Template talk:Half-elven family tree

Formatting
I have no real idea how the tree should look, only being a casual fan and all, so if it's wrong in any way, please feel free to correct, it was just unbearable to look at as it was. Poulsen 18:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Three unions
I think the numerous issues surrounding the 'three unions' are too complicated to cover as an 'aside' in this template and thus the statement ought to be removed and covered fully in the Half-elven article.

It is just too much to explain that Imrazor/Mithrellas doesn't count because Mithrellas wasn't an 'Eldar' under the later 'Calaquendi' meaning of the term, Beren/Luthien does count because Luthien was born an 'elf' (though half-Maia) even though she had become mortal by the time she had Dior, Brandir and other half-elves mentioned in passing don't count either because they are from outdated drafts or presumably non 'Eldar' parents, Aragorn/Arwen does count even though Arwen was technically a half-elf who chose mortality and married a human - presumably because she had lived so long as an 'elf' before choosing mortality, and Dior/Nimloth - Earendil/Elwing - Elrond/Celebrian - Elros/Unnamed human wife don't count - presumably because the half-elves in those cases made their choices much earlier.

That's alot of twists and turns to maintain the 'only three unions' bit. Making the simple statement that 'there were only three' will just continue to attract contradiction and it doesn't make sense to explain the complex rationales behind it on this page. --CBDunkerson 15:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The marriages of Elros and Elrond don't count because they had chosen to be Man and Elf respectively and married their own kind. That of Earendil and Elwing doesn't count because the parties were neither one nor the other.  Hm, was Dior mortal?  &mdash;Tamfang 00:12, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:familytree
The current preformatted text is rather ugly, so I had a go at replicating the family tree using the familytree template, like Template:Fëanor. It ended up being rather wide and long. Ideas for improvement are welcome. -- ALoan (Talk) 00:57, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I actually prefer the text based trees. No, the individual elements aren't as 'pretty' as nice boxes and graphical lines, but you have much greater control of the layout and are thus able to control the size and appearance better. You can also include comments more easily. The whole point of this template is to show the 'line of the half-elven' as described by Tolkien with the 'three unions'... yet there is no easy way to mark the three unions in the 'familytree' version. The ideal solution would be to build a chart the same way 'familytree' does, but manually so that it can then be more precisely formatted. I don't know how subst'able 'familytree' is, but that might be a place to start. --CBDunkerson 12:37, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Dammit! I didn't see this before. Nice waste of time. :/ -- Jordi· ✆ 17:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Italics?
Why are parts of this chart italicized? There appears to be no rhyme or reason to it, at least none that is readily discernable to the reader, which pretty much makes it useless and confusing even if it means something to the creator of the template. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 02:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Modifications
It has been suggested by at Talk:Beren to add some modifications to the template denoting half-elves, men, elves, etc. So I've made a test version with colour codes in my user sandbox. But there may be two problems: it may not be very indicative for colour-blind people, and I'm not sure whether there should be additional colours for Elrond's family so as to reflect their final choices. E.g. Elrond chose to become an elf while Arwen became a mortal to marry Aragorn; and the choice of her brothers is completely unknown. In general I do like the idea though. De728631 (talk) 16:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I think you have a very good point De728631, I never thought about the color blind angle. Nice job on your graphic, and thanks for showing me what the sandbox concept is for!  How about something like a sub-M, sub-E, and sub-H notation after the name to denote Man, Elf, or half-elf?  Your other point about showing final choices is also a good one, there the story gets complicated and nebulous - as you pointed out.  Somehow the article needs to get across that in that world there can be a birth status and a status from final choice, but an elegant way to express that graphically escapes me. I'll let that one bubble for a while.  Regardless, it's great working with you!  Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 13:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I just occured to me that the Half-elven names in that family tree are already marked with italic font. So I played around with CSS styles and came with something that might actually work. Please see the latest sandbox version. De728631 (talk) 14:36, 14 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm giving you a virtual pat on the back, I think you've got it!  In fact I think this graphic would clarify several articles if inserted therein, like the articles for each of the folk named in the chart.   By the way, I'm and old school graphic artist (pencil & paper) and terms like CSS go right by me.   Could you point me to a source to learn how to do what you do?  Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 14:54, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. As to CSS, we've got a whole article about Cascading style sheets. You might also want to do an online search for "CCS patterns". Actually I just know enough about it to add the occasional background colour or something to one of our Wikipedia templates, but I wouldn't be able to write whole websites using CSS. That said, I'm now going to implement these changes to the half-elven template. De728631 (talk) 15:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)


 * You are most welcome. I'm serious about other articles this should be used in, for example Eärendil, Elrond, Luthien, etc.  I think it adds a great deal of clarity.  Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 16:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * A lot of these articles do already use this template or similar ones. And you might want to add the string  to any articles where you think this should be displayed. De728631 (talk) 19:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

If you're going to use cross-hatching, may I suggest we do it in a way that is more than decorative? I don't quite see the purpose of it now. It would make more sense to do green/white cross-hatching for the half-elves, with some clear distinction as to the fate they chose. Double sharp (talk) 03:55, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I already wrote above that the current purpose of cross-hatching is to provide visual support for the colour blind. Using plain coloured boxes may not be indicative enough so I chose the cross-hatching to highlight elves and Maiar (or the single Maia box, if you will). Since elves are one of two dominant groups in the template, the other being men, I thought it would be better to use an easily recognisable pattern for them instead of marking the few half-elven. De728631 (talk) 13:03, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I generally agree with Double sharp. The current hatching makes the text hard to read (probably for both color-blind and normal viewers).  I think it would be preferable to find solid colors for Elves and Half-elven that w/o hue become different shades of gray. For the Elves, a very light gray would suffice.  A light stippled pattern for one or the other is another possibility.  I think the visual clues should clearly distinguish Half-elven from Elves, rather than lumping them together as the current scheme does -- the italic font alone is not sufficient. -- Elphion (talk) 18:04, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * That's true, the hatching does make the text hard to read. So I've been testing some gray-only versions but I found that they provide too less contrast. Especially different shades of light gray can hardly be distinguished from plain white. So I came up with this sandbox, using a touch of blue for the elves. Please feel free to experiment with different colour codes. De728631 (talk) 01:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I made a few changes to the sandbox to try to make it a little easier for people with full color vision to read, while maintaining a bit of the cross-hatching for contrast. I also made the table structure more consistent to make future editing a bit easier. If nobody objects after a reasonable period, I'll apply it for real. &mdash; Xaonon (Talk) 00:40, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I like your changes a lot. Specifically the hatching is now much less obtrusive. But we should really not use a pink background (Melian) while having plain green backgrounds for elves at the same time. Red-green colorblindness would most likely make them all look the same. That's why I chose a yellow box for Melian in the first place. De728631 (talk) 15:46, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I ran both the new and old color schemes through a tool that simulates several different types of colorblindness, and Melian's pink remains quite distinct in all of them -- indeed, more so than it is currently: https://i.imgur.com/vHahOsf.png &mdash; Xaonon (Talk) 20:57, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's impressive – and convincing, so I have now moved your sandbox code to the live page. Thank you for improving this template. De728631 (talk) 19:21, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Display problems?
IP 99.111.205.17 wrote the following into the main template page: "This script does not display properly for some browsers and should be updated or replaced with an image file." Unfortunately they didn't mention what went wrong while displaying the template and which browsers are affected. I'm using Firefox 26 and I'm not having any problems here. De728631 (talk) 17:53, 8 February 2014 (UTC)