User talk:John Vandenberg/Archive/2008-3

Thanks
...for the welcome. Prashanthns 10:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What brings you to Wikisource? Are you interested in an author, or a specific work?  Perhaps I or someone else can help you get started. John Vandenberg (chat) 10:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the offer for help. I come here only as a result of the unified login feature, and decided to leave a link to my en.wiki user page. I wanted to add the Atharva Veda to this collection. This is the only Veda missing, and I happen to have a 1916 english translation of this ancient Hindu work. Any ideas? Is the only option to type out stuff from this? And is that acceptable? Prashanthns 10:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the detailed reply. Will sound you out for any further help. Cheers. Prashanthns (talk) 11:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry for these minor doubts. Can you tell me what the red exclamation marks are in my watchlist? I dont have them on the en.wiki. Also, could you take a look at book 1 hymns, which I have just put in. Any comments?? Thanks. Prashanthns (talk) 17:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Lenski dialog
I have received the reply from the Professor (see talk page). also in the email he says the version at Rationalwiki is the faithful reproduction - is it reliable enough to consider the ones we have correct reproductions of the emails? diego_pmc 18:46, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed
I guess I'll have to leave 10 messages for other users, then, because I don't intend on making 10 edits to Wikisource content... Robert K S 02:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I never make unnecessary edits. Where's the assumption of good faith? :-) Robert K S 04:38, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Does a warning not to do something not imply envisionment of that thing being done? (I don't see how this argument can be characterized as "useful" but boy, I'm working my way there, aren't I?  And thanks for your blessing.) Robert K S 15:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

margin trouble
Hi again,

I have been transcribing a document that makes use of a mix of indents, hanging indents and no indents; see, for example, Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 10 - p. 367.jpg. Whereas I usually ignore these when transcribing text, they contain information in this case, so I have used the text-indent and margin-left properties to capture them. This works fine until I come to transclude all the pages into Transactions of the Linnean Society of London/Volume 10/An Account of a new Genus of New Holland Plants named Brunonia, at which point the text looks fine but the page numbers in the margins are all wiggly. Any suggestions on how to handle this?

Hesperian 01:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * sorry, I do not know. I guess this has to do with the 'page template.... perhaps you should ask jayvdb ThomasV 13:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, will do; thanks. Hesperian 13:14, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that is because the  tags used on each pages have different left-margin values. i.e. the "[ 267 ]" is "position:absolute; left:1em", however the containing div where it resides has a different left-margin to the other ones. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think I understand... but that doesn't mean I have any idea what to do about it. :-( Hesperian 13:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It is too late on this side of the desert for me to look at it.  might be able to help; otherwise, ill take a look at it tomorrow. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No worries; it's too late for me too ;-) G'night. Hesperian 14:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Pulling this out of your archive to let you know it is solved; feel free to archive it again immediately.

The problem was caused by me (deliberately) leaving divs open across pages, whenever a paragraph block crosses a page boundary. e.g.

Page 1: blah blah blah

Page 2: blah blah blah

This nifty trick ensures that both individual pages render correctly, but when I transclude them one after another, they come out as

blah blah blah blah blah blah

i.e. rendering in a single div block, as if the page break never existed!

Unfortunately, the [page] span was inheriting the properties of the divs that I had left open across pages. it was the inherited text-indent property that was killing the alignment. I edited page to give the [page] span an explicit style="text-indent:0em", and everything is nicely lined up again.

Hesperian 14:24, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah! fantastic. Slowly but surely we are figuring out how to use a wiki in a most unnatural way! :-) Have you seen this? John Vandenberg (chat) 15:45, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have now ;-) Hesperian 23:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletions
Could you please delete the 2 templates that I have listed at the above because we already have Template:EBDHeader. They have been listed since 9th July and another User agrees that they should be deleted. Kathleen.wright5 24:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Deletions move real slow around here. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

what needed doing
Hi John, I noticed the thread on your en talk page and looked into it a bit. You did something that very much needed doing; several things, really. I know you've had a less than rosy view of some of my history, but the sort of issue you encountered is familiar to me from sometime ago. Anyway, I hope a few comments from me will assuage what must a mixed bag of feeling over that incident.

I've been busy elsewhere; mostly id:wp, and jv:wp; with a lot of importing to Commons; about 5,000 edits to non-en:wp in the last three months. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your comment, and your grasp of events both now and in the past. It is very encouraging to see you have taken the enWP issue in your stride and throw yourself into other projects.  I cant assess your work on those wikis due to language barriers, however if you put in half as many edits on Indonesian Wikisource, or helped us establish a Javanese Wikisource, you'll have made it to my good books! :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 15:12, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Ha! I don't speak much Bahasa Indonesia and a mere few words of Javanese. I have been focused on code issues. For example, I just made a set of new navboxes for use on id:wp (and will use it on jv, too).


 * Kabupaten Muna -- the navboxes at the bottom

I was going to give a link to some of the really old navboxes, but am having trouble finding them. I have cleaned-up many.


 * w:id:Pembicaraan Pengguna:Jack Merridew (my id:talk page; in English)

That's an admin and a 'crat giving me the go ahead to deploy this code to all levels of id-gov pages; 33 provinces, 370 regencies, 95 cities, and 5300+ subdistricts... (folks will help and some run bots).

I'm on like 80 wikis; I've tweaked code all over the place and fixed-up many interwiki links.


 * w:da:Diskussion:Mads Johansen Lange

A fellow on the Danish wiki asked me to get pictures of the tomb of a Dane who was one of the first bulai on Bali in the 19th century; I gave them a gallery full.

Anyway, I don't mean to be boasting; got carried away. I suppose I want understanding. I have been maligned and demonized by the fellow you blocked the other day. I was also pleased to see your comments to Josh. That needed saying.

I have never played the en:power games. Frankly, that's what makes en:wp suck. They call the WR folks trolls (and I'm sure some are; I don't go there and if there's a Merridew there, it's not me), but the real trolls are the folks who get off on all the power and drahmahz. I pop in to en most days and look at my watchlist and the noticeboards. One gets a very different view when not editing; maybe you have some of the same perspective being more focused here.

My primary contact on id is Revi; w:id:Pengguna:Meursault2004, another 'crat there (and at jv:wp). He said he's working on a jv:wikinews and jv:wikibooks at incubator; I've not asked further, but would help as I could.

Sorry for running on; I've had a good many ignores from emails to en:folks (civility issues, again), so I have pent-up things to say. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:32, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Wikisource does not require a good language skills. It primarily requires the ability to transcribe texts, so typography is the key.  I'm occasionally found on other Wikisource projects typing words I dont understand using glyphs that scare me.  Anyway, I think the first step for this train of action is for you to pick a transcription project and learn a little of what potential there is here, so that you can determine for yourself whether you can be of assistance on other Wikisource projects.  Index:Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu is a our first WS:PotM so it would be a natural choice to for you to learn the ropes with.
 * I've a lot of time for people that work on lots of wikis, esp. if they are able to identify and fill a void in smaller project, with the communities blessing. John Vandenberg (chat) 16:11, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I must admit, I've not got a good picture of just what Wikisource is about. I did a bit of tidying on some pages, but don't quite see what the source of a lot of the text is. Some page I edited was started by an anon and while everything seemed legit, I found the idea disconcerting; maybe this is a wikipedia bias; a cite your sources thing. I expect a lot of it is that I've not looked too deeply. I'll look at the links you've given, mostly tomorrow, as it's getting late and I've not eaten yet; my internet access is at a restaurant. I don't have access to many books here or to things like OCR scanners. I did put some nice quotes from Lord of the Flies into wikiquote. Transcription of this sort is about attention to detail, and that's certainly a strong suit of mine; my text-editor has commands to search and remove trailing white-space and to collapse duplicate white-space. These are scripts I write; others format navboxes.

I've made a modest number of edits at projects like the Arabic wp, Hebrew, Hindi, Malayalam; installed some exotic fonts, like Khmer. I can deal with iwlinks on those sites, but the body text is bewildering. English is my native language.

Revi's been at wikimaina and I've not heard from him in a few days. I'll ask him about the other id and jv projects he has in the works.

I've got a lot on my plate right now; wiki and non. I've started deploying the new navboxes all over id:wp and I have an ongoing effort to move hundreds of coats of arms and locator maps to commons. As I do this, I'm hooking them up on other projects, mostly Javanese and Sundanese, but there are also a lot of pages for these levels of geographic articles on the Malay and Banyumasan Wikipediaa (3.000-ish article; it's mostly me and the bots). The core focus is on navigation; I'm a software developer and know quite a bit about usability. So, the process goes somewhat slowly as when I move a coat of arms to commons, I also add it to a couple of other wikis and to navboxes; and I create new navboxes where they didn't exist. The result is that some of the images get used on many dozens of pages almost immediately.

I do want to be unblocked on en at some point. I doubt that I will ever focus fully there again. I see trying to fix that project as futile at this point. The wiki concept does not scale well; too many 'anybodys' that can edit. I know that a lot of thought is going-on about this and at some point strategic adjustments may be made to reduce the rancor.

On the C68 talk page where the uncivil comment was made: the section was a sincere post by an Alec (?) about too many people being too good at the wiki-game. That is so spot-on. It should be widely read; I'm going to go find it again.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

proofread a page and it seems character-for character correct, So I marked it. The Obama speeches I was editing a while ago didn't have a scan to compare to. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Great. English Wikisource has only recently started using pagescans. see oldwikisource:Wikisource:ProofreadPage Statistics.  We need more software developers.  We've built bots to do OCR, and upload OCR text from DJVU files, but we also need bots to statistically fix spelling errors, import etexts from gutenberg, collate sets of standalone images into djvu files, etc, etc.  We also need people who can operate bots, because the bots we write are all checked in and anyone can help the bot writers by running these bots appropriate, so the bot writers can write more bots.  Also, the other sub-domains need people to run these bots there. John Vandenberg (chat) 15:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah; validated it, I see.

I popped back to let you know that the jv:sikisource idea has come up sort-of-independently (a broken iwlink, really). See: w:jv:Dhiskusi Panganggo:Pras (a jv:wp user talk page; in English). Pras is the most active admin on jv:wp and my primary contact there.

FYI, I'm semi-retired and enjoying a leisurely life on Bali. Wiki-bots a written in Python? which is not my thing; I'm from OOP-school; C++ and a side of Java. I do a mean CSS style sheet, too. Gotta go; 12:30 am here. Cheers, Jack Merridew 16:30, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll look into the Javanese link you gave me, tomorrow, but that is today, so it is goodnight from me.
 * Yea, bots written in python. Not my thing either, but it does the trick.  I'm from the assembly & C side of things, but I dabble in whatever pays the bills.  Lately that has been Oracle, OCI and Crystal Reports. John Vandenberg (chat) 16:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have commented at w:jv:Dhiskusi Panganggo:Pras, and will keep an eye on that page for a few days. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * By the way a little, you say you have CSS skills. That is great, because here on Wikisource presentation of works is where it is at.  The closer we can replicate the original with pure text, without affecting the cut-and-paste needs of readers, the better.  Take a look at Index:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu for some nice use of CSS.  There are others, and better, but that is one that I can quickly recall.  Do you also have JavaScript knowledge?  If so, I mentioned a new tool that might be useful at Scriptorium, and there are many others that are also required.  Oh another one that comes to mind is MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js works ok, but it doesnt understand Author and header - it would be brilliant if it showed the metadata contained within those templates.  While I am at it, MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js would be better if it knew that Author pages are only supposed to have categories designed for categorisation of authors. John Vandenberg (chat) 12:25, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Very strong CSS and xhtml skill; some js, but am out of practice. And long-term professional level C++. C and lots of assembly before that. Large embedded systems programmed on the bare metal. I noticed on that page you validated after I proofread it that you used the center-element, which is the most deprecated element there is. I can see a trade-off between high fidelity to the original typesetting and ease of editing by non-technical people. The CSS I saw on one of the air force pages was basic inline stuff; CSS is, of course, at its most powerful when in a stylesheet with sophisticated selectors. A lot of styling can be rather automatic based on context. However, plain wiki-text has only basic context; headers, paragraphs and lists, for example. Isn't there a center class in common.css; let's see;

Look, margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;
 * This sig is made with inline css; some good tricks, too. You might also look at the implementation of my user page.
 * Cheers, User:Jack Merridew aka david   14:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * For context quickly, I used to be a Mozilla developer, so I am up to speed on CSS, JS, XHTML, XUL, XSLT, etc :-). I use for the simplicity.  Keep in mind that HTML tags in wiki text can be altered as they shoot through the mediawiki software.  This doesnt happen at the moment, but it is a possibility.  Re sophisticated selectors and the like, very early on I pondered out-loud on WS:S whether we could have a CSS for each work, so that the final layer of CSS could override site wide settings, but that never went anywhere, and I've not had time to revisit it.  Ideas, and motivation, on that front will be appreciated.  I'm getting the feeling you will enjoy it here.  Feel free to break pages in order to learn more quickly; there is no harm break new pages that are in the Page namespace if that page hasnt been transcluded into the main namespace yet, or if you want extra fun, seek out my contributions and see how I react if you break them. :-)  Better if you break your own contributions, of course, because that means your adding new pages. :-)  Im off to bed,  John Vandenberg (chat) 15:22, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting; there are a few things I'd say more freely on email. I can see how MediaWiki might massage the html; it's generating enough on the fly now. See this on id:wp; I added newlines before and after the template arg; and this causes MediaWiki to wrap it in p-elements which get top/bottom margins from the style sheets. This is the group field of a navbox and the lists to the right typically get paragraphs, too, so this causes everything to match and the text fields sit on the same baseline (oh, I made them the same size, too).
 * I mostly try to not break things. My most common edit summary is 'tidy' - after the tool. The idea of 'work' specific stlye sheets makes sense; works are large blocks of pages, right? all the numbered pages? So there's plenty to centralize. It's very limiting when you can only use inline styles; of course you can edit the protected style sheets. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You have mail! Re: breaking things, it is the best way to learn and on Wikisource, often a page transcludes a few other pages, so it isnt possible to use "preview" to see what the end result will be.  Yes, works are a page with many subpages.  See WS:S.  Inline styles also dont always work easily, e.g. overriding the style of the automatically generated TOC. John Vandenberg (chat) 22:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Re en.wp, an unblock is not unreasonable if you use your time in the interim wisely. I think I said as much when your case came up at AN or ANI roughly the same time as Poetlisters unblock.  I supported Poetlister being unblocked, but not your unblock because there is no point you being in the enWP community if you cant hold your own.  Working productively on other wikis will earn you sufficient respect to let you back in provided you are mentored, and I am (tentatively) willing to put my name down to do that if all goes well.  From there it is a simple matter of again working productively while you are under the communities careful watch, and full confidence will then be restored.  I'm probably not telling you anything you dont already know, but it helps to say these things out loud, so to speak. John Vandenberg (chat) 16:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Re: the scaling aspect of wikis is a no brainer. As you say, a lot of thought is going-on about this.  en.WP has successfully scaled to unbelievable proportions, but a few bad structural choices have been left to run their course to what is turning out to be the bitter end.  This is easy to say in hindsight.  enWP is the eldest child.  There is a lot of truth in some being too good at the wiki game, but there needs to be a distinction between people being good at the wiki game, and how that skill is used.  I think some people are getting bored of creating new content, and are now abusing their well honed skills.  I'd like to see that diff you mention; I used to have to read too many diffs, but due to recent events, I'm having a diff-withdrawal. John Vandenberg (chat) 16:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec w/above; more in a bit) Here's a very typical edit of mine from jv:wp, a few hours ago; diff, before, after. I also moved the image from id to Commons moments before. Cheers, Jack Merridew 16:47, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The diff? re Alec; that's at w:Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/C68-FM-SV/Proposed decision oldid

I don't know that case or much of the Poetlister issue; my two day unblock/reblock was the very same day. As I see it, Ryan's proposed mentoring would have gone fine if it had not been for the pro-pop-culture editors seeking to remove me for my dim views of such stuff. It is quite true that I had socks and did not adhere to a 'ban' that was never really official. I'd be glad to discuss most any of the past issues; or not, if it would seem petty. I would very much appreciate a mentor. I'm a good editor and a review, including long ago stuff, will show it. I do have to go, now; I'll reply more tomorrow. Cheers, Jack Merridew 17:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I've left Revi and Pras further notes; you too, over on your wikisource-sans-subdomain page; here; not quite sure how to iwlink that.

I'm interested in just what you meant by not being able to hold my own on en:wp; best I be out of there when the villagers are at the gate with pitchforks and torches? I can deal with the criticism from pop-culture fans just fine. Generally, they don't make very good arguments; they merely want their fan-shrines. I was often called uncivil, but no one ever offered a diff that showed it; I did make rather pointed criticisms of the nature of some articles; even calling articles 'shite' and the like, but I didn't direct this at editors, only content. They see it an attack on them because they have a different view of the material. I never failed to discuss when someone wanted to; lots of talk page posts. Well, except with Grawp; I reverted him many times (and now he vandalizes id:wp quite often).

This is pretty much the case with White Cat, too. He has said many times that I take a position opposite him to harass him, to annoy him. The core truth here is that I disagree with many of his positions. The Armenian Genocide occurred; Kurds are people; Kurdistan is a place — I never claimed it was a country. When the Oh My Goddess articles where brought to TV-REVIEW, where I was involved in every series brought there, I couldn't exactly skip one. Those episode articles were pure fandom; Bilby has rewritten a few of the character articles from an out of universe perspective; it seems that magical girlfriend fantasies is a real phenomenon with academic sources referring to Belldandy. The new article is much better.

A few months after the original Cool Cat case, I scuttled my account out of frustration with Jenny's enabling of continuing appalling editing by CC. That case went completely off track. Fred proposed banning CC here. Mark discarded a passed remedy (a 3 month CC topic ban) when he closed the case here (and it was Mark who pushed Ryan into reblocking me).

Since my en:block, CC has gone rather off the rails; he lobbied all over for a WMF-wide block for me. He imploded on Commons and has resigned the bit there. Most of en:wp seems to have him on ignore now.

So, I moved on to other things. id:wp as some junky articles, too, but I can't read them and don't even know where the AFD page there is. It would not be appropriate me to argue for the deletion of something in a foreign language (to them). And it's not like they have a million non-notable articles. The smaller projects ported large amounts of content from en and other larger projects some years ago; whenever they were started. The big wikis have long since gotten rid of infoboxed implemented inline using raw html tables. jv:wp, however, has tons of those (but fewer, now). My edits to all the non-en projects since the en:block have been greatly appreciated and conflict free. To a wider audience — en:wp folks with a say in an en:unblock — this work will certainly have a 'constructive' air about it; not that I don't still feel that removing inappropriate content is entirely constructive.

Cheers, User:Jack Merridew aka david   09:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be best if you didnt discuss the CC situation, which I am familiar with, and let bygones be bygones. My thoughts on the matter are at w:Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive142.  There is a network of trust holding the projects together, and one persons many good deeds are quickly devalued by a little poor behaviour, or justifiable suspicions of worse.  Your can read my opinions re Poetlister on that page too.  WC is a bot operator here on Wikisource, as so I request that you pledge not to work on any pages he has worked on prior to you; pages edited by his bot are not a concern, unless you are reverting his bot or something like that.  The situation needs to de-escalate.  If you are ever in doubt, email me.  WS:S would be the only exception I can quickly think of. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:20, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I wasn't sure how much you knew. I had seen the ANI comments and the ones at RFAR. My email is open and if you want to discuss things privately, feel free. I'll leave it to you to bring CC-issues up. And I'll certainly avoid 'his' pages. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There are not many of them; I doubt you will be inhibited at all. John Vandenberg (chat) 15:22, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, I know; I looked. Lovely bot-flag request. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

oldwikisource:Image:Wiki.png
Hello Jayvdb,

As you're an administrator on the multilingual Wikisource, could you please protect the image ? It is currently used in a portal page. Thanks in advance, Korg 14:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have protected it, and commented on meta. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you! There are no plans to redirect the Wikisource domain to a portal page, but in any event the community would be consulted first. Best regards, Korg 16:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but...
...Archive.org really deserves a ton of the credit. The ability to import from there is really helpful. Thanks on that. WilyD 14:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

User template problem
I've just created user template User Protestant Christian which I have adapted from w:User:Ashley Y, but how do I stop it merging with the other Template on my page User Firefox which I adapted from w:User:The Raven's Apprentice (now retired). Kathleen.wright5 11:44, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have made a change to your user page, which I think might help you. If it doesnt, could you show me the problem, as I am not sure I understand "stop it merging". John Vandenberg (chat) 11:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Could you put them on the left I tried in preview mode but it did'nt work. Kathleen.wright5 12:00, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks like you have figured that out :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 12:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Index namespace
What do I do when I've migrated all the text at the old name? WilyD 01:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * See Help:Side_by_side_image_view_for_proofreading. If you need help, I'll try to give you an example in a few hours. John Vandenberg (chat) 03:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Now, the example in the help page probably gives me enough to work with. Thanks though, the prose didn't make it clear to me that's where it was going. WilyD 11:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks like you have it figured out. Grab me if you have a problem. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for reverting Light 331. Kathleen.wright5 12:34, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As soon as I've finished with Category:Australia and its sub-cats. Kathleen.wright5 12:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Please remove accounts (will not be used)
I've found that I have 2 accounts that I did'nt login for, Multilingual Wikisource and sr.wikisource - (I only went to this site to find the Main Page address for my Serbian neighbours, Cyrillic and latin). Could you please remove them since they won't be used. Kathleen.wright5 02:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * They cant be deleted, and due to recent improvements in the software, they are automatically created. There is no need to worry about these accounts sitting there unused; they are not bothering anyone. John Vandenberg (chat) 02:51, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Mistake on COTW
DYK that the see how it improved! link for Irving Berlin links to Author:Barack Obama ? Kathleen.wright5 04:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks! John Vandenberg (chat) 04:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

formatting an index
Comments? I should find some example of this, I know... Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/555, history

main.css; maaf; Common.css; /* Justify and indent text */ body.ns-104 { text-align:justify; }

body.ns-104 p{ text-indent: 2em; } 104 appears to be 'page namespace' but this seems inappropriate for indices. The indenting and justification are wrong; the 'justify' is making the World-organization and economy, a, look odd. And the dl-element, which may be quite wrong here, should not be bold and should probably also be inline instead of block. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC) and support for the code-element could be better


 * The justified text isnt appropriate for any fancy layout, but it is the most sensible default. I think we should create an override class, or many, for other types of pages.
 * Before changing the meaning of the DL element, we would need to investigate where it is currently in use. I can build a tool that queries the database to find which pages a HTML element is used on, and probably in the future we will need to also query where a CSS class is used.  en.WS is roughly the 10th biggest wiki when measured by database size, so there is a lot to worry about if we are going to consider backwards compatibility issues.  Asking around is useless, because we cant remember everything.
 * All that said, I am happy with how it looks at the moment, and have made some improvements to that first page of the index. It doesn't need to be perfect in order to be useful, and since the image is right there, our page should prioritise functionally over precise presentation. John Vandenberg (chat) 08:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I was thinking along the lines of establishing an 'index-context'; the usual approach would be wrap it in a div with a class of "divIndex", but there are other possibilities. The rules for dl-elements would not change for non-index contexts, but new selectors would invoke new rules for the index.


 * something like;

body.ns-104 div.divIndex { text-align: normal; } body.ns-104 div.divIndex dt { font-weight: normal; }
 * I've not looked to closely at the style sheets on wiki; too frustrating wo/access. The bold's not a bad look; it all depends on how much the focus is on fidelity to the original typography; same for the linebreaks that I introduced. Things like the page number floated to the right (and italic), could come from rules as long as there was something for the selector to hook on to.


 * Also, there are templates out there to do the columns, which don't work on old browsers, but to-bad for them. The templates could just be copied over, unless they exist under some other name here. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I used nested definition lists; reads clearly, but is semantically incorrect.
 * Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/554
 * Virtues, Nietzsche's four,
 * 329;
 * virtue as strength,
 * 375.

'virtue as strength' has nothing to do with '329' but is inside its dd-element; following makes more sense (and I'm thinking from the point of view of a tool parsing the xhtml; bot or google…)
 * Virtues,
 * Nietzsche's four,
 * 329;
 * virtue as strength,
 * 375.

I do hope you've a tool to do the page number linking. Cheers, Jack Merridew

I tweaked things to use the second scheme, which I like better. This is getting rather far from the 'look' of the original, so I'll await feedback. I did look at the math stuff; and fled. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the index page looks good as you have done it, but I suggest you leave that for the moment, proofread up to pagescan 20, and then we will work on the logical presentation layer, which will sit above the Pages of pagescans. It will make more sense when you see it under construction, and then you can mull over the index again.
 * No I dont have a tool to link the pages; I've never been crazy enough to worry about them because by the time I get to the index, i am usually sick to death of looking at the work in general. Maybe your idea of doing them first is a good one :-)  I do usually do the table of contents first, so the page links in it act as a navigational tool.  I will build a tool to link the page numbers.  Can you file a request on WS:BOTR. John Vandenberg (chat) 11:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I didn't start on the index for navigation; it was rather arbitray. I do find myself often taking a bottom-up approach to things. see;
 * w:id:Wikipedia:ProyekWiki Kecamatan di Indonesia/Jawa
 * where the bottom half is done and the top stuff is still to-do. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Is the word 'by' off-center for you? It is for me. And I've seen this somewhere else on something you pointed me at (or something I stalked you on and read). Know why? The paragraph element is still getting a text-indent: 2em; while centered; the first line of the paragraph; 'by' is shoved-over. The next line (same paragraph, but after a br-elemment) is not. So, something like; center p { text-indent: 0; } This would not cover all cases; there are other ways to center. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/7 - the title page


 * Yea, it does look off-center; ive been wondering about that, but it is only slight so I didnt bother checking either my eyes or the CSS, for fear it was neither. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, today, it's your eyes. I found a hack; I added a mere newline and it scooted into position. See; before and after. What's happening is that MediaWiki is generating a br-element at the beginning of the paragraph based on the number of blank lines in the source. It's still a nasty hack. The served-code is;
 * before:

BY

WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER
 * after:

BY

WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER
 * So, text-indent only applies to the first line of paragraphs (or whatever element). The elegant solution will be a selector that targets child-elements of center-elements and undoes the text-indent; a robust solution will include class="center". Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Nietzsche the thinker
I pushed further on this yesterday, but am not sure of a few aspects. See, For example, on 21 where I used this construct " study " to remove the text-indent from the beginning a 'paragraph' that really isn't the beginning because it is a continuation of a sentence that began on the previous page. On one of the other pages, you moved the title and page number up into a heading that I don't see when editing; a mop-thing, I guess. Anyway, doing that again will break this little trick; it's dubious anyway, as it's making the title and first 'paragraph' live in the same element (and it's not a paragraph, it's the center-element). I don't think I should do more of this. I'd like a bit of feedback on where to find the balance between reproducing the original look and avoiding snotting-up the source with markup. I would expect that scripts can massage the source into shape; i.e. convert common templates and removing odd-markup, and emit some standard format. Somebody reading this on a ebook-reader isn't going to want any of the 1917 look. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:17, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and this book uses a complex footnote/endnote scheme; the footnotes are numbers and the endnotes are lowercase letters; I've not looked ahead, but the endnotes are in some of the latter pages; I've no idea how to hook-up ref this way. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've started setting up the logical view of Nietzsche the thinker. We push the header and footer out of the main text area so that they are not included when we slurp in the wiki text into this logical view.  I'll let you play with this when you have time.  I've done better jobs of stitching two tables together to form a single TOC, but I cant find one quickly, but ill find one, or do another, so you can attempt to follow suit.  Tomorrow.  15:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've just been looking; more tomorrow or so. The TOC needs a styling class; lots of small-caps, alignments; and, ya, width control. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

A Treatise on Electricity...: some feedback will be appreciated!
I'm working on Index:A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism_-_Volume_1.djvu as from your suggestion, and I'm trying to do my best; nevertheless I'd like some feedback, since I sometimes feel myself a little too bold managing a task so new for me (and far from simple...). Can you - or another trusted user - take a look? The best would be that someone would validate some critical pages, leaving some comments/remarks on talk page if needed. Thanks! --Alex brollo 07:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have validated two pages. It is hard work!  One open ended query on the index talk page.  If you can point me at some of these critical pages, I'll validate them. John Vandenberg (chat) 10:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, good idea. I'll post into talk folder of Index page any question, and a brief list of example pages to verify. The comments about controversial proofreading could be posted both into talk folder of validated page or into index talk page. --Alex brollo 14:11, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Something wrong with Index:Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu
The page numbers don't match with what's on the Index - e.g page 233 on index links to page number 249. Some pages show not proofread when they have been. Kathleen.wright5 07:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The pages are not correlated properly because this work has images throughout, and those images are not numbered pages. i.e. the numbering isnt sequential throughout the book.  Someone needs to fix this.  See
 * The index page isn't refreshed until you someone clicks "Pages" on the index page.
 * John Vandenberg (chat) 07:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I clicked "Pages" but it did'nt work. Maybe someone with Internet Explorer should try, it still dose'nt link to the right pages. Kathleen.wright5 08:11, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I had an identical problem working about Index:Equitation.djvu. About refresh of Index page: I discovered that a trick is to enter in edit mode into Index page, and to save it (even with no edit at all). Page status will be refreshed.--Alex brollo 14:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have labeled the images and accompanying blank pages in the Wind in the Willows... the numbers line up correctly now. For anyone that stumbles across this regarding this issue, if the page link shows 'proofread', the page linked to from the index page has been proofread (even if the numbering is wrong). --Mkoyle 06:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I just realized that the blank pages on the back of the pictures almost don't need a link on the index page... but it seems unwise to use "" because then there will be no colored icon on the page to indicate that there is a blank page to be 'proofread'. " " seems better, and looks good-- but if someone edits the page for some reason the non-breaking space is replaced with a regular space and the pages disappear again.  Any other ideas?  "_" underscore might be unobtrusive enough. I'll address this at Central Discussion... just to get more ideas.--Mkoyle 17:51, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The eating of " " is a bug.  It might be hard to fix. John Vandenberg (chat) 00:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Waltzing Matilda
Heya John... so I've decided something different is needed on the Main Page. So I've been working on this one. A few questions... —Giggy 08:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Would a recording of it be free? And would that depend on when the recording was made/published? (I'm thinking yes/yes, just checking)
 * 2) Anything else you think is lacking prior to FTC?
 * Err, shucks. This is a difficult copyright question.  When was the musical composition first performed?  When was the sheet music first published? John Vandenberg (chat) 08:48, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Going by http://nationaltreasures.nla.gov.au/%3E/Treasures/item/nla.ms-ms9065-3-s1 both are older than 100 years. —Giggy 08:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It does look like it, but we need to be sure. As we discussed on IRC, it would be great to have a FTC that had a musical composition, printed sheet music, and validated text.  When you are looking for pagescans, keep in mind that we can use scans from a more recent printing (I'm pretty sure I have one at home), provided we dont upload editorial elements of the page which could be considered copyright.  i.e. the text is PD, and the actual typesetting of a modern book can't be copyrighted, so the pages are still PD even though they are modern. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Under Australian Copyright law sound recordings are PD if they were made before 1 January 1955 see page 4 Information Sheet G023v14 (Duration of Copyright) February 2008. Kathleen.wright5 10:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

History of West Australia and Index:History of West Australia
Some pages of Index:History of West Australia are also in History of West Australia. Should the former go to WS:DEL ? Kathleen.wright5 23:19, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * No, the former is the page based view. The latter is a logical overlay.  Click edit on History of West Australia/Chapter I and you will see what I mean. John Vandenberg (chat) 00:58, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Transcription_Projects
I have discovered it is quite easy to upload transcription projects... I have listed the ones I uploaded over there, and, as I feel a touch impatient, I appear here to bring them to your attention.

Of course I might get carried away adding projects that will not be proofread anytime soon. If you want to suggest any restraint, I will listen. archive.org just has too many interesting things sitting around.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if you would like to have someone else capable of running a bot to extract the djvu text layer to the pages. I am not especially tech-savvy, but am a touch above the level of neophyte. If it would be helpful for me to run the bot to do that, I would be more than willing; email me if you'd like. --Mkoyle 07:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Please do exercise restraint here, as we are already growing at an incredible rate of unproofed pages, but still have a long way to go for proofed and verified pages. Also the OCR text from Internet Archive (archive.org) should not be used if there is a gutenberg etext already, an ongoing pgdp project, of a transcription anywhere else on the Internet, as it will result in unnecessary proofreading, and it fills Google with crap that could suck in readers to view our crap, and leave in disgust.


 * As an example, much of Index:Letters to Mothers (1839).djvu can be copied from the local pages here -- a bot can then fill in the missing pages, or another transcription might exist on the internet.


 * I try to set up projects that are reasonably likely to have at least a few pages proofread soon, but I don't always succeed in that department. Also I try to proofread the table of contents, as I have done just now for Index:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu, as a navigational tool so that newcomers get a good feel for what is required.  This is especially important for poetry collections, as the same poems often exist in many different books, and we dont want to load OCR text into Wikisource if clean proofed text exists on the internet - the name of the poem is a great way to find an existing transcription.


 * It will be handy to have more people able to run bots, as it will mean bot writers can focus on building better bots. To start, create a separate account to run your bot, following the bot naming suggestions at WS:BOT, and then use the bot account to add about 20 pages of a work that you cant find an online transcription for.  I'll review it, and then add the bot to the whitelist -- John Vandenberg (chat) 09:10, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

centering issues
See; As suggested, it requires; without it; the two examples look the same.
 * User:Jack Merridew/centering;
 * User:Jack Merridew/monobook.css copied to yours; should have no other impact

It's got icky testrig code to get it behaving along the lines of stuff in ns-104. The second set of sample text has another rule in effect that overrides the testrig. So, the first set are wonky to the right sometimes and the secod are nicely centered. I'm gonna add a few more bits of sample text, next. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Re:Template:Indent
I've suggested using the : colon to indent as mentioned on Template talk:Indent. I've been using this on Criminal Code Act 1995 (Australia). Kathleen.wright5 09:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That is a good idea, as indent is deprecated. I have left a note on Talk:Criminal Code Act 1995 (Australia) about the USC, which is a good example of formatting. John Vandenberg (chat) 10:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hesperian says indent and :colon are two different things see Template talk:Indent. Kathleen.wright5 10:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Gecko bug
So, I found a gecko bug; in old-Gecko, prior to Firefox v3's Gecko. And I broke thousands of infoboxes on id:wp for days. Many are still broken as I wait for a 'crat to edit two protected templates.

In a lot of code there (and elsewhere), infobox captions have margin:inherit; from the table and they're getting a margin-left: 2em; and no margin-right; this throws the caption off-to the right by 1em; sound familiar. I'm gonna get a rep as the centering guy. So, I changed the captions in about five templates to use margin: 0 auto .4em auto; and it looked great, but not on old Firefox or SeaMonkey; they centered the caption on the whole content area and put the infobox 2em from the left side and cleared stuff to below the box. I'm not sure what versions broke; my install of v2 won't work today; it may have died when I got the .01 update to FF v3. Anyway, the fix is to use something other than auto for the left and right values; same thing for both. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC) on more than 15,000 pages


 * Im sorry to hear the centering problem is haunting you elsewhere too. Did you find a bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org ?
 * When you say "Anyway, the fix..", you mean id:wp ? I dont see how the above helps with the en:ws issue. John Vandenberg (chat) 22:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

See;
 * w:id:Pembicaraan Pengguna:Borgx — mostly in English; see the next two subsections as well.
 * w:id:Pembicaraan Pengguna:Borgx

Most of what I wrote last night is about id:wp issues; I'm just telling you about it. I found this the old fashion way; by breaking something. As I write, better than 20,000 pages of id:wp are broken for Firefox 2.0 users (and I did it). Borgx is away and Revi doesn't see the problem.


 * w:id:Berkas:Koja Utara, Koja, Jakarta Utara.jpg
 * w:id:Berkas:Kalimantan Tengah.jpg
 * the boxes are supposed to be on the right

The note about class="infobox" and captions applies to all wikis as I believe a tweak should be made to every common.css on the planet. Many millions of infobox captions are off center (and I didn't do it). See;


 * w:en:Template:Infobox

and see where it gives a sample for 'Text in caption over infobox' and note that the caption is off-center to the right. This code or an older version of it is on every wiki in every language.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Would it help if you give me a blurb to post to w:en:Template talk:Infobox ? John Vandenberg (chat) 10:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I can write something up for those folks, but… see;
 * Steward requests/Permissions
 * where I'm trying anything to get id:wp fixed.


 * Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:19, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * id:wp is all fixed; Jagawana unlocked the pages. My take-away is to perform more tests before tweaking stuff. Presumably the Moz devs know about this because they fixed it for FF v3. My view is that the 'auto' was not wrong, but was not needed; for my final fix I changed stuff to not mess with the l/r margin for the caption at all; captions are centered by default and the best route is to keep your fingers out of the gears unless there's a need. I expect the bit in common.css is left over from a long time ago. I looked at the histories of w:en:Template:Infobox and w:en:MediaWiki:Common.css and find that I don't know those editors; they must not put much unencyclopaedic pop-culture trivia into en:wp. Thanks for your comments on Meta. I gotta go; I'm late for a dinner date. I'll be more active here in a week. Busy on non-wiki stuff of all sorts. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:37, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Could you explain the FF2 bug succinctly at Firefox bugs affecting MediaWiki John Vandenberg (chat) 21:51, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure, but it'll be tomorrow or so. I don't have a bug#. I'm thinking a talk post to get started. Oh, I got a thanks when Borgx got back re the id:fix. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea. But if nobody assists, just note the bug description on the page and hope someone finds the bug #. John Vandenberg (chat) 12:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

using djvutext.py
Hi,

I'm trying to use djvutext.py, but I keep seeming to get an error message. This is the way I enter the command:



But the error I get is. Do you know what this means?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 15:44, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The "djvu:" value must point to a local file. John Vandenberg (chat) 21:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So, does that mean I must create the page Image:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu? Would adding anything do?—<font style="color: #000000; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold">Zhaladshar <font style="color: #FF0000; font-size: small; text-decoration: none">(Talk) 22:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry; my earlier explanation wasnt clear. You need to download the djvu so that the python code can read it.  The "djvu:" value must point to a local file - local to the machine running the python. John Vandenberg (chat) 22:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I saved a local copy on my computer, and still got the same error. Does this mean there might not be a text layer?  When I converted it I told it to add the OCR'd text, but this is the only thing I can think of.—<font style="color: #000000; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold">Zhaladshar <font style="color: #FF0000; font-size: small; text-decoration: none">(Talk) 13:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * When there is no text layer, it will upload blank pages. That is a bug I have yet to fix, but it isnt affecting you in this instance. Could you tell me which line the error is occurring on ?  I'll add more error condition checking to better diagnose the problem. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

DjVu converter
Hi John! I'm here to ask what PDF-to-Djvu converters would you recommmend. I currently use Any2djvu which is good, but it's sometimes down because of server overload. When I also try to upload a large file, it starts processing it only to crash again. So I'm looking for Djvu converters which could be online or a program to install to a local machine, sort of like an alternate to Any2djvu. It also has to be user friendly, to cope with my crappy computer skills! :D Any suggestions? - Mtmelendez 17:43, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There are instructions on Help:Djvu, but they are not simple. If the PDF is less than 20Mb, upload it, and add the PDF to WS:TP in a new section named "To be converted to djvu", and someone else can do the conversion. John Vandenberg (chat) 22:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Proudhon and JK Ingalls
Well, I was about to bring the Proudhon translation project to Wikisource, but my experiences so far have been a test page deleted without so much as a query beforehand and your assumption that my bibliography of Ingalls' work is public domain. None of that is heartening. I no longer have much involvement at Wikipedia because individual labor is so taken for granted. I had hoped things were different here, but I'm not sure they are. Thanks, anyway, for your suggestions. Libertatia 05:04, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for moving the file. I'm going to suggest that the transcription work on Proudhon (etc) be done on Wikisource. It looks like there are a number of reasons to do the translation work on an explicitly Anarchist Studies Network-affiliated page, but if there's consensus on the GNU license, we can make sure it gets here eventually. I'll keep you posted on getting the Ingalls stuff, and most of the other things I have in the Libertarian Labyrinth, mirrored in Wikisource, but let me clean some texts up first, since access to the originals is pretty limited, and I would rather not have the stuff circulate much until I've proofed it pretty well. It should be a steady flow of stuff, once it gets started. Libertatia 22:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate Obama Speech
are the same speech. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * A World that Stands as One and
 * Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: A World that Stands as One

:-( by Alex
Dear John, Proofread engine has been started on it.s.

So I'm hardly working there by now... :-(

My time for en.s has completely gone. I'll come here sometimes, just to take a look to the work of your community. I created a It:Categoria:Equitazione with an interwiki pointing on Category:Horsemanship... let we see if some horse addict would add something new.

Thanks a lot for your help. --Alex brollo 15:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for efforts here. I look forward to seeing it.ws rise in the stats :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 23:54, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it.wikisourcers perhaps begin to be worried about... ;-) --Alex brollo 07:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Advice
Hi, I ask for your advice again. Do you think this would be suitable to include on WS, and if so, could you suggest a title? diego_pmc 14:02, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely! Transcribe it at Page:Punch - Offenbach elegy.png :-)  I would use a title like Punch/Elegy to Jacques Offenbach or Punch elegy to Jacques Offenbach.  It can be added to Wikisource:Obituaries.
 * John Vandenberg (chat) 00:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I have added the text here: Punch/Volume 79/Issue 14/Elegy to Jacques Offenbach (a name similar to that of Century Magazine/Volume 57/Issue 4/Cole's Old English Masters. John Opie), and this is the transcribed: Page:Punch - Offenbach elegy.png. It isn't proofread yet, but all words underlined with red by Firefox are just like in the original (not very reliable, I know :-)).

I also saw Punch/Volume 1/Issue 1, which has a very appealing layout if you ask me. The problem would be that it will have to be split into pages, since it might not be such a good idea to put a whole issue on a single page. And it doesn't look too complicated to do either, from what I can see. Do you think this layout should be a standard, or recommended for newspapers, and the like? diego_pmc 12:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks good. I prefer that each article has its own page, and that we then transclude the articles into an "original layout" page.  See Scientific American/Volume 1/Issue 1/Front page.  But that is just my personal preference. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 13:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I also thought about that, but didn't think it was necessary at first. But after thinking it over, it has a few advantages. But still what I don't like about that particular page you gave as an example is that it isn't a faithful layout of the original. I would like to try and digitalize an issue of a publication of this kind, the way I think it'd be best to handle this kind of texts, and then maybe the community can discuss whether or not to adopt it as a recommend/standard style. What I was thinking was to transcude the text (as you said), but make the full layout more like the original, sort of like the example I gave before. The problem is I don't have any old newspaper, or anything like that. do you know anyone that I might be able to ask to scan an issue? diego_pmc 14:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, it's up
FTC! :-) —Giggy 09:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem with PD-UN on Brundtland Report
I've put PD-UN on the above document, but it appears as the same narrow width as this document, not as normal. What should I do? Kathleen.wright5 10:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It needs a closing  before the tag.  It also desperately needs to be split into separate pages. grumble, grumble, I tried to demonstrate this, but clicking edit on that page has frozen my Firefox window, potentially loosing half a days worth of unsaved work; I'm hoping that if I leave that window alone it will revive itself. grumble, grumble :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 11:15, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Pages moves with djvu
Having realised Index:Life and journals of Keh-ke-wa-guo-na-ba.djvu should be at Index:Life and journals of Kah-ke-wa-quo-na-by.djvu, can I just do a straight pagemove, or will that fuck up all the subpages? WilyD 16:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The index cant be moved without all of the pages also being moved, so ... It will cause a lot of distress if you try to fix this maually!! I can move them all with a bot; ill get right on it. John Vandenberg (chat) 21:14, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That's why I asked. WilyD 02:04, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

German instrument of surrender
Heads up. At FTC you have linked to commons:Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/German instrument of surrender, World War II. "Commons:Wikipedia:"? You must have meant either "Commons:Commons:" or "Wikipedia:Wikipedia:". Hesperian 07:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

en:Template:SouthSulawesi

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:SouthSulawesi&action=edit


 * I see!?!? can you give me more context? John Vandenberg (chat) 08:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I hit enter before I was done and then edit conflicted with you.

I just noticed this; the Tnavbar is linking off to 'West Sumatra' instead of 'SouthSulawesi'; the whole thing is a lame navbox. Perhaps someday an edit summary of 'saka id' will appear in its history; means 'from id' where the navboxes make a bit of sense.

I found this handy tool;


 * http://toolserver.org/~luxo/contributions/contributions.php?user=Jack+Merridew&lang=

It occurred to me that the above url would make a fine parameter to w:en:Template:Unblock

Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:36, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * nb: 'Administrative areas in South Sulawesi' is off-center a bit to the right. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

is just-now finished being converted to use nice navboxes; Kalimantan and Sumatra are still to do; the rest of Indonesia is done. The Kalimantan boxes are well-along; Sumatra is huge. I'm getting no traction on this issue; the wikiproject page that collects all the navboxes for Java together for a look-see is choking on 116 nested templates; the article pages are fine. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * w:id:Wikipedia:ProyekWiki Kecamatan di Indonesia/Sulawesi
 * w:id:Pembicaraan Pengguna:Borgx

Someone really should enable cross-wiki transclusion; above should work; anyway compare;

Beyond the appearance of the navboxes, there is also the sea of red ink in the entertainment wiki's box. Take a peek at this old chat with Cas Lieber; especially my closing comment which led to this change to my user page. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * w:en:Template:SouthSulawesi
 * w:id:Templat:Sulawesi Selatan
 * (yes, Indonesian spells template with out the 'e'; Javanese spells it 'Cithakan')
 * w:en:User talk:Jack Merridew/Archive 1


 * Shh, this is a library! :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 09:58, 6 August 2008 (UTC) Sorry, I dont have time to look at this atm, as I am busy working on Veni, Creator Spiritus.
 * mebbe i should just go with the unblock idea, above. better than 4 months, now, 3 since the unblock/reblock by ryan. cheers, jack Merridew 10:07, 6 august 2008 (utc)
 * I would still oppose; there is plenty to be done on id:, jv:, here and on Commons. An en.wp summary of "copied from id:" will sort itself out. . John Vandenberg (chat) 10:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Commons:User talk:White Cat Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

DjVu extraction request
Could you turn JVBot loose on Index:Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc.djvu, please? Many thanks! Tarmstro99 14:36, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've grabbed that, and noticed it has line numbers throughout. I can pre-process this a little, to do something meaningful with those line numbers.  Either I can drop them, or I could convert each page to a table with each row being "| d | text ".  I've uploaded the first two pages so you can play and think about it. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:21, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Better to drop them, I think. The line numbers are an artifact of the typescript opinions produced by the court clerk’s office; they won’t be included when the opinion is added to the big legal databases (Westlaw, etc.) and will not appear when the opinion is published in F.3d.  I cleaned up page 2 of the text and I think you’ll agree that it’s more useful without the line numbers, which seem to get in the way of the actual content authored by the judges of the court. Tarmstro99 01:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok. I'll need to find an hour to do the pre-processing, so it might be a few hours before I can get this finished. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No rush at all. I appreciate the help.  Tarmstro99 02:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. John Vandenberg (chat) 02:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

vi:Monobook.css
This, from the Monobook.css on the Vietnamese wiki; /* Sửa những thành viên cố tình giấu thanh bên v.v. ở trang cá nhân */ body.ns-2 div#bodyContent > * { position: static !important; max-width: 100% !important; } necessitated these tweaks to my user page implementation, which uses positioning for the metaicons and for the notes in the corners; I establish my own containing block which the notes are positioned relative to. It would seem an entirely deliberate effort at controlling the use of positioning in userspace; a vain effort, in my case. I think their intent was to force meta icons, like mops, out of their usual top-right position (which often squabble with [dismiss] links). Their use of <tt>!important</tt> will beat-out local positioning declarations further down in the cascade unless, of course, they vigorously assert their own importance. The design of the specificity rules always allow user-level rules the final say. Anyway, I'm telling you because of its use of the universal selector. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: HOI update
It can be deleted.

And if the text in the djvu is the same as Archive.org's (which I believe it is), then go ahead and extract it and upload it. For some reason I thought the OCR button did that. <font face="Verdana"><font color="ForestGreen">Psych <font color="DarkGreen">less  12:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I also forgot about that. I think it would be better to copy and paste from there. They don't have pages 135-290 of Volume 3 though, so go ahead and upload the text of images 175-360 of Image:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu <font face="Verdana"><font color="ForestGreen">Psych <font color="DarkGreen">less  13:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

OCR, Validation and others
If the button is NOT intended to do text insertion en masse, then it should not be provided.

I look forward therefore in line with your comments for it's removal

In respect of validation, A lot of the 'rapid' validation is of blank pages.

I am checking carefully, against the original scans, the fact that I can validate quickly should not be an automatic indication of poor quality.

Issues with Sydney Hailstorm noted...

Sfan00 IMG 11:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Further last message, When I OCR I do intend at some point to return to at least make sure the text is clean,

some assitance from more skilled contributors to typesetting and formatting would be appreciated ( Maybe a new phase is needed in the proofing process, I.E typesetting vs typing?) Sfan00 IMG 20:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Guan Yuncheng
It seems to me that at least one of these articles is redundant with the other text you pointed out. Whether a merge is needed is questionable; perhaps the earlier text is already complete? I guess we should wait for the input of the people you consulted. I would note that the user has asked that the content be deleted, and, under policy, it technically should be deleted, as the author reserves the right to request the deletion of a page if no-one else has contributed. Whether we do this is ultimately up to you, but I thought I'd just make a mention of that. Thanks for intervening in regards to this matter. Best wishes, &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 10:55, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We do not deleted two editions because they are duplicates. We redirect one to the other.
 * He requested deletion is in response to being told he has misunderstood Wikisource and he should go to Wikipedia, by both you and me, and it appears we both may be wrong. We need to wait for more authoritative opinions on this before aggravating the situation further. John Vandenberg (chat) 12:45, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If I implied we would not redirect after deleting/blanking one of the two duplicates, then I am sorry. I agree we may be wrong and should wait for further input. Cheers, &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 13:12, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Page:Fort Sumter telegram.jpg
What say you about the way the text from this telegram should be digitalized? Should it be caps, like in the image, or should I leave it like this? Also, there are some punctuation flaws - I guess I should keep those (for example: <tt>... end of sentence . beginning of another sentence</tt>).

And I also have a bit of a trouble figuring out which words should start with a capital. If you have time, could you have a look at it? diego_pmc 07:25, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it should be in all capitals, but someone more familiar with this telegram might have a better idea. I'm about to ask for more opinions at w:Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates/Fort Sumter surrender telegram.  -- John Vandenberg (chat) 08:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm not sure whether Wikisource has a manual of style for telegrams. If there isn't, then I'd suggest either normalizing the spelling and spacing or maintaining an exact duplicate of the original version.  Best wishes, Durova 09:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * We only have WS:STYLE - nothing specific to telegrams. So, you guys get to write the book ;-)  I would maintain the original as much as is feasible in a wiki setting.  i.e. keep the original spelling, with footnotes enclosed in tags if necessary, and normalising the spacing makes sense.  It would also be appropriate to put it into a monospace font, which I have demonstrated. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * From what I can tell, the page is the centrepiece, while the accompanying text should be as close a mimic to the image as it can be. If there is a spelling error, leave it in there, but put something like a <Nowiki> tag with [sic] or something. --&mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 09:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I made it all caps. If you ask me, I'd say that it should be mentioned in the description in the header template that any mistakes are also present in the original. diego_pmc 09:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Possible copyvio
I'm not really experienced in this section of WS, so I figured i'd best notify you. Isn't Clair de Salino a copyvio? i ask because the author, Richard Boneworth was born 1973. diego_pmc 16:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It isnt a copyvio if the author is donating it to Wikisource. So, I have added published?, requesting publication details. John Vandenberg (chat) 16:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 1.djvu/70 (and others)
Been validating checking, in some cases page text is ok, but section headers aren't correct or are missing, Assistance requested... Sfan00 IMG 20:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Please ask on the "Index talk:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 1.djvu" page, and leave it until a group of editors has decided on a communal standard for how to transcribe/present these complex layouts for that work. 01:47, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Navigasi Sumatera
fyi. Last batch in progress; all the other main id:regions are done. This is the biggest batch; Jawa was nearly as large.


 * w:id:Wikipedia:ProyekWiki Kecamatan di Indonesia/Sumatera Sections on;
 * Sumatera Utara (largest section)
 * Kepulauan Bangka Belitung
 * Kepulauan Riau

are done, as are scattered others; 69 done, 63 to go; overall there are about 500. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmm.
. Thoughts? --&mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 07:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have set up a transcription project for that work. By cleaning up Page:Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus - Granville - Revised.djvu/19, I found that Chapter XXI was at Page:Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus - Granville - Revised.djvu/295, and is very different to what has been contributed.  Tagged with no text and anon user welcomed :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 09:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for your input. Cheers, &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 12:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Work for your bot
Hi John,

I got some work for your bot. ;o) Could you extract the text from Image:Brundtland Report.djvu and include it in the respective pages of Index:Brundtland Report.djvu (OCR by Any2DjVu Server, I don't know which software they use.)? Actually the text is also available on Brundtland Report (OCR by Tesseract). I don't know which is best. Thanks in advance, Yann 23:35, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have removed the OCR from Brundtland Report as a proofread text exists online at un-documents. John Vandenberg (chat) 05:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)