User talk:Olivia Curtis

Welcome to the 'pedia, Olivia Curtis! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit How does one edit a page and experiment at Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --Lorenzarius

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thanks for the typo fix on my page! BTW, in case you didn't already know: you can see exactly what changes someone has made to any page via the "older versions" link. For example, here's your change to my page: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Tarquin&diff=0&oldid=644337 -- Tarquin 17:26 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

If you'd not mentioned it was based on Bach, I would've probably never remembered myself (I've studied that movement, but it was a few years ago). We got there between us, though :) --Camembert

"Why hasn't everyone heard of it?" - And don't you go and tell everybody just yet, either.. :) - theres a long running issue that advertising (see VFD ) sometimes gets things out of hand here - too much clutter and crud to deal with at times... Its an interesting question you ask though .. :)-'Vert

Olivia, here's what you asked for above. I am not any kind of expert so the more knowledgeable can probably tear what follows to bits. Do so, by all means, but be gentle with me! I do know that my method produce a neat looking result on the page. This stuff is only about inserting pics with JPG extensions i.e. photographs.

HOW TO PUT A JPG ON A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE PAGE If you want to see examples of my work: For a scanned object look at the Lapis lazuli article, the blue elephant was laid on the scanner plate, this is NOT a photograph, it's a scan! For photos from my digital camera see Severn Bridge. For a scanned colour print see Kaprun disaster.

These instructions give a good appearance on my 1024 by 768 screen. Ideally I would check the appearance at the other common screen sizes but I can’t because changing screen size puts all my desktop icons into a heap in the corner and it takes too long to restore their positions when I return to 1024 by 768! Perhaps a peculiarity of my OS (Windows ME).

PREPARE THE PICTURES Pictures come off my digital camera at 2048 by 1536 pixels at 700K, far too big size-wise and memory-wise for Wikipedia. The output of my Epson flat-bed scanner (if I want to scan objects or colour prints) is often even bigger than that. Those of us with 56K modems won’t wait to upload such large pics so the size has to be reduced without sacrificing too much quality. There are dozens of graphics programs for resizing and quality reduction, I happen to have the big one – Photoshop - but the power of that program isn’t usually needed for Wikipedia illustrations. My standard pic sizes are a big pic at 750 pixels wide and a little pic (a thumbnail) exactly one third of that size, at 250 pixels wide. I used 800 pixels until recently but the re-sizing produced poor quality thumbnails, the one third cut-down seems to produce better quality. If the pic is portrait format, then use a lot less width for the big pic (say, 500 pixels) or the pic may be taller than the screen. Then the reader will have to scroll down to see it all (very irritating!). The big pic should be created at a quality producing a size not bigger than 100K and the little pic not bigger than 20K (15K would be better). Make the pic name descriptive – for example: old.severn.bridge.250pix.jpg and old.severn.bridge.750pix.jpg

UPLOAD THE PICS TO WIKIPEDIA The two pics are now ready for upload to Wikipedia. The little pic will go on the article page and big pic can be seen by clicking on a link called “Click here for larger version” (which I put below the caption). Now upload the two prepared pics to Wikipedia by going to this URL: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload. This screen requires three actions: . browse to one of the two files, say the 750 pixel one, . promise that you own the copyright by ticking a box, . put in a simple title such as “Pic of Severn Bridge”.

Then click UPLOAD FILE and wait awhile.

Your pic will be uploaded (with an on-screen complaint if it’s over 100K) and the screen will ask you to “Please follow this link”. This will take you to a screen carrying the famous slogan “EDIT THIS PAGE”. Click on that and then enter your description text in the Edit box, such as who took it, where and when, and if it’s public domain. Don’t forget to fill in the summary box with, for example, “Picture of the Severn Bridge”. A typical pic description would be: “The Severn Bridge seen from the English side of the river.Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in April 2002 and released to the public domain.” (you can see this message for anyones pic by clicking on the pic). PREVIEW until happy. To keep your description text for use with the second pic, select the text and do EDIT COPY. Finally, SAVE. Now go back to the upload page URL you used earlier and do exactly the same for the 250 pixel pic.

INSERT THE PICTURE CODE INTO THE ARTICLE Go to the article and note the area where the pic can best go, and if best on left or right of the page. Steal my picture code, here’s how: Go to Severn Bridge, click on EDIT THIS PAGE, copy the coding by selecting it with the mouse and choose EDIT COPY. You need the stuff between (and including) the words TABLE. In the code I know that “width=270” looks odd but it gives a better clearance between the pic and the text. Then paste it down into the articles Edit Page with EDIT PASTE. Modify the left or right instruction and the file names, type in your own caption and PREVIEW. Don’t forget the Summary. Modify as often as you like, finally SAVE.

If you have only a small pic and no large one then you probably just delete the “Click here” line in the coding (I haven’t tried this).

FOOTNOTE: I have a copy of this picture code pasted on to a Microsoft Word page and saved, then I do EDIT COPY/EDIT PASTE. I think that’s easier than going off to an article to steal it.

Done!! Enlightened, Olivia? Best Wishes -- Arpingstone 08:40 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Olivia - hopefully I'll get the basics of the other Mahler symphony articles (and Das Lied von der Erde) done over the weekend. I was going to expand the 5th Symphony article somewhat before starting on any of the others, but I've lost my copy of the score, so that's on hold for now. --Camembert