Wikisource:Outstanding technical matters

Template & portal colour schemes
There has been disscussion regarding having a livery for templates (and possibly portals) as it is likely several could be used on the same page. I thought we should start a disscussion here to keep it from being lost. WP recently started have featured potrals I looked through those and I thought that these two had nices color schemes. Any others ideas for a livery?--BirgitteSB 22:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I've retrieved this from Scriptoroum Archive #4


 * HTML manuals sometimes have colour charts. An excellent online one is at Visibone.com [] They also publish a manual about it. Apwoolrich 19:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't particularly like the trains or cricket colours. I think for the portals we can probably leave it a while before fixing a colour scheme (all you have to do is change the box-header colour codes anyway to change the colours used on that particular portal). For the templates I think a set colour scheme would be useful, perhaps with different colours for different types of templates - Eg red for 'urgent' ones like proposed deletion - make your comments now, etc. AllanHainey 12:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC
 * I didn't mean for portals, but for templates. I just was looking at WP portals to see a scheme of colors all on the same page.  I imagine all templates will use complimentary colors in such a scheme rather than be exactly the same.--BirgitteSB 14:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yesterday I posted on Birgitte's user page a note about the WP Mathematics Portal which looks handsome. Apwoolrich 14:07, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Here is the link to WP Math Portal.  I agree it is very attractive and also a bit papery which would work well for us.  It is really only four colors besides Black and White Top Section:  border=tan; titleforeground=#503b1e; titlebackground=antiquewhite; background=white; foreground=black  Botom Section: bgcolor="#fff";  bgcolor="tan"; bgcolor="antiquewhite".  How many  colors should we have in the pallette?--BirgitteSB 14:49, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that one's got a quite nice colour scheme. AllanHainey 15:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikisource talk:Template messages/Sandbox. I put some templates likely to appear on the same page both as is and with the above colors. What does everyone think of this? --BirgitteSB 01:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Plan for a suite of colours
On Sciptorium there has been a discussion about the wording and colours of the new welcome page. There has been a view held by several that we need to establish a list of infobox templates used for different purposes, and then agree colours for them. In my view its important to get this list right first and then deal with the colors later.

Here follows my thoughts, please amend as necessary.


 * Templates used on document pages
 * a) The new header, b) The text quality box on the discussion page and c) the link button to get to this from the document page. d) There is a template for an info box about the origin of the text, etc, but this might be dropped now is the information could be added by editors to the notes section of the new header. Its very ugly and boxy e) there are also templates for getting to section of a document, such as the alphabetical parts of an index, eg, its a long box with buttons A, B, C, clicking which will jump to the parts indicated


 * Templates used for copyright information
 * a)by date of publication, b)by special licensing such as UK Gov.


 * General Wikisource messages
 * such as the document is a copyvio.


 * Templates used on User pages
 * such as the date template and the Meta Account template I have on mine.


 * Portal templates
 * so far we have them for Commmunuity (which needs a major re-think IMHO), poetry and speeches.


 * PLus anything else I have overlooked.

I think we much endeavour to have each of the templates in a type having a common colour scheme, but not all templates groups need be identical. I am very happy with the grey scheme of the copyright templates for example. It will be much more user-friendly and professional-looking if all the infobox templates used on the documents have the same colours.

As to the colours, we seem happy with that of the main page, and the antique white/tan of the welcome page has found favour. I suggest we stick with using variations of this, namely we use shades of tan, brown, some yellows, orange, etc, plus some greys, rather than blues, greens, and reds. I feel that this range of colours has warmth, and if adopted across WS generally will form a sort of house style for our work.

From here on I am in difficulty as I am not at all familiar with web-design, and don't know how to design a simple program for this page which would allow us to have some small sample boxes showing the colours and their HTML names/numbers shown. Once we have an consensus of the sorts of colours we want to use, maybe somebody could do this so we can see that the result is and vote if necessary. Apwoolrich 12:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Further to the last paragraph, see and click 'Colour Swatches to see all the HTML clours named. Apwoolrich 15:05, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

To rephrase what Apwoolrich said in a different way I also stumbled across this which has color info that we might find useful w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Color & List of colors. Other than that we also need to remember that the TOC style colors may also appear on any page in addition to what we do with the templates.--BirgitteSB 16:46, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Templates give information particular to the text (header; same temp but different info for every instance used)
 * 2) Templates give meta-information about the text (license; same info used many times)
 * 3) Templates made for navigation a particular series documents and will not be used with any other text outside the series(Book of Mormon)
 * 4) Templates give information about Wikisource's opinion of the text (copyvio, deletion}
 * 5) Templates give information about the Wikisource community {Welcome template, Proposed policy, babel, etc.}
 * 6) Templates are used to warn users of unacceptable behaivour (test)

Examples of the templates in use
Building on Birgitte's analysis above.Many thanks;-), I now propose slotting in the various templates we actually have as follows. This will take a bit bit time as I have to find them.Apwoolrich 18:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I am using samples pulled from documents as they give bettter idea of the templates in actual use. Apwoolrich 18:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)