Module talk:ang-adjective

Refurbishment of this template

The edit summary isn't long enough to explain my edit, so here is the explanation.

The old iteration of the template was cramped - it looked like something designed for 640x480 monitors 25 years ago. What's more, the template's width choices (fixed overall width, but flexible column width within that set space) created a poor look for long adjectives, especially where multiple alternative case forms needed to be shown in the same cell (e.g. gestrienendlic). Not to mention that the template did not look good at all in Wiktionary's new dark mode.

I made the following changes:

• use {{inflection-table-top}} to get instant dark mode support and resolve the cramping/layout issues
• place plural next to singular, as is done for {{grc-adecl}}, {{el-decl-adj}}, {{la-adecl}}, {{de-adecl}} (admittedly with no gender distinction in plural), ... The West and North Germanic adjective templates seem to be the odd ones out in the way they present plural below singular.
• place alternative case forms on a new line below the main form, rather than offset by commas. This ensures a more consistent layout and avoid making the template wider than it needs to be - instead we use the other dimension available to us: height. This has long been the approach taken by the Latin templates among others.

Unfortunately this change means that strong and weak boxes don't always take up the same width. One may be slightly wider than the other. This is ugly, but the only way to solve it, short of setting a fixed width on the template (which will bring back the cramping/layout issues mentioned above), is to incorporate both strong and weak declensions in the same collapsible box. With plural placed beside singular, I think the whole declension (strong and weak) fits comfortably on a single computer screen, so if there's no opposition I will make this change at some stage.

Another issue is that this change is arguably a backward step for mobile users. It would be possible to rearrange the template so on a wide screen (e.g. computer) you see

StrongSingular  WeakSingular
StrongPlural    WeakPlural

and on a narrow screen (e.g. mobile) you see

StrongSingular 
StrongPlural   
WeakSingular
WeakPlural

but this is inconsistent with what Wiktionary readers are likely to expect - namely, to find the plural forms to the right of the corresponding singular.

What this template really needs to make it premium-quality are:

• merging of adjacent cells where the declined forms are identical (as already seen in Latin templates - see aspectabilis) to improve readability
• place the plural form below the singular only on narrow screens (e.g. mobile) to reduce excessive horizontal scrolling

Neither of these issues are Old English-specific and they both require a significant time investment to come up with a proper solution.

This, that and the other (talk) 02:13, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I've tried to improve the situation on mobile by making the left column "sticky", so as you scroll across to see the plural forms, the left column (showing the case labels) stays "stuck" in place. Give it a try! This, that and the other (talk) 02:42, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@Vergencescattered I'd be grateful if you could read my comments here, and respond. Thanks, This, that and the other (talk) 06:53, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@JnpoJuwan @Mellohi! I'm not on Discord (I fear it would be too much of a timesink were I to join!) so let's centralise discussion here. Keen to hear your thoughts as well. This, that and the other (talk) 00:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I appreciate the work you're doing to try to update our templates, and I fully agree that the colors should be modified to fit with dark mode. I don't think the template width is a problem—even on my phone, it's not an issue—but I not concerned about that change either. However, the updated version simply looked a lot worse than the old one. In particular, creating two separate tables within the strong and weak sections is harder to read and less appealing than the current look. I'm not opposed to making changes, but I am opposed to a change that in my opinion (and that of every other Old English editor I've talked to) makes it looks worse. Using commas to separate forms might not be ideal, but putting them on separate lines causes a much bigger problem, so I don't think it's the solution.

Which brings me to my next point—I find it very frustrating that you have made significant changes (and, in my opinion, downgrades) to both the Old English noun and adjective templates without even attempting to talk to any Old English editors. This is a major change, and shouldn't be dictated solely by you. I'm aware that there has been some agreement on updating templates, but there isn't a standard formatting that was decided by consensus. If consensus here is to use the new templates, I'll of course abide by it, but there should be a discussion first for changes that will affect thousands of pages.

I also have to point out that prior to your edits, the noun, adjective and verb templates for OE were all made in the same style, which is no longer the case due to your edits on here and Module:ang-noun. The latter edits, I might add, are also opposed by multiple OE editors and warrant further discussion. I didn't revert that because it's not as egregious as this, but I am still unhappy about the changes that were made there.

As for combining cells with identical forms, I think that's a good idea, but it's not a change that should be made without discussion. However, I don't see any reason that we need this template to resemble the Latin adjective template. OE and other Germanic adjectives are different than Latin adjectives, and so I see no reason to try to rearrange Germanic templates to resemble the Latin ones. I don't think people are going to be confused by a slightly different arrangement since, as it stands, the OE template is very clear and most people aren't going to be looking at both often enough for it to really make a significant difference. However, that's not a hill I care to die on, so I would like to see how others feel.

Also, I apologize for reverting your whole edit, since the dark mode changes especially are good; I don't know enough about template editing to pick out individual pieces of code. However, I do think there needs to be discussion here before any more changes are made, and I would prefer if the ang-noun module could also be reverted until there has been discussion. Vergencescattered (talk) 03:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Vergencescattered thanks for the response. It helps to understand your point of view.

Deciding whether to seek consensus before editing, or forgiveness afterwards, is always a difficult issue when it comes to wiki editing. See w:WP:BRD for an endorsement of the latter approach, albeit in a slightly different context. I have chosen this "bold-revert-discuss" path for most of this template refurbishment work, mainly because most language communities have few or no active editors with whom to consult or seek consensus, and in most cases the changes I'm making are less drastic than my change to {{ang-adecl}}.

After a Greek-language editor expressed some concerns about my changes to {{el-decl-adj}}, I am making an effort to consult with language communities where they exist and are active. For example, I identified Vorziblix as an active Egyptian editor (perhaps the only one) so have asked them for feedback on proposed changes to Egyptian templates. Another approach I am taking is to look at {{wgping}} to see if there is a relevant workgroup and the editors listed are active - clearly this is the case for Old English, so I must have omitted to check {{wgping}} when it came to Old English!

Hopefully that helps you to understand my editing approach.

As for your specific concerns, I certainly appreciate that it was a big change to this template - admittedly perhaps bigger than it needed to be. I'd be glad to work with you and others to come to an agreement on what would work well. Alongside dark mode, I'm especially keen to remove the fixed width, which creates problems in the different skins, and improve the use of space within the template, which is cramped down the left column and overly spacious everywhere else.

The splitting of the singular and plural sections of the table with a separator gap is done so that the reader can immediately see the subdivisions in what is a very large table of forms. This is not a new idea - the Ancient Greek, Latin, and Latvian adjective declension tables have had this for some time. You also see it in verb tables like {{en-conj}} and {{is-conj}}. I'm surprised to find objections to it - perhaps the Old English editing community is not used to it.

Since you also mentioned {{ang-decl-noun}}, I'd like to explain my rationale there:

• The old template used two different font sizes (headers and content cells) which are smaller than the page content font. There is no reason why the declension table should use smaller text, nor any justification for the even smaller header cell fonts. Reading through page histories, I'm having trouble working out whether this was done deliberately or as a side-effect of some other change. Either way, it doesn't seem to be justified in 2024 (if it ever was).
• The template is tiny and there is no good reason for it to be collapsible. We see the guidance at Wiktionary:Templates#Inflection-table templates: "Unless they are very small, these tables should be made collapsible".
• Other than these changes, the template essentially retains the same look as before. The indigo colour scheme has been kept as is. Moreover, it now works in dark mode.

Did you have any concerns with these points, aside from the now-inconsistency with other ang- tables? This, that and the other (talk) 09:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm definitely okay with changing the width, and while I still don't think there's much of a reason to split singular and plural, I'm okay with it as long as it looks good. The Greek declension table, for example, is arranged such that the singular/dual/plural sections are all the same size, with padding between them. ἑξακισμυριοτετρακισχιλιοστός, for example, looks pretty good due to the padding, the fact that each number/gender is the same size, and the color choice.

As for the noun template, I'm fine with making it not collapsable and I'm not particularly concerned about the font size, but you have completely changed the way it looks. It has lines now that it doesn't need, the "case" heading is gone for no reason, and the "Declension of X (strong x-stem) is no longer part of the table, but is in plain text above it, which looks much worse and is completely unnecessary. It seems like you're trying to make it look like the Latin templates, but since the recent changes made to those templates, they don't look very good, and shouldn't be imitated. Currently, the OE noun template looks sterile and like it was copied from a spreadsheet, instead of an actually appealing template like the old one. The same was true of the edits made to the adjective template, and ones made to the Latin template. And to be honest, I genuinely don't know how you can say it looks the same as before when you completely changed the way it looks. (comparison of the two) Vergencescattered (talk) 04:08, 3 December 2024 (UTC)