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Revision as of 19:41, 15 August 2006

This template is an infobox for articles about writing systems.

The purpose of this page is to outline what the end result will be with the Infobox WS template. Feel free to add your two cents to anything, or tweak any ideas.

Color coding

Color coding will change depending on the type of writing system.

Please add more missing categories.

We should probably use a modified version of Template:Infobox Language/family-color for colors.--The ikiroid (talk) 17:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

If there are just going to be a handful of colors like the above then they could easily be built directly into the template. However, that being said what about hybrid or unusual cases? For instance Egyptian hieroglyphs... which are to varying degrees 'Pictographic', 'Logographic', 'Syllabic', 'Alphabetic', 'Undeciphered', et cetera. Or how would Quipu be classified? --CBDunkerson 23:40, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Most of these are originally based on one type—chinese has syllabic features. Consider:

1. 马(mǎ)—Horse
2. 吗(ma)—
3. 妈(mā)—Mama
4. 骂(mà)—Scolding

all of which modify the 马 radical. If there are multiple traits maybe we could have the color of the first mentioned be the color of the template.

Also, we need an "other" or "alternative" for things like Leet, AIM speak, and shorthand.

The template also probably needs blue links under "type:" I tried to add a link to "Abjad" in the Arabic one and the color turned white. Thank you for helping us out. Is there a way to make bluelinks under type not cancel out coloring?-- The ikiroid  20:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I made a change which may help for this... the color switch now recognizes either 'Abjad' or ']'. It would be easier to make the 'type' always act as a link (i.e. '|type=Abjad' produces Abjad by default), but then we would have a problem with things like Alternative and Manual not really going where they were intended. We could also set up a separate switch to translate 'Abjad' to Abjad and 'Alternative' to whatever page that should map to. --CBDunkerson 23:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Fields

I suggest (not necessarily in this order):

• Name
• Type (as specified by color code)
• Language(s) used for
• Geographic region (if applicable)
• Demographic group (again, if applicable)
• Time period
• State of decipherment
• Parent WSs (e.g., Etruscan for Latin alphabet)
• Child WSs (e.g., Cyrillic for Greek alphabet)

--Siva 00:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we need also to add logosyllabic as a category-type. In addition to the fields suggested by Siva above, we should also find room for:

• Example- an image or block of text written in the script, for illustrative purposes. This could either be an inventory of graphemes (but won't be practicable in all cases), or perhaps an example of the same semantic phrase, the script's name written in that script, or some other. Would need to be sure that the example displays correctly in all browsers, so maybe an image of the script rather than unicodified text would be better.
• Creator- where that is known
• Unicode blocks and ranges
• Currency- perhaps not needed if explicitly mentioned under Time Period, but need some flag to indicate whether it is still in use or not.

--cjllw | TALK 00:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I made changes for the colors, name, type, languages, region, demographic group, time period, script sample, and creator. I wasn't sure how to handle the remaining items so held off on those for now. For instance, should 'parent' be a single previous item or trace back as far as is known? Should 'child' include 'grandchildren' or just direct descendants? Are there specific categories to 'state of decipherment' that we would want to list or just whatever the user inputs? Also, I don't know what the 'Unicode blocks and ranges' should look like. --CBDunkerson 00:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

What category would shorthand systems such as Pitman's shorthand fall under? Do we need to create a special "shorthand" category?

As for CBDunkerson's concerns: for "state of decipherment", the terms undeciphered, partially deciphered, mostly deciphered, and deciphered by xx(decipherer) in xxxx(year) should be used where applicable, but it should also be possible for a user to elaborate on these. (Note that if a writing system has never been in any need of decipherment, this field should be omitted.) "Unicode blocks and ranges" would look like "U+0621&endash;U+FEFA" (for Arabic, in this case). Make sense?--Siva 23:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I added a field for this and an example of use to the Arabic table below. Is that what you were looking for? --CBDunkerson 12:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I had in mind. --Siva 20:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

ISO notice not needed

I don't think the ISO part is needed, since that only applies to languages. But we should keep the IPA notice. I tried to remove the ISO part, but it messed up the template, so I guess we'll keep it in for now.-- The ikiroid  18:54, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Preview

Here's what I got for the Arabic Alphabet:

The code is like this:

{{Infobox WS
 |name=Arabic alphabet
 |type=]
 |languages=All dialects of Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and Pashto
 |time=600 A.D. to the present
 |fam1=Phonecian
 |fam2=Nabataean or Syriac
 |unicode=U+0621 - U+FEFA
 }}

It's almost ready.-- The ikiroid  19:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I got rid of the ISO stuff and added options for 'children' and decipherment 'status'. Another example of use: --CBDunkerson 23:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

{{Infobox WS|name=Sarati|type=]|languages=]|creator=]|date=~1919|time={{ME-date|VY|1179-}}|children=]}}

Implemented in articles

I've added our two example versions into their two respective articles. I still have to add an image to them, though.-- The ikiroid  14:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

"Sister Writing Systems" option added

I added the option to display sister writing systems, i.e. under the "Hiragana" box, "Katakana," "Manyogana," and "Hentaigana."-- The ikiroid  16:08, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Well done

This template seems to be working well. It even looks like it may have settled the perennial argument at Leet over whether the 'language' infobox should be included... by switching to this one. Good job by Ikiroid in tracking down and bringing together the right people to make this happen. I'm sure there will be further updates and alterations as the template becomes more widespread, but this is a solid foundation with alot of nice design ideas from the contributors on this page. Nice work all around. --CBDunkerson 00:06, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

And thanks to you CBD for your invaluable technical expertise - now I know who to turn to the next time I'm scratching my head over some template code arcana. Cheers! --cjllw | TALK 02:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. We could hypothesize and plan all we wanted, but in the end someone had to impliment the ideas. Thank you.

By the way, I think I built the "Sister writing systems" option wrong....sorry....--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 02:14, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I looked at it when you made the update, but missed the problem. You just had inconsistent capitalization of the parameter... they are case sensitive, so {{{Sisters}}} is different than {{{sisters}}}. I standardized on lower case for consistency with the other parameters and it should be ok now. --CBDunkerson 11:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, thank you so much. I'll try out the parameter.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 14:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

ISO 15924

IMO a variable iso15924 should be added for those in ISO 15924. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)