  </tt>. Choosing a name for this device is something of a challenge; it should probably have a very short name (at worst, no longer than "BookTemplate"), and it may want to avoid having "meta" in its name lest that been confused with Meta. I'm even half tempted by <tt>bt</tt>, despite my basic agreement with Darklama about initialisms. --Pi zero (talk) 12:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, that book you're dealing with is quite the challenge. I understand what your higher-order template would do, yet I don't see what its goal is. What would its advantage be over the code currently in ? I wouldn't want to make things too complicated for the people who have to use these. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Using BookTemplate, the only parameters that will reach the target (in this case, /MapConstructor) are those that are explicitly passed on by BookTemplate. Right now that's nineteen unnamed parameters.  There's no point in just upping the number of unnamed parameters passed on, because there are still named parameters that don't get passed on, and the only way to pass them on would be to explicitly hardwire their names into the central facility BookTemplate.


 * (BTW, I see I muffed the markup for my hypothetical higher-order template: I used it as if it took a parameter for the chaptername of the book template, but the markup doesn't provide for that.)  --Pi zero (talk) 15:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * This is why its better to call/use templates directly. If your still bent on trying to make this work, would avoid the limitations of having only a fixed number of parameters and not being able to use named parameters. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  13:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * (Lot's of unnecessary and possibly missing-the-point discussion of "using templates directly" deleted here... --Pi zero (talk) 15:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC))

I've created a template BOOKTEMPLATE, that simply generates the main book-template name for the current book, i.e., <tt> Template: </tt>. My notion is that an editor reading markup sees the all-caps and expects a device that generates part of a page name, because that's what all the other all-caps names do (pre-existing naming convention). The notation for calling the main book template of a book would then be
 * <tt> </tt>

and for calling a book template <tt>/Foobar</tt>,
 * <tt> </tt>

If this works out as well as I'm hoping, we can convert all of the existing BookTemplate calls to use BOOKTEMPLATE instead, and then delete BookTemplate. It's simple, one-stop shopping for editors using book templates. --Pi zero (talk) 15:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * To get the book's template of its own name, is not working. I have to specify  for it to work. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Ya that is the draw back to that approach. The mediawiki parser thinks there is a template parameter named either {BOOKTEMPLATE} or BOOKTEMPLATE with {}'s placed around the result. You can also use or  . --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  16:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * That slipped my mind when writing the docs for BOOKTEMPLATE. --Pi zero (talk) 16:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The only remaining references to BookTemplate are from this talk page. --Pi zero (talk) 21:45, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Another reason to noinclude BookCat
You asked a while back (over on my talk page) about removing the noincludes around BookCat. My answer has changed, a bit: I now recommend noincluding BookCat for pretty much every template that doesn't generate a complete table. The reason is that, as I was gradually forced to remember by wrestling with Template:False Friends of the Slavist/MapLegend4, category links have a tendency to prevent paragraph breaks (though I don't remember exactly how that works, if I ever really understood it). --Pi zero (talk) 00:06, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that's a bad idea. Using noinclude defeats the main reason why its usually included to begin with. To make it easy to categorize pages of a book without having to manually categorize each page separately. I think having templates with the only difference being the number of arguments passed are bad ideas too, so I went and fixed that. I think the MapConstructor template needs improved too, because all the images overlap each other based on the positioning, making any obscured images loaded a waste of bandwidth and slows down the time it takes to load pages. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I did notice your technical fix for the problem with MapLegend. Admitting such technical fixes on a case-by-case basis somewhat expands the range of templates that can include BookCat.  Recalling a key element from the earlier discussion, though, BookCat neessarily must be noincluded on templates that could be used inside links (which is most of the templates for Friends of the Slavist &mdash; and also the /Navlist files used to specify book contents, as we were forcibly reminded when adding included category markup to Conlang/Navlist broke all the navbox links in the Conlang book).  Likewise, BookCat must be noincluded on templates that generate fragments of template names.  As a rule of thumb, I'd still noinclude BookCat on any template that generates a small text fragment without embedded markup.  --Pi zero (talk) 13:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)