User talk:Jberkel

— billinghurst  sDrewth  00:12, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

block center/s
Please don't shift this template from header to body in your edits of Panchatantra; this template is being used for verses across page breaks. Thanks. Hrishikes (talk) 05:07, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah ok, sorry, thought it was a mistake, I'm still finding my way around here. What does the /s stand for? Maybe it could be made a bit more obvious that it belongs in the header. – Jberkel (talk) 08:42, 19 February 2016 (UTC)


 * We use some templates in pairs. The /s version is the "start" and the /e version is the "end". There are also ordinary versions of the same templates. So, in the block center example, if the block that needs to be centered is entirely on a single page we just use block center. But if the block is split across two pages and we were to use the block center template twice, the alignment of the two blocks would be out of kilter in the mainspace. So, to get round this problem we use the paired templates. The /s goes at the beginning of the block on the first page and the /e goes in the footer. Then on the last page of the block, the /s goes in the header and the /e goes at the end of the block. If there are more than two pages in a block, which happens sometimes with poetry, the intermediate pages have the /s in the header and the /e in the footer. Does that help explain? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:55, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep, that definitely helped, thanks. Another thing I was wondering, why is &lt;poem&gt; implemented as tag and not a template? And it looks like it's not paired and must be used on every page on multi-page poetry? Would that not have similar negative effects? – Jberkel (talk) 09:21, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * That's historical and a part of the wikimedia implementation and it doesn't behave in the footers. It has a few other quirks that only show up from time to time. As a result some of us don't use it in poems at all, and just use &lt;br /&gt to break lines. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:51, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, another MediaWiki hack, that's what I thought. Is inconsistent markup not a problem? I find it very confusing to see different styles of transcription and I'm never sure which one to use. — Jberkel (talk) 10:04, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Books are created with different formatting, plus there are editorial choices, usually the first editor sets the style for a given work. Main thing to ponder is what exactly you want as the result of your efforts. If you want minimum spacing between two lines in a poem (without specifying line height &c), you use the poem tag. Slightly more gap, you go for br tag. Still more gap, you use the p tag. But as BWC said, the poem tag has peculiar behaviour. Other templates (e.g. center template) used within it behaves separately than normal for the template. When one stanza ends in one page and another stanza starts in the succeeding page, you require more gap. A blank line follwed by a line with the nop template in the first page ending helps in such cases, as pointed out by one expert. I find the poem tag more suitable, moreover, with break tag, you need to use it in every line, which looks somewhat inelegant. But as I said, editorial choices of diverse kinds only makes this place more interesting, unity in diversity, as said in my country. Hrishikes (talk) 10:40, 19 February 2016 (UTC)