User talk:Tar-ba-gan/2015-2017

New Proposal Notification - Replacement of common main-space header template
Announcing the listing of a new formal proposal recently added to the Scriptorium community-discussion page, Proposals section, titled:


 * • Switch header template foundation from table-based to division-based

The proposal entails the replacement of the current Header template familiar to most with a structurally redesigned new Header template. Replacement is a needed first step in series of steps needed to properly address the long time deficiencies behind several issues as well as enhance our mobile device presence.

There should be no significant operational or visual differences between the existing and proposed Header templates under normal usage (i.e. Desktop view). The change is entirely structural -- moving away from the existing HTML all Table make-up to an all Div[ision] based one.

Please examine the testcases where the current template is compared to the proposed replacement. Don't forget to also check Mobile Mode from the testcases page -- which is where the differences between current header template & proposed header template will be hard to miss.

For those who are concerned over the possible impact replacement might have on specific works, you can test the replacement on your own by entering edit mode, substituting the header tag   with   and then previewing the work with the change in place. Saving the page with the change in place should not be needed but if you opt to save the page instead of just previewing it, please remember to revert the change soon after your done inspecting the results.

Your questions or comments are welcomed. At the same time I personally urge participants to support this proposed change. -- George Orwell III (talk) 02:04, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Problem at Statement by the President on the Murder of Boris Nemtsov
Problem at Statement by the President on the Murder of Boris Nemtsov, and I know it's in the original by The White House, as well.

Why does it refer to "Boris Efimovich" ?

-- Cirt (talk) 16:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, never mind, I see that was the full first part of his name. My misunderstanding. Thank you very much for this contribution to Wikisource! -- Cirt (talk) 16:39, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Приглашение
Приглашаю вернуться к работе над проектом ЭЛ. Я залил новые более качественные сканы, все с текстовым слоем. Присоединяйтесь.--Silberrus (talk) 16:57, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

About Abbé Huc
It's no joke, but when I saw the books on IA, I was thinking of you since you like material about China. I also like it, but time is so short and there is so much to do. — Ineuw talk 02:09, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Great! I appreciate your help. I am in China so IA is only accessible via VPN while Wikimedia resources are mostly not editable via free proxies, which makes it complicated. This is gonna change in a month or so. Gonna go Russia and forget about these problems. Tar-ba-gan (talk) 10:03, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * What can I say, I am jealous. Enjoy your travels and keep safe.— Ineuw talk 15:43, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * No need to be jealous (I do not really suppose a lot of my own friends would agree to live/work like I have been doing either in Russia or China). Also, apparently archive.org got blocked in Russia a month after I arrived, which actually tells me to get more stuff from it. Tar-ba-gan (talk) 01:03, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Phrase Book in the Canton Dialect
Hi, I was really pleased somebody noticed what I was doing with China and the Manchus! I want to finish plowing through it by this weekend, so if it would be great if you'd care to validate whatever's left. — Anyway, I was poking around through your stuff and found the phrase book. Some of those handwritten characters are rather unusual. I noticed that on archive.org there's a more legible edition with pretty standard characters all nicely typeset. Would you consider changing the source file? If I could work from that one it'd be fairly easy to input the Chinese. For example on page 6 the last character in #11, in the typeset version is just the normal character for salt 鹽, but in the one you have it's an abbreviated handwritten form on the image, and my browser won't display the encoded character, whatever it is. Then in #18, the missing character is 爺 grandfather in the typset version, whereas the handwritten character is that plus the mouth radical which I can't find anywhere on the Unicode charts. I'm sure the handwritten characters are more interesting, but I wouldn't have the expertise to deal with the problematic ones. — BTW, Hakluytus is another thing I'm interested in working on, as it's frequently cited in an interesting history of Russia (the French translation of which was my main stimulus for getting involved with Wikisource), but working with that formatting is tough. (French Wikisource seems to display marginal notes a bit more simply.) I wonder if it'd be possible to edit the text in a more tractable way, and finish off the formatting at the end in a batch process. Sorry to intrude with all these comments, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Mudbringer (talk) 16:24, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for all the comments. It is great that you paid so much in-depth attention.
 * It is true that the non-standard chars are a problem. I am not sure the version that features handwriting, should be removed -- maybe saved for later? I mean, the problem of how modern standard corresponds to colloquialisms and individual writing styles may be of use for later researchers (I was actually thinking that this might further on inspire some new tools because I started experiencing problems while on Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills and keep on having them in Pekinese Rhymes). For making the progress now, the idea of switching to work on another source file with Chinese chars typed (without removing the file with handwriting) looks fine to me. What do you think?
 * Formatting is definitely a problem with Hakluytus Posthumus, given that the standard (preserving marginal notes the way they figure in original edition) established in en.wikisource. With my own attempts to keep the pages in the mainspace as small as possible (I am planning to break Chapter VII into paragraphs) and its archaic spelling, working on it is by no means easy. I do not know how to proceed with it, and I am glad if you give some direct recommendations (I do not know how automated tools could manage the sidenotes but your idea sounds great to me)
 * Karamzin's is the standard first book of Russian history... looks like Russia's distinct literature, philosophy, legal studies and historical narrative were all born around the same rule of Alexander I, embodied respectively by Pushkin, Chaadayev, Speransky, and Karamzin. Personally, I could never finish much of Karamzin, for his a bit archaic style (might be totally more impressive when translated) and ideology, though the volumes rest on a shelf somewhere behind me. I might take to Chaadayev however, his writings are way shorter.
 * Sorry my own style is terrible in this reply, I was in a hurry to answer. All the best, --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 23:50, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello again, Tar-ba-gan. Sorry it took me so long to get back, I keep getting sidetracked. I agree with what you said about the conversation manual - there's no point in undoing work that's already been done, but it would definitely be easier to make progress with the typeset version. — I've been thinking about Hakluytus, but it'll take a bit of research and experimenting to make any firm decision. Right now the finished pages are very faithful to the book layout, but I'm not sure the approach will give the best results when they're transcluded, which is important. The big problem for me is that when I look at the Page view, the text overlaps the image. But when I click edit and then preview the preview looks all right, although the side notes are much farther from the text than they need to be. So ... when I get down to working on it I might try copying the templates for the side notes and tweaking them to see if they can be made a little more manageable. I might also try stealing the sidenote templates they use on French wikisource and see if they're are as easy to use here. Another idea I had was to make dummy templates, that could either be set to do almost nothing (just leaving the notes inline with the rest of the paragraph, maybe coloring them), or else redirected to the templates currently used to make them proper side notes. Does that make sense? — Your Tibetan foothills book is impressive work. A problem character on this page looks like 扌敖. The printed character is obviously cobbled together, so the typesetters mustn't have had it in their font. I actually found that one, it's in extension B, which I don't know how to input, or whether many browsers would display properly. One thing you could do would be to use the tooltip template like this 扌敖刀, so the underline would be a clue that it's supposed to be a single character, and you can see the code when you hover the mouse over it. There's another, standard character 摮 that seems to have the same reading and meaning, so maybe you could even do this: 扌敖刀. Probably overkill ... — I have my issues with Karamzin too! Reading about Ivan the Terrible when he was living up to his name is very depressing. Other parts can be fairly tedious, especially when Nikolai Mikhailovich is making the same points time and again with his moralizing. But sometimes the narrative really gets lively and makes up for all that. Oddly enough, I think I enjoy the accounts of diplomacy the most, when the negotiations get tense and the sovereigns hurl finely calibrated insults and threats back and forth. — Sorry, I do go on. I've never really had the chance to talk about Karamzin to anyone. Anyway, talk to you later. Mudbringer (talk) 18:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Mudbringer! Oh, please translate French sidenote templates into here, maybe as a "HP" (Hakluytus Posthumous) feature. In case someone does not appreciate the new templates, they are welcome to make slight amends later.
 * Karamzin was exactly a pre-Pushkin writer, which creates a stylistic problem for me. Pushkin crafted the backbone of Russian literary language, and while he was a fan of Karamzin (as a pioneering scholar and an intellectual), he was way more concentrated on language innovations, and a lot more liberal/republican in his views. I often use his line "with the gut of the last church minister/We will strangle the last king" to explain Russian Empire's problem with Masons that are otherwise ubiquitous in Republican settings.
 * Also, Pushkin tried to court Karamzin's wife, but the old folks treated him with laughter, like people who had seen way more. After all Pushkin created the reputation of reckless womaniser way before his literary reputation.
 * Pushkin, however, did write a clever epigram about Karamzin's History: "Exquisiteness of style, simplicity of words, / To us they prove, blind-folding all the bias / Unbounded rule is best, and should use / Advantages of whip" (you might wish to take this as a fairly good non-rhymed translation of the actual Pushkin lines and make the better of them)
 * May I ask you to take an interest in Wikiquote? Whether it is French or English, there seem to be lacunae. Say, Karamzin is entirely missing there in French, English, or any other Western European languages, and however backward his views may have been, the links of his Wikipedia article show that he was quite popular/up-to-date around the world in his time. I am not surprised as to absence of Karamzin's quotes (apart from 6 wikiquotes that are closer to Russia's core of education), but what about, say, Prosper Mérimée? I really care about him as a hard-working translator from the Russian. When it is just me doing a wikiquote page, it looks shameless (see Russian language for example). There are writers without a wikiquote French page: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris_Pasternak, present in En wikiquote but a quote or two would look nice in Fr... Tar-ba-gan (talk) 23:17, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Index:Gospel of Buddha.djvu
Done some attempted proofreading but would appreciate a second set of views especially on accented charcters as it's sometimes note clear what should be n&#x304; and what should be ñ. Thanks ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:06, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Will look into it carefully in a short while! I do not think these n's are essential, and ñ shall be all that is needed. Tar-ba-gan (talk) 23:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey
Please see this question when you have a moment. Outlier59 (talk) 00:34, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
 * If you are running a BOT, please make sure Wikisource users and Wikisource knows that you're running a BOT. If you're not running a BOT, please just ignore this comment.
 * While it was kind of you to send me multiple "Thank you" messages for my image uploads and edits to The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey, getting multiple alerts from you via Wikisource is rather intrusive on my time. You might want to consider using a brief thank-you note on my user page rather than multiple "Thank you" alert messages, or just sending one alert to indicate that you have seen and appreciate my edits.
 * I hope you make good progress on The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey. It's a good book. Outlier59 (talk) 01:41, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I overdid it? Sorry. I know how it is sometimes very disturbing to get notifications from a wiki. I am not going to do that as much anymore. And no, I am not using a bot. Thanks a lot for all your help, it is great! --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 22:08, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep, I think you overdid it a bit, but I understand how thrilling it can be to get some hard-to-find help here in Wikisource.
 * I suggest you concentrate on doing what you can do well. Proofread and validate text -- especially text with Chinese characters. I can't do that, nor can most others on this English Wikisource. You have knowledge of two languages. I think you should USE this knowledge to add text to Wikisource. And don't worry too much about images and tables. Just proofread the page -- and if you come across an image or table problem in the page, just flag it for an image or table insert. Outlier59 (talk) 01:39, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Chinesische Volksmärchen
Hello Tar-ba-gan, sorry, my English is bad, but i ask for an permanent English translation of our rules for the future. We have double proof reading. One important rule is, you have to proof read pages of other works 1:1 (if you have good OCR) or 1:2 (by hand transcription) before or at least beside to save time for the second proof readers. Also you work very slow and de-WS don´t like maybe year of incomplete projects. But we found in Web a professional high quality transcription from http://www.zeno.org/Märchen/M/Asien/Richard+Wilhelm%3A+Chinesische+Volksmärchen, maybe we can take this without new proof reading, so if we found an exact equal scan. This will save a lot of time for all on de-WS. I will tell you news in a few days. BR, Rumpelsteig (talk) 14:42, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Page:Myths and Legends of British North America.djvu/18
Rather than use a lot of template calls, I would suggest checking out TOCstyle which lets you make one template call per page :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Single page example here - Page:Myths and Legends of British North America.djvu/19ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:49, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Would I be able to create a page more in line with the original contents layout this way? BR, Tar-ba-gan (talk) 19:10, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Possibly you'd have to read the template documents carefully, currently you can't use ts short codes in TOCstyle though,

so you have to do a bit of cut and pasting if doing something complex or 'clever' .ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:58, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I was never good at using short codes, so right now I am sorry to say I will just follow inertia and do the same multiple template calls for the rest of the ToC. I will keep your advice in mind to try using it once I see a ToC that is not intricate. This should save me a lot of time. BR, -Tar-ba-gan (talk) 23:29, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

validate
Please validate this page. I cannot. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Chinese_Fables_and_Folk_Stories.djvu/47 --Maury (talk) 01:22, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Tooltip with pinyin and simplified
Hi!

Regarding Index:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu, I have been removing your tooltips with pinyin transcription and simplified characters conversion, as I think they do not bring much value and I don't add them on the pages I proofread, it is too time consuming. I think it is more important to complete the transcription of the actual content first. However, I see that you are actively working on this text (great!). Are you OK with this strategy or do you want to keep the tooltips (I won't add them on the pages I proofread though)? Koxinga (talk) 21:08, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Please do keep the tooltips already present. A lot of the characters used, are not common today. I was very much trying to create a student-friendly version. I believe some of the tooltips are necessary - the Latinization used by the author is obsolete and not so very well understood, while I believe the author had a point when giving it. I agree though that my priority as well should be finishing the text as it is, not embellishing it with tooltips.
 * I have a long record of starting the project then leaving it unfinished for years. Thank you for a more systematic approach that actually gets things done. BR, --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 00:07, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
 * OK. let's do it this way. I think that such additions should be done once the main text is finished. Most of it can be automated, and you would just have to reread the text to check if any wrong conversion has been done, but it should 99% accurate. Koxinga (talk) 19:39, 27 June 2017 (UTC)