Template talk:topic cat

Boiler template replacement

I would like to see some functionality to help replace {{dercatboiler}}, {{etymcatboiler}} and {{dercatnav}}. I created these to handle navigation through the Etymology categories for both English and foreign languages since {{nav}} was inappropriate. The functionality required would be to use the foreign language parent category in some cases - this would allow us to replace {{dercatboiler}} and {{etymcatboiler}}.--Williamsayers79 13:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion to assist people to start using this scheme

I think this looks very exciting, and I have begun learning how this works. I'm sure many like myself go rather blank when first attempting to read the documentation on a rather complex template scheme such as this, no matter how genially concocted, so I suggest one litte feature to the template. When added to the mother category (i.e. the English category), the template should do an automatic check to see that the Template:topic cat parents/topic exists, and if it doesn't. it should display a link to Template:topic cat parents so that the requisite parent(s) can be defined. __meco 16:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

That works for everything except for the top-level *Topics categories, but I suppose those could be a special case. The reason I did it the way I did was that I wanted to be able to eventually redirect {{nav}} here without having it make everything using nav immediately display a nag message. Mike Dillon 03:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, I've done some Javascript stuff for myself to make populating these a little easier: User:Mike Dillon/Scripts/topicCats.js. It adds a "parents" tab to any non-colon category page to allow population of parent helper template from the existing category parents and it adds an "Update parents" button to the edit form when editing a subpage of Template:topic cat parents. Not sure how relevant it is... Mike Dillon 03:47, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I just enhanced this code to do an AJAX check to see if the parent topic config template exists and color the tab red if it doesn't. The benefit to doing things this way is that you can config the parents before switching the category content to use the topic cat template. P.S. My JS code depends on User:Mike Dillon/Scripts/easydom.js, so both of them need to be imported. Mike Dillon 04:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Child category doesn't show in language table

Category:Bedding presently doesn't show a link for Category:no:Bedding. A bug? __meco 09:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The call to topic cat was passing "bedding" instead of "Bedding". I've fixed it. Mike Dillon 01:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Good. __meco 06:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Categorization

Why does this template (or its child {{topic cat parents}}) subcategorize all foreign language topical categories under (xx):*Topics even when they have other legitimate parents? For instance, it places Category:fr:Rare under both Category:fr:Lexicons and Category:fr:*Topics. We don't do it for the English ones (Category:Rare is only under Category:Lexicons, not Category:*Topics) so why would we do it for the FL ones? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 12:32, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it because we can't guarantee that proximate parent (e.g. Category:fr:Lexicons) exists? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 07:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

See a thread on the same subject in #Only main categories in All topics below. --Dan Polansky 10:41, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Priveleged placement of English language categories requested

It seems surprising to me that a user of English wiktionary would always have to click an extra time and then find English in the ever-growing list of languages, but at least still on the first page. Can't English be given a priveleged position? If we don't do this, it is another way of reducing the usefulness of this wiktionary to monolingual users. DCDuring TALK 11:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

How about following the same ordering that we do for entries on a page: Translingual, English, [everything else alphabetical]? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 04:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

That reduces/postpones the likelihood that English categories won't be on a first page, but it increases the chance of confusion. If monolingual users are header-blind, then they will be confused. "Translingual" is a label that only a linguist could love. It is not so bad for entries in cases where:

1. the content suggests the meaning, as with Letters and Symbols,
2. a monolingual user wouldn't find it (CJKV character) without having overcome a hurdle which suggests that they would understand (entering the characters)
3. the users who find it would find what they want on the entry (taxonomic names).

Categories don't have those characteristics, IMHO. DCDuring TALK 12:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I'm not exactly sure of the situation you originally thought was problematic. I thought you were concerned that English didn't show up first in places like Category:Nouns by language. But are you concerned that English isn't listed in Category:Fundamental, or something else? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 15:22, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Changing "*Topic" to "All topics"

Per WT:RFDO#Category:*Topics I was going to modify these templates to point to the new topical root. Is the best way to change the {{topic cat parents}} subtemplates (including {{topic cat parents/default}})? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 15:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Changed. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

subtemplate existence

I think that there's probably many calls to this template that assume that a given subtemplate (like /Agriculture) will exist (since it's a "slight" failure - and /Default is used). It would be nice to see all the calls where the subtemplate currently doesn't exist. We could identify misspellings and candidates for new subtemplates. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 15:55, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Cycle

Recursive inclusion in Category:ru:Chinese derivations should be repaired. Infovarius 19:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It's because of {{zh}} which used to say Chinese, which is of course correct, and now says Mandarin - which is wrong. But I don't think I can simply go back to the last good version without breaking numerous things. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Only main categories in All topics

I have disabled automatic placement of non-English topical categories into the non-English All topics category, by editing {{topic cat parents}}. See the Template talk:topic cat parents#Only main categories in All topics and Beer parlour: "Only main categories in All topics". --Dan Polansky 10:22, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

template issues

i've looked Category:Nouns which contains this template. categories have inconsistent naming so it shows Category:fr:Nouns as an indeed red link when the real category is Category:French nouns. all links are red but korean. same issue in adjectives. there's no link to other languages in verbs - MIRROR 20:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

No that is correct; Category:fr:Nouns would be French words relating to nouns, like um... well that's why it's a red link, I'd struggle to think of more than about three (nom, nominal would be two). Mglovesfun (talk) 12:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

In traditional/simplified script

Needs to allow script=traditional and script=simplified for Mandarin. Could be sc or script, or both. I can probably add it myself but I wanted to nofify other users first. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem in calling without the language code parameter

The documentation says "This template can now figure out any missing parameters from the name of the category, but parameters which are included must be correct.", but, e.g. at Category:ja:Prison, where I called it without any parameters, it shows the Latin alphabet in the table of contents thingy, whilst, e.g. at Category:ja:Law enforcement, where it is called with the language code parameter, it shows the Hiragana syllabary in the table of contents thingy. Nibiko (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2015 (UTC)