Wiktionary:Grease pit/2009/February

=February 2009=

change brite white bak ground to blue/green/gray-ish
since weeks now I am trying to accomplish this. so I can use W.ictionary longer without getting migraine headaches.

I'v managed to make it change in my messenger, but it seems I have to do something in what might be your source language I suppose to have this same background color change on any  W.ictionary pages I visit

As this change would have such a tremendous impact in my comfort levels in using your resources, I greatly anticipate any reply in this matter!!

Please disregard any spelling idiosyncrasies, my speech recognition has been playing up dictating this, and since I rely on it to make any corrections, apart from moving the mouse and the occasional tap on my pad, it is not always easy to make it letter perfect --  Thank you so much for your understanding!--史凡 02:12, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

PS. I finally figured out how to make a screen snapshot,, but I don't know how to in clude that word document here, so for now. I cannot graphically illustrate what I tried to express in the above, so much for a picture is worth a thousand words sad smiley


 * You can change this by adding some code to Special:Mypage/monobook.css. The following code worked for me.  I suspect that our resident wizards can come up with something better, but this seems to do the job except for a few leftover islands of white:

body,#content,#wpTextbox1,#toc,.pBody { background-color : #cccccc; }


 * (That's for medium-gray; for other colors, replace "CCCCCC" with your hex color of choice.) I never minded the white, but having tried this out, I kind of like it. -- Visviva 03:54, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Visviva, thank you so much for such an incredibly fast and helpful reply!!

Since I have my monitor 's brightness and colors in the properties down regulated as much as I could, it appears as dark gray to me, but  it is definitely a major improvement, so. sincerely thank you once again!!I tried one o ther color, having read again about text colors in Wikipedia[aren't these media fantastic, poor me growing up without them LOL], but that was a garish affair called "orchid", hurtful to the eyes in more than one way, and sins the adaption takes my computer quite a bit each time, apart from the clicking strain on my arms, for now I am happily going to leave it black in gray as it were, thank you so much again!!!--史凡 05:20, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

PS Would it be an idea to repose your help on  the tat -- page?; others might find it as helpful as. I did,. Ideally it would just be a  Click on the button in the preference page I feel,  But I wouldn't know how to do that myself, the latter thing. Thanks again!!--史凡 06:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * If you are using FireFox (highly recommended), you can go to Tools/Options/Content/Colors... choose a background colour, and uncheck the box that says "Allow pages to choose their own colors...". This will help you on most sites, not just the Wiktionary. (And it does work here.) Robert Ullmann 10:06, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Robert, thank you so much for your reply; I am not very knowledgeable about computers, though I do like the technology and opportunities they provide, and when explaind step-by-step i normally manage to use it, at least in the end -- 1 reason I feel so much for an educationally sound approach to things,whether one is talking about writing a scientific article, sharing one's professional knowledge. or, in this case, helping [well, trying to in my case. huh]to make a revolutionary dictionary! .

Is Firefox a web browser like I'm using Opera? I like howOpera remembers my opened windows when restarting my computer, but otherwise don't feel strongly about it, I mean emotionally attachment wise -- if my assumption is right,. how does one get Firefox, from the Internet? [That's why the first paragraph immediately above, shy smiley]; does it help an older laptop [Dell Inspiron, about five years]as myne runs smoothly?

I did see the "skin" -- preferences part on this project. [Or wiki media in general, I really wouldn't know for sure,tho I started this account on wictionary],. But I didn't readily see the background color change I was after, a few days ago that was.

I did manage before to do a similar change to my messenger background, but at least for me. that was not a very straightforward exercise, though I managed under clear the email guidance from a friend, so sure, a more dummy/user friendly interface, or whatever the exact technical word for that, I do would happily embrace!!

Thank you in advance and already for your responses, remaining sincerefully,--史凡 10:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Go to http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ and take a look; yes it is a browser like Opera and Chrome and that other one. You should be able to run it (although you didn't say what OS version you are on): the website will sort it out for you. I think you automatically get the correct download matching your system when you visit that page. Is free, cost you nothing to check it out. And it does remember tabs and windows between sessions. Robert Ullmann 17:04, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Robert, Only today I checked here again[I tend to put of such things out of frustrations with computers endured in the past,till as today. My body plays up and basically puts the knife against my throat...] and downloaded the browser successfully!it was indeed very straightforward and fast-- I changed the color settings as explained clearly by you: system colors, giv me my previous messenger background, only a shame this system/Firefox doesn't seem to allow you/1 to define the hex colors at wil!my speech recognition seems to be doing relatively fine (struggling with it is one reason I might be slow in replying generally.)  I tested Yahoo and Hotmail, everything seems to be fine! Early around today I had tostopp using the computer because of the bright background screens were causing me troubles/headaches, so once again. Thank you so very much!!!

PS, I dID see Mozilla Firefox software on my computer before, after I got a new hard drive installd by the local ex-pat computer expert here, but not knowing any better, I assumed it just had something to do with my computer security, Internet -- wise, though the antivirus program is AVG-- as you notice it's all a little confusing to me, computer things. bythe way, I think my OS is, windows XP, but even that I'm not sure of shy smiley

Thank you once again!!!--219.69.81.128 11:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way  Numbertwo, could you perhaps referr me to a passage in greasepit or so (I noticed people mentioning it, but didn't find  exactly how to do it) that spells out to me how to get my Toc/table of contents  to the right, whith the text wrapping around it to the left -- I  tried a couple of times before, but it never worked out sad smiley...


 * You are welcome! For TOCs on the right, go to WT:PREFS (the extended preferences for the wiktionary) check the top box and the box next to "Put the table of contents onto the right of entries." (last pick in the first section) and click on "save settings".

worked! So cooll, I'm getting more things done with a computer in the last fortnight than in my previous computer life altogether, so thank you (and the others)very much!!!new paragraph, new paragraph.

Iwas told before about options isaw on that list, but look for them in my personal preferences, in my account /related. I mean.

I now realize I could have looked withde control f. functionfor TOC in the grease parlor, but before, and that might have been opera, the search box would cover the actualkeyword, forcing me to drag the box a waymost of the time, exactly 1 of the movements that is poison for my RSI arms, but I promise to check out if like before, on the other" (that is techno-slang for the Microsoft one right?) browser, the box automatically moves away -- most things I ended up asking.  I try to find before, but unsuccessfully, computer mor on me said smiley...史凡 15:27, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, and you can set the background colour in hex in FF, but you have to go a level deeper: type  in the URL line; you will then get a warning message (-), continue, and find the line that says   double-click on that line (or right-click/modify) and you can put in a hex color. You can also really mess up some things by changing options at this level so have fun! Robert Ullmann 17:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I notice, I can get my customize background color via changing the properties by right clicking on the desktop. So for now I'm going to leave it by that and passed out on the fun. LOL.thanks for explaining clearly though my intention is to come back to your description. Whenever I feel brave enough to give such thing a try!

perhaps a couple of things I noticed on Firefox:

An annoying one: the cursor seems to have the same color as the rim of my windows, and as such is really hard to see on the easy on the eye background colors; I'm talking about the Roman capitalized Council. "I" shaped cursor, like in the editing box ; I tried in the properties where I initially changed the background color of my messenger to locate anything that governs the color of the cursor. But in vain-- would you know how to do this, I mean, how this can be done?

For now I have to move the mouse in circles looking for the cursor. And that's exactly 1 of the movements that make my arms hurt -- right now my speech recognition is working a bit slowly but reliably, but if that software starts playing up. In addition, to me. It's baneful arms having to move my mouse all the time. Already that can push me over the edge, meaning I have to stop trying to redact a post or edit sad smiley

Another thing isthat "red links" now show plain blue as the actual "blue links" meaning that I have to use the mouse cursor, sliding over at the links to see which ones are actually existing entries (and if I get up to speed with Chinese to add more entries smiley)-- would there be a fix for this?

Last thing would be That on Operather wasa feature called "speed dial" or soenabling me to display up to nine favorites websites(and of course wiki media projects were heavily represented smiley) and to go there just by single click -- for nowit has proven to be quite a bit more click intensive to open those twentysomething windows as is might wontshies smiley; do you know about a similar trick for Firefox?

I would like to apologize for the length of the above; thought I' tryd to restrictto wat would make editing on wiki media(I haven't found the trick yetto have my speech recognition display "wictionary", annoying)more feasible to me given my disabilities, I do realize and understand that lengthy posts are a bit/rather frowned upon; since I'm in the habit of blaming my speech recognition for everything, as it's working smoothly, for once, the above will likely read Chatty-- of course I realize, that is not da program but me-- now I just lost my endingto dis post, I guess Dragon speech 9.0 could do with an upgrade sigh -- could it be my Dell Inspiron 5160 is also too slow for such software? I'm a bit isolated here in Kaohsiung Taiwan, and how to find out such info on the web, I'm just not to experienced...

anyhow I just hope to have plenty of practice time with a slick functioning software package in the next days and weeks, so I come to an appropriate posting style and size, as well as to be able to comfortably edit. Thank you so much for your contributions to such!!!史凡 16:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Template parameter expansion for labelled section names
So the line of code is  , and I want to encapsulate this "etymology" string into a parameter, say  , with the default value of "etymology", so I write   , but as it turns out playing around with Special:ExpandTemplates, this addition does not get expanded, but is left "as is". I thought that MediaWiki was "expand everything first, then evaluate", so how can I get back the desirable behaviour, or work around this issue? :) PS, the template in question is --Ivan Štambuk 16:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Things don't get expanded inside extension tags (unless the extension itself does it). But there is an obscure magic parser function, so you can write  which then is expanded (say section isn't defined) to  . However I'm not sure this works with LST, depending on how it finds the sections to include (is it looking for tags in the wikitext, or does it do some parsing?). "tag", BTW, is the magic for using parameters inside math, hiero, etc tags. Robert Ullmann 11:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Doesn't seem to work... in Special:ExpandTemplates expands to   instead of the expected  ..? --Ivan Štambuk 12:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't get it quite right, it needs an explicit empty content:  and then it generates , the question then being whether that is equivalent to the desired tag. (It should be, by the definition of the syntax, but that does not of course mean that it is ;-) Robert Ullmann 08:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently they're not equivalent.. Too bad, we now have to stick with the ugly markup ˘_˘ --Ivan Štambuk 09:31, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

'clear' style in templates
With the ToC on the right-hand side, some pages have elements (e.g. some collapsible boxes) that want to span horizontally the whole content area and have to be below the ToC. Depending on length of the ToC and the position of these elements, this can leave a large, ugly white space in the content area. It happens with but not  for instance. Not knowing too much web stuff, I was guessing it's the  that's causing the problem. Is there some reason this is needed, or can this be removed with out trouble from templates? Are there exceptions? Thanks.--Bequw → ¢ • τ 06:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * They shouldn't be using . "wanting" to span the whole width is wrong anyway, as (e.g.)   only takes up half of my screen width, the rest is wasted horizontally. The   et al classes have the correct style(s).  Robert Ullmann 11:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist questions
I seem to remember the watchlist as formerly including all the changes on a page, not just the most recent one. It doesn't seem to do so any more. I haven't run any experiments even on the current state of affairs. But for at least several weeks I find that when I go to the discussion pages, there are comments I missed on discussions that I would have wanted to participate in (not to mention Votes).

Questions:
 * 1) Is my memory correct that formerly the watchlist worked differently?
 * 2) Is my understanding that the watchlist only has the most recent change correct?
 * 3) If there has been a change, what caused it?
 * 4) How should I have found out?
 * 5) What can I do to not miss comments on discussions? Do I have to check history for each discussion page? DCDuring TALK 15:40, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Special:Preferences -> Watchlist -> Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes, is this what you want? -- Prince Kassad 15:44, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed!!! Thank you! I had missed it on three looks at that page. Has there been any change in that or was my problem self-inflicted? DCDuring TALK 17:06, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This has been the default watchlist behavior for as long as I can recall ... My guess would be that you had changed the setting earlier, and inadvertently changed it back? (I think I have inadvertently reset my preferences to default once or twice, though I don't remember how it happened -- possibly something to do with changing my password.) -- Visviva 17:57, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I remember doing some experiments, didn't remember that change in particular, and simply didn't see it even when I was specifically hunting for a switch. D'oh. DCDuring TALK 21:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Template:top, Template:mid
I added Papantla Totonac and Mandaic translations to water. However, these don't work because of their language codes (top and mid, respecticely), which are already in use. As these templates have up to 8,000 inclusions and are used varyingly (which rules out bots and the like), I'm asking if there's any workaround to the problem. -- Prince Kassad 20:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Those templates are (slowly) being phased out. In Translations sections,  and  should be used.  In other sections,  or  (and corresponding "mid" templates) should be used.  Unfortunately, the change is a very long one to implement. --EncycloPetey 06:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Papantla Totonac could just be entered as plain wikitext, without using . In fact that's probably preferable for most languages that don't have their own wikt.  Not sure what to do about Mandaic, as it requires . -- Visviva 06:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Something is wrong with the Mandaic (water), but there are no instructions for using the template. —Stephen 20:29, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it tries to use the contents of Template:mid as a piped link. But since Template:mid is not a language template, it fails at creating the link and instead prints an error message. And yes, I should probably write some instructions on using t-image, currently only I know how it works. -- Prince Kassad 20:45, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe it would work if we made . That’s what I did with and it works for Papantla Totonac now. —Stephen 21:00, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Removed that crap again. It is hard enough to fix things without re-breaking things. Robert Ullmann 01:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * t-image uses a different code from Template:t. I believe it would only work if you set the language parameter in the template to lang:mid too. -- Prince Kassad 21:08, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know if that's a good solution., , and  are the only remaining templates which are in the way of language templates, and are already in the process of being phased out.  It seems silly to introduce code into a widely used template  just for this one situation.  Couldn't we just do a subst hack of some sort for the time-being?  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We used that in the beginning, but it confused AutoFormat. -- Prince Kassad 21:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Note that not everything has to be FORCED into {t}. Especially if you have to break something else. Just write out the link normally?

That said: {t-image} is not "widely used" (:-), it is used in water and nowhere else. Yes, the intent is to use it more widely, but there is also an easier way to do it (-). But in any case, we can (and I have) hacked "mid" = "Mandaic" into it for now. That solves the singular case we have. (It doesn't require some ever-growing switch; and wouldn't be absolutely terrible to leave for a fairly long time.) I also fixed {t-image} to display in-line without using a table and on the same line; this will still show extra line breaks on some older browsers. See the first table at water.

As to replacing top with trans-top; this was to be done automatically, when found in trans sections, but DAVilla complained violently about that flooding the category for missing trans glosses. (AF has the code, it takes putting one regex back to what it was.) Then the remaining top/mid/bottom can be automatically changed to top2/mid2/bottom. We could also change top in trans sections to (say) {old-top}, and the others to {top2}, and then proceed as now with the slower process of adding glosses.

I might mention here that if you add a gloss to {top}, AF will quickly pick that entry up and change the template names to the trans- names, you don't have to do that yourself. Robert Ullmann 01:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * warning, contains unmarked snark: One more thing, even though the birds are telling me to sleep now: the template was only created so that Tbot could turn off the t/t+/t- functions for all the languages without wikts (where t's primary function is pointless) without just expanding back into piped link syntax. If you suffer from OCD, and will be in personal pain if you can't use {t} everywhere, note that tø has no use for the code whatever. Just do this: e.g at water


 * or you can put "top" in if you really want to (we care about your pain). It won't matter either way. (Ha!) Good night (morning) to all, Robert Ullmann 03:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Let's change the {top}s in trans sections to {old-top} (and mid too). Then we could decouple the translation-gloss problem from the this-language-has-no-lang-template problem. We would all sleep better I think. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 03:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, certainly. There are (as of yesterday morning) 7431 uses in 7276 entries within translations sections, and 34 uses under other headers. I'm working on changing all (NS:0) {top} to {old top}, {mid} to {old mid}; but to top2/mid2 in those other sections. We will have to then see what use there is outside NS:0 (I haven't looked yet ;-). There are, however, hundreds of recent uses, so it may take a little while; people are still creating entries with {top}. These could be automatically fixed by AF going forward for a while? Would end up in that fix category. Robert Ullmann 00:27, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Noted on News for editors. Nadando 00:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Much better I think to do it this way: AF has been converting {top} to {trans-top} when a gloss is present. It was converting all of them, but DAVilla complained that Category:Translation table header lacks gloss was getting "flooded" while he was trying to work on it. That was two full years ago. It is high time we put the remaining 7K entries and any new ones in that category to get cleaned up. All I need do is un-comment one line in AF, and editors need not do anything differently from what they (should ;-) already be doing. Much simpler. And I'll go fix the uses outside trans sections now. Robert Ullmann 01:25, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 02:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Serious magic ... "top" and "mid" will work in the various templates like {t}. The codes won't work on their own (but then we seldom do that), but are also not subst'ble. When we complete the process, they will be ordinary code templates. Robert Ullmann 05:38, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Minor auto-redirect bug?
Visit this URI for example, where a user's name is "misspelled" only in being miscapitalised: The automatic redirect says "(Auto-redirected from User%3AdavidFarmbrough)". I think the colon should not be escaped here. Is it a small bug? Equinox ◑ 23:30, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Fixed, thanks. (Hard-refresh, and/or wait a month, to see the change.) —Ruakh TALK 00:51, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The American illustrated medical dictionary
For your consideration, The American illustrated medical dictionary. Published in 1922, so this is from the last year for works automatically falling into the public domain. A brief review suggests that the definitions are nonetheless generally current (and even those that are not should be included here as obsolete forms). Can we import this? And if so, can someone with the requisite magic wiki-fu do the deed? Two caveats, btw, a small number of the entries are proper names, and some of them (those containing commas) indicate multiple spellings of the same word. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:11, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No preview available? -- Visviva 01:36, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Huh? Should be. It has the [View page images] link, and the entire book is there. I just don't know how to import it. bd2412 T 05:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Nope, it's fully invisible here in Korea. Maybe it can be only be viewed within the US?  At any rate, if all we have to go on is an OCR'd PDF, it's likely going to be quite a lot of work (proofreading, basic formatting) to get it into wikifiable condition.  The nice thing about Webster is that it had already been prepared in a proofread HTML format, and just needed some relatively mechanical conversion. -- Visviva 06:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we could import it into a temporary space? I'm really most concerned with words in the work that are missing altogether here, which is probably a small subset of the whole. bd2412 T 17:03, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Can't be seen from here (UK) either, does it have the PDF download, and if so, could you put it somewhere? Conrad.Irwin 20:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Very temporarily at http://dax.wustl.edu/~msh210/AIMD.pdf .—msh210  ℠  22:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ironically enough, I can't open the pdf. But does it matter, as long as someone with the appropriate skills can see it, and can pluck out the definitions that we are missing? bd2412</i> T 20:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually after the last posting I was able to access and download it through Circumventor/Glype. (Hurrah for proxies!) But it seems that the OCR'd text is not actually included in the PDF.  So either we need someone with a good OCR program, or we need an extremely patient person (or persons) to cut and paste each individual page from b.g.c. into a text editor and wikify the headwords.  I did this for column 2 of page 17 and both columns of page 18, see User:Visviva/AMID1 (or see here for the original dump before any manual edits).  I don't think this could be importable -- not without much better OCR, anyway -- but it would be a useful guide to missing entries/senses.  -- Visviva 09:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * If a patient human could do that page-by-page cut and paste job from Google Books, surely a program could do the same? <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 01:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes. In fact, the "View plain text" option doesn't use AJAX or anything — the text is just in the bare HTML, the whole page is a single HTTP request. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 02:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That program would need to be in US, though, or using a more forgiving proxy than Glype. Because it's intended to forestall censorship at both ends (I guess?), Glype hashes all the URLs so that there is no way to extract a pattern from them.  I don't know enough about proxies to find a way around this. -- Visviva 05:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Could someone outside the US write the program and send it to someone in the US with instructions on how to run it? <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 07:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, here's what I would do, from the Duct Tape school of not-exactly-programming: 1. Get the pattern for the text URLs.. This should be something like "http://books.google.com/books?id=0Di6AAAAIAAJ&pg=PAxx&output=text" where xx is the page number.  2. Make an HTML or wiki page of links to all the text pages (they should come in increments of 5); a spreadsheet is handy for this. 3. Use any of various link-downloading programs (such as DownThemAll for Firefox, or Linky if you don't actually want to download) to fetch all the links.  4.  At this point you have all the pages; you can either do some fancy program-y thing to extract the text and strip out the tags, or just C&P 240 times (if you use the pasteboard in NoteTab Light this can go surprisingly quickly).   -- Visviva 07:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Since it looks like the solution is going to be copy-and-paste, shall I put these under User:Visviva/AMID(x), or in Wiktionary space? <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 18:15, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Webster 1913: classified as spam
I am trying to add a link to Webster 1913 using the template "* ". But upon saving the addition of the template, I get the following message:


 * Spam protection filter
 * The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to a blacklisted external site.
 * The following text is what triggered our spam filter: http: //machaut
 * Return to designate.

Can someone knowledgeable please fix this issue? --Dan Polansky 11:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Adding to designate? I didn't see any problem. Sometimes there is existing text (links) on the page that have since been added to the blacklist. Robert Ullmann 11:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * There aren't any links to http: //machaut in the wikt (now); but that isn't even a complete link? I dunno. Robert Ullmann 11:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm. The issue is no longer there. Thanks for having looked at it, anyway. --Dan Polansky 16:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

easy way of giving in IpA and pinyin?
dear Greece pit,I discovered in WT:prefs the edit tools -- addition, I stumbled upon it as it were, under my search box,and happily further discoveredthat finally with that additionI can give in, what I mentioned in da headline; to my surprise, I didn't see such edit tools  When actually editing in wiktionary, so I had to, a bit in acumbersome way and notvery good for myRSI arms, to then giv in the IpA say,in the search mask,. And then cut and paste itto the actual editing mask--is there a more elegant and ergonomically sound, wayto the same effect Available please?thank you in advance--史凡 15:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

PS source language-- dummy me, could somebody explain to me how com the "{ {" around the IPa notation -- is that to link it to something like a categoryor so.?


 * The "{ {" is there as a way of transcluding the template, which helps to ensure that everything displays correctly.
 * I'm afraid I really couldn't understand your first question. If you're asking whether there is a way to have IPA available without having to navigate the dropdown, I think the answer is yes, but it's a bit tricky.  There was something going on with customizable edittools that I haven't heard much about lately... maybe someone else can fill in the gaps. -- Visviva 05:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)New paragraph.

dear vis Viva, I'd just sow your reply, thank you so much!!I'll work through the various points: sign.

Please let me rephrase: sign. I can now give in IP a [ and pinyin should be possible too, just didn't try it out yet.] in my search mask, using " editing tools" and then copy it from ther in the edit mask-- is their a way of doing this directly, givin the IP a in the edit mask?

. I just spent four hours reading up technical Internet terms on Wikipedia,, but unfortunately I have stilno idea what is colon sign transcluding? Navigate the drop down?

My writing style colon : rereading it myself. I often cringe, but as it is now, I will have to work with an imperfect set up, including a trickiespeech recognition. I do appreciate your and other peoples efforts to nonetheless, answer medeeply though!!

I did manage to get my cursor visible again when editing through again changing the background color. What should be red links still appear as regular blue links thoin the user pages sat smiley.New paragraph

[. I think I can provide screenshots by now, I think I know how to do that. But am not sure whether such would be appreciated by the community, so I won't for now].

r categorys is vital? It seems so from the random reading I did,at least in some posts, but unfortunately, to me. Having these appear in respective entries is something I still have to learn -- is there a trickto do this ?

[For example, I finally made another new entry about Mandarin today, imperfectly, for now, on the other hand. It's such a high frequency word. It pains me not to see it in yet, in your dictionary I mean, confused smiley]

I do not expecta written out reply to each of the points I mentioned; I am more than happy to read concerning wiki documents, but I have a little problem locating them just by myself sad smiley

Thank you so much again for your answer!!!--史凡 15:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

A way of tracking a specific language
Hi all,

I'm still working out some of the kinks in this, but I thought I'd mention it here, as it may be useful for people who want to keep an eye on a specific language or languages:. Basically the idea is to provide a pseudo-RC list for all non-bot changes to a specific language's language sections and translations. Caveats: note that the lists don't substitute for either RC itself or a robust watchlist, as they lack most of the patrolling bells & whistles; they also ignore talkspace and topline edits, which a person with an interest in a particular entry would want to know about. Also, since this currently runs on my desktop (the output then being FTP'd to the server), occasional outages should not come as a surprise. ;-) If you do make use of this, please let me know if you encounter any fresh bugs. Note that any false positives from before roughly now -- 16:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC) -- have probably been fixed at the source, and are just working their way through the system. Oh, and if anyone has any bright ideas about formatting, lay 'em on me. :-) Cheers, -- Visviva 16:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, it's fun to note that the (entirely unscientific) list of most active languages recently went from "English, Translingual, Italian, Spanish, French" to "English, Finnish, Lithuanian, Spanish, Egyptian". There's more going on around here than meets the eye -- kudos to Hekaheka, Opiaterein and Strabismus for their yeomanly labors. -- Visviva 12:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This is really cool!. Have you considered getting a toolserver account to run things from there? Conrad.Irwin 13:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I did, but it looks like they have a very long backlog (e.g. the request made by our own TheDaveRoss in Feb. 2008 is still pending), so I figured I would just muddle through on my own. :-) -- Visviva 13:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I've been wanting to see such a feature for some time now. Thanks Visviva for doing it.  I wonder, though, if such a thing might possibly be incorporated into the MW software itself, either as an option for rule based watchlists, or qualifications to a user's view of RC or something.  No idea if this is feasible.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It would certainly be very cool if it could be built in; but that seems unlikely to happen until we get our own dedicated software (ha!). Prove me wrong, devs, prove me wrong...
 * Then again, while playing around with RSS, I discovered that it is possible to do something like this with the MediaWiki RC feed in Google Reader -- because the RC feed includes the diffs, you could set your subscription to filter out any diffs that do not include specific words or phrases (such as a language name). This is clunky, though, since it would exclude e.g. edits within a language section that don't happen to include the language name in the diff or summary.   On the other hand it would include pertinent edits in other namespaces, which might be useful.  On the third hand, the RSS feed seems to have a very low job priority, and often updates slower than my hand-rolled lists.
 * A third possibility might be to home-roll a setup for rule-driven watchlists feeding off the API (with an x-minute update cycle). Not sure if either Devtionary or Toolserver would work for this, as there needs to be a setup for normal-user accounts. (... or does there?  maybe all rule-driven watchlists could be public.)  -- Visviva 05:24, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Awesome! :-D  —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 02:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)