Template talk:Polytonic

Fork
This is a fork of Template:IPA, aiming to be a less ugly hack that will substitute HTML font tags used to render polytonic Greek script. The need to create this has emerged from a talk on Talk:Greek language. I've decided to fork this as a primitive means of semantic markup, that will help us weed out all the tags and get rid of the template itself, when technology standards are updated to properly support polytonic. Etz Haim 00:14, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd like to point out that technology standards are fine; it's Internet Explorer that's deficient. &mdash;Michael Z. 2005-01-28 16:39 Z 

I've added some features to Template:Polytonic that we've used successfully in Template:IPA (details at Template talk:IPA.


 * 1) Added a declaration which will hide the font specification in every browser except MS Internet Explorer for Windows.  Since this template only exists to work around a deficiency in one browser, why impose a font choice on everyone who uses another platform, or has chosen to use a modern browser?
 * 2) Added a class attribute.  You can put something like the following in your user style sheet to format the text (whether you use MSIE or not):

.polytonic { font-family: Gentium, Athena, serif; color: green; }

See Template talk:IPA for more detailed instructions and discussion.

&mdash;Michael Z. 2005-01-28 16:39 Z 

Another (temporary) use for this template
I've discovered quite by chance, that this template is better than Template:Unicode at representing some accented characters used in English, and I've therefore been using it for that purpose. See also Template talk:Unicode.

The following is a list of places I've used it in this way, all of which ought ideally to be converted to Template:Unicode when the latter has been upgraded to be more useful:      rossb 06:33, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Hebrew alphabet
 * S
 * Sütterlin
 * Tucson, Arizona

Following the recent update to the Unicode template, I've now adopted it instead of the Polytonic template in the articles listed above. rossb 08:57, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And following recent changes to the polytonic template, it's even less suitable for cases where the Unicode template should be used - see Template talk:Unicode. rossb 06:39, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Font declaration has been moved to Common.css
The way Template:IPA, Template:Unicode, and Template:Polytonic do their job has been changed. They should continue to work as before. Sorry if this causes any inconvenience.

The font declarations for these three templates have been moved to the style sheet at MediaWiki:Common.css. This reduces the size of Wikipedia pages' code, by as much as 100kB in the case of IPA. The respective font declarations are applied to HTML entities with one of the following attributes (capitalization counts). The three templates in question have been updated, so they will continue working as before.

The only disadvantage of the new scheme is that only admin users are able to edit the font declarations in Common.css (or is it an advantage?). But you can override the font declaration for yourself by editing your own Wikipedia user style sheet. See Template talk:IPA. Alternatively, you can use a browser like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Safari, in which Unicode text just works.

The reason for this change is that the Mediawiki software no longer allows comments in inline style sheets, because Microsoft Internet Explorer's incorrect parsing is unsafe and can be used for cross-site scripting attacks. See Wikimedia bug no. 3588.

Similar font declarations applied to any tables or divs on Wikipedia should have one of the above-mentioned class attributes added instead.

The style sheet code in Common.css looks like this:

/* Support for Template:IPA, Template:Unicode and Template:Polytonic. The inherit declaration resets the font for all browsers except MSIE6. The empty comment must remain. */ .IPA { font-family: Chrysanthi Unicode, Doulos SIL, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Code2000, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, DejaVu Sans, Bitstream Vera Sans, Bitstream Cyberbit, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, Matrix Unicode; font-family /**/:inherit; } .Unicode { font-family: TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Code2000, Doulos SIL, Chrysanthi Unicode, Bitstream Cyberbit, Bitstream CyberBase, Bitstream Vera, Thryomanes, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Visual Geez Unicode, Lucida Grande, Arial Unicode MS, Microsoft Sans Serif, Lucida Sans Unicode; font-family /**/:inherit; } .polytonic { font-family: Athena, Gentium, Palatino Linotype, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, Code2000; font-family /**/:inherit; }

Please discuss this at Template talk:IPA. —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 15:40 Z 

Mac and IE
The template does not work with Macintosh and IE

System Software Overview:

System Version:	Mac OS X 10.3.9 (7W98) Kernel Version:	Darwin 7.9.0

Explorer Version: 5.2.3 (5815.1) Encryption: 128 Bit User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.23; Mac_PowerPC) Machine Type: Unknown System Version: System 10.3.9 TCP/IP Software: Open Transport - version 16.3.0 Drag Manager: 68K & PPC Version Text Encoding Converter: Version 1.9.0 System Memory: 2097,148K Bytes

01:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * MSIE/Mac doesn't support Unicode up to the same standards as up-to-date browsers. Its development has been abandoned, and users should switch to something else.  On Mac OS 10.3.9 I suggest you use Safari or Firefox.


 * This template and the selection of fonts it applies are only intended to work around a particular font display bug in MSIE/Windows (which is a totally different browser from MSIE/Mac). —Michael Z. 2005-12-28 06:01 Z 

fr: changed
Hi,

The name of the French template has been changed. It is now fr:Modèle:Grec ancien. Please, correct the interwiki. Thank you. User:Bibi Saint-Pol 16:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * And it's still this way now ... Please, someone, do something ... -- marilyn.hanson 15:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. I would advise to place editprotected on the talk page in the future, so other administrators are aware of the request as well. Cheers, —Ruud 15:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Template or .css class is flawed
This template doesn't work well for every Ancient Greek character. ϡ is a snail @ IE6, and not what it should be. (You must read my comment using IE6 to see what I mean. To other users: is a snail @ IE6, and not this symbol on the right (click) what it should be.) --194.152.154.2 (Adolar von Csobánka (Talk)) 22:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry to glibly sidestep the issue, but if you're reading a lot of articles involving more obscure character sets, I suggest you use Firefox, if possible. Opera is probably good, too.  Or get a Mac.  MSIE just doesn't have great support for Unicode, and doesn't promise to improve that any time soon: templates like this one will always remain imperfect workarounds. —Michael Z. 2006-08-19 05:45 Z 


 * Well, to be honest, I hardly ever use MSIE (only to test how the pages are displayed, to make sure everything works correctly), my preferred browser is Firefox. So it's not my personal problem, I just wanted to call yer attention to the issue. The mere fact that the lower case Sampi character can be displayed @ IE (albeit in a "tricky" way, using the upper case Sampi character and an IPA-template, as above) suggests that there might be a way to improve this workaround (eg. by changing the font precedence @ the polytonic class?) and consequently, the accessibility of Wikipedia. -Adolar von Csobánka (Talk) 16:09, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Let's see which font is the problem:

These are the fonts tried, in order, by. Now, can someone who is seeing the problem say which line is the one with the problem? A screenshot would be helpful. With that information, it might be possible to determine a better ordering for the fonts (moving the one with the problem towards the end of the list, for instance). --cesarb 21:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * None of these fonts is OK in this case. Only Microsoft Sans Serif renders the correct result (I added it to a separate table down here, will make a screenshot in a minute yet I'm not sure where I can upload this as I've lost my password @ my free ftp acc), but as this font was not included in the list before, it is likely that it wouldn't display other Ancient Greek characters correctly (otherwise it would've been included in this list before). The bigger problem seems to be, that Platino Linotype renders a result, but it is a snail (the animal) and not a lower case Sampi. (Of course it is entirely possible that some fonts doesn't display the correct result on my computer because I do not have them, but if I don't have them, nothing assures that others do.) --194.152.154.2 (Adolar von Csobánka (Talk)) 23:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have updated the tables to link to the article about each font. As you can see in the article for Arial Unicode MS, it comes bundled with Microsoft Office, so it's pretty common. The one which comes with Windows (and by consequence with MSIE) is Palatino Linotype. So, if Arial Unicode MS works better than Palatino Linotype (I have neither, so I cannot check), it might be a good idea to swap these two in the font order. I also do not have Microsoft Sans Serif, so I cannot check how well it works with the rest of Polytonic Greek. You could try asking for help at Talk:Greek language, which is where this template originally came from. --cesarb 04:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, the character U+03E1 ("small sampi") was added to Unicode only in a recent version, and many older fonts still don't have it. For me, all the fonts in the first table above show the font's missing-character glyph, which is a little round spiral in the case of Palatino Linotype, a blank in the case of Gentium, and an empty square box in the others. Microsoft Sans Serif in the second table works for me, as does Titus Cyberbit Basic (which I've added to the second table). However, Titus Cyberbit is not particularly good in terms of screen readability, so I wouldn't recommend giving it high priority in the template. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:45, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * U+03E1 was added to Unicode 3.0.0 in 1999. —Michael Z. 2006-08-20 16:08 Z 

Why not put the whole Greek alphabet into each line of the tables above, to get the full picture of which fonts are suitable for this template? —Michael Z. 2006-08-20 16:09 Z 


 * Done. Not the whole alphabet, but a selection of characters that might be problematic (combining diacritics, "symbol" variants, upper- and lowercase archaic letters, uppercase letters with iota subscript, a couple of other polytonic characters that are known to be problematic in some fonts.)


 * For me, Microsoft Sans Serif displays all of these characters (albeit at my screen resolution & default font size it's almost imposible to distinguish between the Rho with a spiritus asper and the Rho with a spiritus lenis), Arial Unicode and Palatino Linotype display most of them and Lucida Sans Unicode displays some of them. I can't evaluate the other typefaces as I don't have them.
 * As MS Sans Serif renders all of these characters, I suggest including it in the polytonic class (but giving it low priority because of the accent issues). --194.152.154.2 (Adolar von Csobánka (Talk)) 16:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

IE7 is the answer?
I've just installed Internet Explorer 7, and it seems to overcome the problems completely as far as I can see. --rossb 08:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * To be honest, this is what I also expected to happen, this is why I didn't push my opinion [that the workaround needs to be improved] thru more agressively despite the relative lack of interest from the admins. God save Bill Gates and IE7! :P --Adolar von Csobánka (Talk) 19:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It dosn't work any more
Apparently, the template does not work any more since Sept 2006. The class="polytonic" tag, does not work either, in spite of the fact that the MediaWiki:Common.css file still contains: .polytonic { font-family: Athena, Gentium, "Palatino Linotype", "Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Code2000; font-family /**/:inherit;

This is a pity because on the Mac (Safari) the breathings are can hardly be seen. It appears this is a Wikimedia bug. Andreas (T) 15:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

css change
the "polytonic" class in the css has been duplicated as the :lang(grc) pseudoclass, i.e. you should now get precisely the same rendering if you use ... . I'm transcluding lang to this template for this reason. If this works alright, the "polytonic" class may be deleted from common.css as redundant (and polytonic may be subst:ed by a bot). dab (𒁳) 11:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * In MSIE this template is not functional anymore because :lang(grc) pseudoclass doesn't work. This is not a problem in Vista/MSIE7 only because default font is new Arial version 5.00 which already has extended Greek characters, but XP/MSIE6 (with older Arial) needs "polytonic" class in this template in order to select one of such fonts. --93.138.48.136 (talk) 05:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Why does lang-el work for some users for whom this template fails?
At Talk:Eidos, a user complained that, for him/her, lang-el (εἶδος) correctly displays the polytonic character, whereas polytonic (εἶδος) doesn't. Can polytonic be improved so that users aren't tempted to abandon it in favor of lang-el, i.e. so that if lang-el works for you, so will polytonic? I find it mystifying and told the user that installing Gentium should work, but maybe there's some other technical or practical advantage of the rival template that can be incorporated here. Wareh 15:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki link
Dear administrators, please add the following interwiki link: ia:Patrono:Polytonic Thank you in advance. Regards, --Julian (talk) 00:06, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. --- RockMFR 00:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)