Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 13:24, 29 April 2006 (→Suggestion). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

List of References

Attached below is a list of all the references which can be called with this template.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937). Douglas A. Anderson (ed.). The Annotated Hobbit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (published 2002). ISBN 978-0-618-13470-0.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954a). The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 9552942.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954). The Two Towers. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 1042159111.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1955). The Return of the King. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 519647821.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Silmarillion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1980). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). Unfinished Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-29917-3.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1984). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Book of Lost Tales. Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-35439-0.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1984b). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Book of Lost Tales. Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-36614-3.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1985). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Lays of Beleriand. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-39429-5.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1986). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Shaping of Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-42501-5.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1987). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Lost Road and Other Writings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-45519-7.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1988). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Return of the Shadow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-49863-7.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1989). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Treason of Isengard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-51562-4.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1990). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The War of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-56008-X.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1992). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). Sauron Defeated. Boston, New York, & London: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-60649-7.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1993). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). Morgoth's Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-68092-1.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1994). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The War of the Jewels. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-71041-3.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1996). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Peoples of Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-82760-4.

Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (2023) . The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.

Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.

Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (2005). The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-720907-X.

Hammond, Wayne G.; Anderson, Douglas A. (1993). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books. ISBN 0-938768-42-5.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1966). The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-34506-1.

Tolkien, John; Tolkien, Priscilla (1992). The Tolkien Family Album. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-59938-5.

Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (1995). J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. Illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-74816-X.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1964). J. R. R. Tolkien: Tree and Leaf. London: HarperCollins (published 2001). ISBN 0-00-710504-5.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1983). The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. London: Allen & Unwin. OCLC 417591085.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1982). Mr. Bliss. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1998). Scull, Christina; Hammond, Wayne G. (eds.). Roverandom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-89871-4.

Tolkien, J. R. R.; Swann, Donald (2002) . The Road Goes Ever On (3rd ed.). London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-713655-1.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1999). Baillie Tolkien (ed.). Letters from Father Christmas. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-00937-X.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1990) . Bilbo's Last Song. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-53810-6.

Please place any thoughts on changing the template to reference alternate versions for any of these books below. --CBDunkerson 01:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Listing articles that use references

Many, many thanks for all your work on this, Conrad. Further to my desire to use these templates to find all articles referencing an individual book, I have realised that I will be able to (sort of) use "What links here" to find articles referencing the books, as long as each book has its own Misplaced Pages article. Will this be workable? If not, I would like to consider having separate templates for each book. Will this require a lot of extra work? Carcharoth 08:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

No, 'What links here' would not include the books linked on the page unless the articles for those books had links to that page. I'll redesign the template so that it calls sub-templates with the actual reference text in them. Then you can check 'What links here' from those sub-templates to get all pages referencing that book. --CBDunkerson 13:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

But it would work for books that had articles? For example, for Letters, you could examine this list here. I think this would work well (with a few false hits) for my "general references to any editions of a book", and the templates would work well for "references using a specific edition of a book". Of course, this system still falls down when the book doesn't have an article. I tried doing what links here for sections of a page, but it doesn't seem to work. Carcharoth 21:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, because the references include links to the books you can get 'What links here' from that... even if there isn't an article on the book. For instance, Special:Whatlinkshere/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_A_Reader's_Companion provides a list even though there is currently no article on that book. --CBDunkerson 21:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Wonderful! For most books that should work very well. Please don't worry about getting the "What links here" to work for the templates, unless you still want to do that. I am quite happy to use "What links here" for the book articles or red-links. Carcharoth 11:32, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

More abbreviations

How about "Biography" for Carpenter's biography, "S" for Silmarillion? Carcharoth 09:00, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll add these if there are no objections. I actually considered both, but didn't know how common 'S' was as an abbreviation for Silmarillion and wondered if there might be objections to promoting Carpenter's biography as THE 'Biography' (though it is generally recognized as such). --CBDunkerson 13:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be fairly commonly accepted that Carpenter's Biography is the biography, though not definitive (maybe that will come later, with the passing of the years, if another biographer is allowed access to the papers again). I believe it is also the only official one. I've seen a couple of other books with varying amounts of biographical material, such as "Master of Middle-earth" (Kocher), "J. R. R. Tolkien - Architect Of Middle-Earth" (Grotta), one by Michael White (can't remember title), but they all seem to rehash material from Carpenter's Biography. The "Tolkien and the Great War" (Garth) book does have new biographical material not found in Carpenter, so that should probably be on the list. I'll try and dig out the details sometime. Carcharoth 20:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

More books

The talk page list above includes the Annotated Hobbit, which is not on the listing on the template page. Some suggestions for other books: the "Reader's Companion"; "Tolkien and the Great War", the various books including Tolkien's other works and essays (particularly 'On Fairy Stories', 'Farmer Giles', 'Smith of Wootton Major', 'Leaf by Niggle', 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'). Might it be best to have a standard way to reference these essays/other stories that are published in several different collections?

Also, would it be silly to have references to the books and chapters of LotR and the other books, or at least examples of the way we would like people to refer to these books/chapters if they want to? Carcharoth 09:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

The Annotated Hobbit is just a version of The Hobbit with annotations and additional text. Most notably it contains the text from all different versions of The Hobbit which have been released and thus is the one book which can be referenced to cover any particular version of the story. Therefor I listed it under 'TH' / 'The Hobbit' as the standard reference.

I've got a stack of other books here which I was planning to put in this morning, but now will hold off until after the design updates. On standard referencing of sub-sections within each book... I think it would be difficult to cover all reasonable formats. Maybe we could write suggestions up on the project 'Standards' page. --CBDunkerson 13:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I think some people will want to reference editions of The Hobbit, rather than the Annotated Hobbit. In particular, people might want to reference just the latest copy of The Hobbit, that most readers should be able to access. And then use the Annotated Hobbit reference for all that earlier edition material? Not sure yet about the other stuff. Carcharoth 20:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

This page takes ages to load!!

There are lots of templates on this page, but some articles may have even more templates than this! This will mean that the pages will take a long time to load (like this page) and place strain on the Wikimedia servers (I think). Is this a bad thing? Carcharoth 09:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Yup. I've got an idea for re-designing it which should process faster. It's not as 'pretty' code wise, but I'm working on it now and we will see if it fixes the load time issue. --CBDunkerson 13:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Much faster - thanks! Carcharoth 20:08, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Update Made

Ok, I made the design updates. I was still getting a slow load time though... not sure why since the new design is very similar to what I've used in other templates which load quickly. --CBDunkerson 14:08, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Made a further adjustment which seems to have largely resolved the loading speed issue. --CBDunkerson 16:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Subst?

Because all the sub-templates go through this one they all end up being linked to any page which references any book on the list. I've come up with a way to link directly to the sub-templates (allowing proper 'What links here' for each book), but it would require that this template always be substituted. That is, {{subst:ME-ref|5|pg 17}} would evaluate to {{ME-ref/LROW|pg 17}}... this would remove all evaluation time problems and allow 'What links here' from each sub-template, but are people ok always using 'subst' with this template? Under the proposed method it would produce a warning message (possibly followed by a block of junk if I can't figure out how to suppress that) if not substituted. Let me know if you think using 'subst' is ok. --CBDunkerson 15:56, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been looking at the templates coding, and I think I'm slowly beginning to get the hang of it... :-) But in any case, I've thought of a problem... What I want to do is go to a general template for FotR (say) and click "What links here" to get all articles referencing that book. The problem is, that this will only find links to references using that edition. What if someone has used another edition? Or should we be working on the assumption that all references will be "corrected" to a single set of editions? - I would say we shouldn't do this. Is it possible to have subtemplates that allow people to choose whether they reference a US or UK edition of FotR. At the moment, most of these templates won't work for me because I have mainly UK editions. Anyway, I'm going to list details below of the books that I would be using, in case this helps, but I think the system needs to be flexible enough to encompass different editions, while still allowing someone to pick up a book and check all references using that template. Carcharoth 20:27, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

What I was trying to do, based on the discussion here, was to come up with a list of 'standard references' which can be used in most cases. Ideally we would pick editions which are widely used and/or have page numbering consistent with many other editions. That's the purpose of the list above... to show what I put in so we can discuss whether these make sense to be the 'standards'. Note that if you are just citing the book in general or a section (Letter #113, FotR 'A Long Expected Party') rather than a specific page number the edition listed doesn't matter.

In this case, we should reference the books people can go out and get today in bookshops and libraries - the "latest" editions, or my (4) below. Carcharoth 11:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin editions of Tolkien books very often have the same page numbering and thus can be used interchangeably. The problem I foresee with including multiple editions is that it will become exceedingly difficult to remember all the references - if we have a dozen versions of Lord of the Rings how do we sort out the abbreviations for each?

I think the idea is to list all the editions and abbreviations somewhere, and tell people they should work out which ones are suitable for their editions, then they can make their own little list of abbreviations to kepp handy for themselves. The page numbering page you mention above would also help with this. Really, I think we need to find a website somewhere that has done all this work already. I seem to remember a few, but don't have time to dig out the URL now. Carcharoth 11:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

To address different page numbering issues we can put conversion charts on the sub-template pages to show how to convert page numbers from one edition to another. --CBDunkerson 22:14, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

more comments inserted above Carcharoth 11:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Multiple editions don't really work, I agree, unless you set it up carefully (as below). The trouble is, while I want to use these templates, I would want them to reference the editions I have. It might be best to have at least a few sets of these templates: (1) Templates referencing the books without specifying date of edition, publisher, or ISBN - let the Misplaced Pages editor fill those in or use these basic templates to set up templates for their editions; (2) Templates for the first edition of each book (might be useful); (3) Templates for a standard set of books considered to be the most widely available editions; (4) Templates for a standard set of books considered to be the definitive editions - possibly splitting this into (a) US and (b) UK editions. I think that should cover most cases. I would then use a combination of all these, depending on which editions I was using.

(1) seems self-explanatory; (2) should be fairly easy to do; (3) should be some form of the second edition of LotR that has the most consistent page-numbering across different editions; (4) should, IMO, be the very latest editions published by HaperCollins and Houghton Mifflen (ie. the 50th anniversary 2005 edition). There should also be references to the latest single-volume editions published by them.

To explain all this, a page should lay out these four schemes, and explain that there are many other editions of LotR. It should also explain that while this may seem confusing, it is likely that the volume you are holding will have the same page numbering - so (3) or (4) should be chosen, depending on how old your edition is.

I would, tentatively, call these schemes: (1) General reference; (2) First editions; (3) Second edition of LotR/Silmarillion; (4) 50th Anniversary Edition of LotR.

As for 'The Hobbit', I would set up reference templates for general use, for the first edition, for the latest available (US and UK) and for the Annotated Hobbit (are there different editions?).

Having said that, there is probably no rush to set this up. But I think all the templates should be transcluded for now, in case there are problems. Is the substing really needed? Carcharoth 11:17, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Examples of UK and other non-US editions

I've copied these off a database I made of some of the Tolkien editions I have. I somehow ended up with some French and German editions - I guess these are not so important for an English-language encyclopedia. But I'm wondering how the UK books can be incorporated into the template referencing system? The order of the columns is: Author, Date of publication of first edition (unfortunately I didn't record the date of publication of the editions I have - silly me), title, publisher, ISBN. Will add a bit later. Carcharoth 20:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

OK. Here they are. If anyone wants to separate out the columns again, I replaced the tab symbol with two spaces " ". I suppose it might be possible to use the ISBNs to generate a year of publication, as, just to make this clear, I only recorded the publication year as the year the first edition was published. Carcharoth 21:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 The Hobbit Harper Collins 0 261 10330 X

J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 The Hobbit Unwin 0 04 823188 6

J. R. R. Tolkien 1949 Farmer Giles Of Ham Unwin 0 04 823233 5

J. R. R. Tolkien 1954 The Fellowship of the Ring Unwin 0 04 823185 1

J. R. R. Tolkien 1954 The Two Towers Unwin 0 04 823186 X

J. R. R. Tolkien 1954 The Fellowship of the Ring Unwin 0 04 823112 6

J. R. R. Tolkien 1955 The Return of the King Harper Collins 0 261 10237 0

J. R. R. Tolkien 1966 La Communaute de l'Anneau Pocket 2 266 10798 4

J. R. R. Tolkien 1966 Le Retour du Roi Pocket 2 266 10800 X

J. R. R. Tolkien 1966 Les Deux Tours Pocket 2 266 10799 2

J. R. R. Tolkien 1968 The Lord of the Rings George Allen & Unwin 0 04 823087 1

J. R. R. Tolkien 1972 Le seigneur des anneaux: les deux tours Christian Bourgois 2 253 01208 4

J. R. R. Tolkien 1975 Tree and Leaf, Smith of Wootton Major, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Unwin 0 04 820016 6

J. R. R. Tolkien 1977 The Silmarillion Unwin 0 04 823230 0

J. R. R. Tolkien 1977 The Silmarillion Unwin 0 04 823153 3

J. R. R. Tolkien 1977 The Silmarillion Harper Collins 0 261 10366 0

Humphrey Carpenter 1977 J. R. R. Tolkien George Allen & Unwin 0 04 928037 6

Christopher Tolkien (Ed.) 1980 Unfinished Tales Unwin 0 04 823179 7

Humphrey Carpenter (Ed.) 1981 The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien Harper Collins 0 261 10265 6

Tom Shippey 1982 The Road To Middle-Earth Harper Collins 0 261 10275 3

Christopher Tolkien 1983 The Book Of Lost Tales - Part 1 Harper Collins 0 261 10222 2

J. R. R. Tolkien 1983 The Monsters and the Critics Harper Collins 0 261 10263 X

Christopher Tolkien 1984 The Book Of Lost Tales - Part 2 Harper Collins 0 261 10214 1

Christopher Tolkien 1985 The Lays Of Beleriand Harper Collins 0 261 10226 5

Christopher Tolkien 1986 The Shaping Of Middle-earth Harper Collins 0 261 10218 4

Christopher Tolkien 1987 The Lost Road And Other Writings Harper Collins 0 261 10225 7

Christopher Tolkien 1988 The Return Of The Shadow Harper Collins 0 261 10224 9

Christopher Tolkien 1989 The Treason Of Isengard Harper Collins 0 261 10220 6

Christopher Tolkien 1990 The War Of The Ring Harper Collins 0 261 10223 0

J. R. R. Tolkien 1990 Tales From The Perilous Realm Harper Collins 0 261 10342 3

Christopher Tolkien 1992 Sauron Defeated Harper Collins 0 261 10305 9

Christopher Tolkien 1993 Morgoth's Ring Harper Collins 0 261 10300 8

Christopher Tolkien 1994 The War Of The Jewels Harper Collins 0 261 10324 5

J. R. R. Tolkien 1994 Poems From The Lord Of The Rings HarperCollins 0 261 10312 1

Christopher Tolkien 1996 The Peoples Of Middle-earth Harper Collins 0 261 10348 2

J. R. R. Tolkien 1998 Roverandom Harper Collins 0 00 714911 5

Tom Shippey 2001 J. R. R. Tolkien - Author Of The Century Harper Collins 0 261 10401 2

Christopher Tolkien 2002 The History Of Middle-earth Index Harper Collins 0 00 713743 5

Adding editions to these templates

Would it be possible to have a step-by-step guide to adding new editions to these templates? I think it would involve creating a sub-template page, plus some instructions on the front page, and then updating the "higher-level" templates. I'd be happy to add some editions if that would help. Carcharoth 11:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's settle what we are going to include first. I'm very concerned about having multiple editions of each book because it just seems extremely complicated and then becomes impossible to standardize the page numbering. If we use a single set of references then all page numbers consistently refer to that edition. Obviously this is ideal for people who have editions consistent with that page numbering scheme (and thus I think that we should pick editions consistent with the most widely available page numbering scheme), but I believe it is beneficial even for people whose editions have different page numbering... because it would then be consistently different. Instead of every reference using a different set of page numbers they would all be based on one set and we could have conversion formulas for various other editions. --CBDunkerson 11:47, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

Let's start collecting information on various editions of the books. If we get full {{cite book}} details for every edition we can find and the page numbering scheme we can see which page numberings are most common and set up the conversion formulas. Comparative page numbering is usually handled by listing the page number for the start of each chapter in a given edition and then devising a formula which evaluates to one set of 'chapter pages' when the other set is plugged into it... this can be off by a page or two for individual entries, but is usually quite accurate. We can use the talk pages of the individual reference templates. I'll build a framework and then put in some examples this afternoon. --CBDunkerson 11:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Please see Template:ME-ref/TH. I listed all of the editions of The Hobbit I have and the two Carcharoth listed above (please add page numbers). Unfortunately, thus far only two of them use the same page numbering. Most of the books will have greater consistency, but this one and LotR are going to be all over the map. I didn't put in conversion formulas yet because we don't have an agreed standard to convert from. --CBDunkerson 23:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Found those websites I was talking about with page number conversions - see here and here. I remembered that last one as being more helpful, but in fact most of the calculations seem to be hidden in a 'black box'... Actually, after a bit more ferretting around, I found a webpage that this guy refers to as "The Gory Details"! See here. Not sure how helpful this is, but it has reminded me of the scale of the problem. I do think that somewhere, we could put in Misplaced Pages a list of all the Tolkien editions that have been published (starting with the ones in the US and UK). It is a long list, but it should be doable. Carcharoth 13:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)