Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 15

Typographic & graphical improvements
Please have a look at, e.g., in the article Manitoba. It's very similar to this template, but a bit cleaner graphically. I'd like to roll some of those differences into this template:


 * 1) Remove hyphen-bullets.  Hyphens are not suitable typographic bullets, and the lines don't wrap correctly.
 * 2) Replace the hyphen-bullets by using bold text for a table sections' first heading, and roman for  subsequent ones.
 * 3)  Divide the Website row into header and data cells, like every other row.
 * 4) Place area and population rank in the data field opposite “Area” and “Population” headers.
 * 5) Add a table section with GDP & rank, total GDP (date), and per capita GDP, following the example

For an example of the hyphen-bullet wrapping problem, in this example, I see the following:

Even if a non-break space were added after the hyphen, any line wrapping would put part of the heading directly under the bullet, ruining the effect of indentation.

Objections to any of these changes? —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 18:29 z 


 * Ditching the dashes seems like a Good Thing, although the table headers in this version are actually HTML TH elements, which is also a Good Thing. Making the subordinate headers not bold will require using a class for these that overrides the default bold for TH elements.  The similar Template:Infobox Country uses dashed, non-bold subordinate headers (I haven't looked to see how it's done there).


 * Splitting the website into header and content seems OK. Does GDP make sense for a city? -- Rick Block (talk) 20:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * A class selector, like, would be best.  But inline CSS would work instead, or until this is in the style sheet:




 * GDP is used for Canadian provinces, and this template is supposed to be usable for “any subdivision below the level of a country”. —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 21:06 z 


 * GDP is one of those things that can be added using one of the "blank fields" if necessary.


 * The hyphens-bullets was/is based on to give a "standard look" (I think anyway.  It was a long time ago).  I believe that this would need considerable consensus with lots of sandbox examples for folks to look over before this should be changed.


 * Area and population ranks. That can be done.  &mdash;  MJC detroit  (yak) 21:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * But if GDP is added that way, then it ends up in the same table section as postal abbreviation and provincial bird, right? (e.g.). —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 22:46 z 

I changed that example, I hope that it looks a little better now. Also, I changed the "Lt Governor of Quebec" to "Lt Governor"; the of Quebec is well...a given. &mdash;  MJC detroit  (yak) 02:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, but “Federal representation” does the same thing in my browser, in this example. And if you fix that one, then some other type-in fields will get busted in another settlement.  Or a lot of them will in the browser of someone who needs the text to be larger. —Michael Z. 2009-01-13 03:20 z 
 * It must be the browser you're usin'. FF seems fine but IE7 is doing what you're talking about.  Why?  Maybe Mr. Block can answer that.  &mdash;  MJC detroit  (yak) 03:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Safari/Mac. I see that someone manually set the heading to "nowrap", but the text is too long so it had to wrap somewhere.  That's still besides the point; not everyone is using the default font or text size. —Michael Z. 2009-01-13 04:03 z 


 * I removed it, so it's better, but not great. now it looks like the following.

 - Federal Representation


 * Left-margin and negative indent would make this look better, but I prefer the bold-roman combination, without indentation, which also makes better use of the narrow column. —Michael Z. 2009-01-13 04:10 z 


 * I looked at how Template:Infobox Country does the subordinate headers and it's, let's say, not overly clean. They're done as 3 (!) columns, one for the dash, one for the title, and one for the content.  This makes it necessary for the major headers to include a colspan=2, but ends up with the wrapped subordinate titles indented properly.  This strikes me as not a very good solution (the amount of markup required borders on the ridiculous).  I think I prefer the bold/roman combination (no indent), but I would truly like Template:Infobox Country to be consistent.  Maybe we should expand the scope of this discussion. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yikes. The indentation of {Infobox Country} does look better, but this could be done with CSS—table cells for presentation elements is not right.  I see that it uses a combination, with bold-and-roman heading hierarchy. —Michael Z. 2009-01-13 06:02 z 

I standardized the Website row. Here's a start. —Michael Z. 2009-01-25 22:14 z 

I've made a proposed infobox without the hyphen-bullets, in the local sandbox. The hierarchy of table headings within a section is reinforced by bold/roman formatting, in addition to the horizontal rules between sections. You can see a couple of sample cities in User:Mzajac/Infobox settlement. —Michael Z. 2009-01-25 22:34 z 
 * Looks OK, but side-by-side, before-and-after comparison would be helpful, please. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, I added one to the proposal. Also adjusted the line-height a touch, which crabs the lines way too close together for basic readability. —Michael Z. 2009-01-26 00:24 z 


 * Thanks. The new version looks much better (though there's a stray comma, after "established"). I do think some of the  cells need to be  : the main title, and sub-headings like "Government" and "Area", for instance. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:54, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Good eye. I made some th's roman font, but I didn't check for table headings in td's. Fixed now, I think. —Michael Z. 2009-01-28 15:28 z 

Dimos-related changes
The deletion debate for Infobox Greek Dimos closed as 'no consensus', with some suggestions for improvements to this template, prior to re-nomination. Anyone have any thoughts? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Nudge! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

pushpin_map vs. type:city(###)
Okay, so sorry if this is a stupid question, but does the latter scale the map if the former is set? - Jarry1250 (t, c) 10:00, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not from what I have witnessed. Admiral Norton (talk) 11:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates pinpoint fix
Please replace

 Coordinates:

with

 Coordinates:

The text may appear the same in talk page view, but spacing has been changed, so please use the source in the edit box. This is necessary to maintain the spacing between the parentheses; the text currently displays as "Coordinates(Strossmayer Square):" instead of "Coordinates (Strossmayer Square):". Admiral Norton (talk) 11:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've changed it to use &amp;#32;, which then gets changed to a normal space. --- RockMFR 18:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Admiral Norton (talk) 23:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates type
Following the comments at: I made a test version at Template:Infobox Settlement/sandbox. It adds (numeric) population_total to the type:city parameter of coordinates (WP:GEO). Check "City of New York" with type:city(8143198) instead of type:city on Template:Infobox_Settlement/testcases -- User:Docu
 * Template_talk:Infobox_Settlement/Archive_11
 * Template_talk:Infobox_Settlement/Archive_13
 * Template_talk:Geobox

Country/state in subdivision_name, subdivision_name1
The entries in these fields are somewhat inconsistent. There is:
 * subdivision_name        = United States
 * subdivision_name1       = Massachusetts
 * subdivision_name        = [[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|20px]] United States
 * subdivision_name1       = [[Image:Flag of Iowa.svg|20px]] Iowa
 * subdivision_name        = 🇺🇸
 * subdivision_name1       =  Missouri

Samples are from Cambridge, Massachusetts; Des Moines, Iowa; Columbia, Missouri.

Currently only the first version is converted to region:US for coordinates. It is also the most frequently used and the easiest to re-use in templates.

Personally, I'd favor first version, possibly w/o any brackets for all entries. Wikilinks can be added through the template. BTW Geobox has a special field to turn on flags. -- User:Docu

Autolinking
The template currently uses the ifexist function on leader names in order to check whether the target article exists, and automatically creates the wikilink from the parameter if it does. This is problematic in two cases: It goes without saying that trying to fix #1 by disambiguating only gets you stuck into #2. Am I overlooking something here? If not, autolinking should be removed from the template. GregorB (talk) 00:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Two different people with the same name, and the wrong one has a Wikipedia article (just ran into that one for Mayor of Biograd na Moru).
 * 2) For cases such as e.g. "John Doe (British politician)" and "John Doe (American politician)" there is no nice way to pick the correct one. You can't use pipes.

Addison, Pennsylvania - 3 maps?
Could someone who knows the infobox have a look at this article and see what's going wrong? It has three maps, and I can't see why. It seems to be right on the state boundary - has this caused something to throw a wobbly? PamD (talk) 23:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I tweaked it a little. The problem (as I see it) is the map image that is used.  I've contacted the author of it.  &mdash;  MJC detroit  (yak) 03:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help - I knew there'd be somewhere here who could sort it out. I've re-tweaked the caption slightly. PamD (talk) 08:50, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates display for US cities
If coordinates are added in the infobox, these are currently displayed by default only in the infobox. To enable the display the coordinates in the article's title, one needs to add "| coordinates_display = somevalue" to the infobox.

For US cities, most articles include geolinks-US-cityscale or mapit-US-cityscale which displays coordinates both with the template and in the article's title. Besides, coordinates are also present in the infobox. As coordinates generated with the infobox include the state and population, it's preferable to rely on the infobox to generate the coordinates for the article's title.

Thus we might want to change the defaults for US cities to display the coordinates in the article's title unless they are disabled. At the same time, we would disable geolinks to display coordinates in the title.

When implementing this, we would need to check: A maintenance category should simplify this. -- User:Docu
 * articles with US geolink templates, but no infobox settlement
 * articles with an infobox, but no geolinks.


 * Note: both templates cited above geolinks-US-cityscale and mapit-US-cityscale are deprecated; a bot should convert them to coord. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it's better to switch the display of coordinates to the ones in the infobox. -- User:Docu

Discussion at WP:CITIES re Infobox Settlement v. Geobox
FYI: There was a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Cities about the use of infoboxes for city articles. --- User:Docu

Skewed location maps
What are the chances of getting this changed so that if a parameter were set, say "pushpin_map=skew", the location map template changes from Location map to Location map skew?

This would allow integration of maps such as the one at Uddjaure where the extent of latitude would otherwise make pushpin hit the wrong X-location. (Actually, that one would probably work anyway because it's in the middle, but along those lines anyway...)

Also, I'm trying to work up a method to fix the map used at e.g. Atikokan but Ontario will definitely need Location map skew for it to work. Franamax (talk) 20:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)