User talk:Carlinmack

Welcome
--EncycloPetey (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Prose
I see that you are adding to the start of some pages. This should not be necessary. It will actually register as an error, because you have opened a div but not closed it. Unpaired tags will generate an error. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was following the style of the page Heart of Darkness/Section_I. The reason I was doing this is so that the text is formatted like a book, as the two articles I edited are both books and it's harder to read them as full width web pages. I realise that the entire text should be consistent but I thought I would WP:Be Bold, edit one and see what happens, happy to change my practise! Carlinmack (talk) 17:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * In cases like this, it is better to allow the user to choose their own settings rather than forcing a single layout on everyone. Users can set their own preferences.  There are situations, such as with poetry and dramatic works, where it is necessary to apply a layout, but in general Wikisource style is to not specify the layout for the user. You find the class specified in some of the oldest works hosted here, but works being newly added do not have the "prose" class specified.
 * Note also that Wikisource is not part of Wikipedia. We are a separate project, so policies of the English Wikipedia do not apply here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * How can a user choose their own settings? I looked in preferences but I can only see the settings for the UI skin, not changing the max width of pages Carlinmack (talk) 20:29, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The settings for preferred layout are not yet adjustable in the Preferences, which is a shame. You would need to set up your personal cascading style sheets (CSS) settings. Mine is at User:EncycloPetey/common.css (and is minimal); yours would be at User:Carlinmack/common.css.  Once it is created, it will activate.  This is something I don't personally do much with and so can't offer much advice, but you can view what other Admins here have done with theirs, as they are the most likely to have layouts applied.  There are also page at WP w:Help:Cascading Style Sheets and w:Wikipedia:Customisation that might offer some help if you are not familiar with CSS. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * wow imagine every website told users they had to write CSS to make their websites legible rather than having sane defaults? I'm lucky enough to have the expertise required, but it seems a shame that I can't lift other people with me by adding properly closed  tags where they are needed. This is an issue of accessibility and users shouldn't have to write code so that websites are accessible to them. Carlinmack (talk) 20:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikisource is a smaller project, so the Wikimedia developers don't pay us the kind of attention they pay to Wikipedia. When new code comes out, it is not unusual for the update to break something here because no one thought to check.  Any interface would have to be created and added by the developers, and isn't a priority for them.
 * But the problem with putting the layout into the documents themselves is that it prevents customization, and forces one style for all readers. Where we can avoid this, we do, because we do not know what kind of device or screen our readers are using. It could be a wide hi-res monitor on a desktop or a smartphone. Our readers might need to enlarge the text size in their browser because of poor vision, and limiting the text a narrow width can break that.  There are some situations where applying a layout is unavoidable, or more beneficial for the cost, but for simple prose text we don't apply a layout.  --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

It occurs to me to point out that, when works are correctly formatted, a reader can also choose to download them as an EPUB for reading. You can try this with Aeneid (Conington 1866) (it's incomplete, but happens to be the text I am currently working on). On the left-hand side you should see options for downloading, including PDF and EPUB. These options are regularly used by readers here. As long as the work is properly structured, this kind of download is possible.

Unfortunately, some works have not been properly set up. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is not set up properly. A reader trying to download the work will only get the front matter because the contents were not linked using AuxTOC. The links to the individual stories will be weblinks back to Wikisource rather than links to a downloaded section of the book. A user can download the individual stories within the volume, but not the entire volume. We have a number of editors here who do not understand this issue, and so do not set up the Contents correctly in the works they create for a user to receive a complete download. Correcting the contents pages of works would be generally helpful. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)