Wiktionary:Grease pit/Italbrac and italbrac-colon

Template:italbrac and Template:italbrac-colon

Earlier today I adapted the code from {{see}} to allow these to also take up to 9 parameters. They will be separated by simple commas but those have a CSS class of .ib-comma. I'm out of time now but haven't been able to test all the ways of displaying especially {{italbrac-colon}} - I think it may not be possible to hide a span but display a span within it - even with important. If anybody cares to look at it I'd appreciate it. — Hippietrail 03:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I threw out a lot of your work when I edited {italbrac} using {foreach}. I would have changed {see} as well except for the special end conditions. For now italbrac-colon is basically just italbrac plus a stylized colon, but if you need to change the style just substitute the call to italbrac with its contents. Davilla 13:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice! The only problem is that you took away the possibility of having the colon inside the brackets. It's probably best though since only 5 articles put it inside.

Anyway I've realized I used a bad design for the CSS classes. I was being too clever. Instead of having both inner and outer brackets and hiding one and always having the italics, I should have: a) class for the brackets which can be set to italic or plain, b) a class for the content, c) a class for the commas, and d) a class for the colon.

I'm going to simplify it that way now and post the change on the Beer parlour. If anybody really wants the possibility of putting the colon insider, speak up and I can add it. By the way, the simplification will solve the buglet of cutting and pasting resulting in two sets of brackets. — Hippietrail 19:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

At any rate, to clarify: is {{italbrac}} intended for ad-hoc definition tags such as (slang)), (colloquial), (engineering), (southwestern U.S.), etc.? And if the answer is, "Yes, but if they're recognized categories you should use {{cattag}} instead", where's the definitive list of recognized tagging categories? And if the answer is "Yes, but when predefined tagging templates such as {{US}} and {{slang}} exist, you should use those instead", where's the definitive list of those? —scs 15:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't understand your question completely, but italbrac is also used for {{transitive}} and friends, which don't need a category. — Vildricianus 16:33, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's the question in a non-hypothetical nutshell: was my use of {{italbrac|colloquial}} on boneyard sense 1 appropriate? —scs 16:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

No. You should just use {{colloquial}}. — Vildricianus 17:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Right. Next question: How am I (or for that matter any editor) supposed to know that? Is there a canonical list? —scs 18:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

You aren't. You're supposed to ask us, so that we can feel important. No, really, there is a category. There is also supposed to be a index to templates...

Aha! Got 'em. Thanks. —scs 19:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

...which is unfortunately horribly outdated and far from exhaustive. I quit working on my own list of templates as well, perhaps I'll restart that. So many things to do. — Vildricianus 19:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Now that I'm thinking of it, that's not very useful actually. The usefulness of the category it adds entries to is a bit dubious. I haven't looked very thoroughly at the {{cattag}} code itself to see how and what, but could we abrogate all the label templates and use {{cattag|colloquial}} instead? With a list of things to check it could determine which tags it should add categories for as well (transitive, no; chemistry, yes etc.) — Vildricianus 17:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

In one sense, {{colloquial}} gives us the most flexibility, because it can be easily and individually redefined to do whatever we want. But on the other hand, {{cattag|colloquial}} could conceivably (as you suggest) check the actual value of the tag and make decisions accordingly, and that would make things easier at another level, because random editors wouldn't have to remember whether to use {{colloquial}} versus {{cattag|colloquial}}, or {{Capitol Hill district of Seattle really localized slang}} versus {{cattag|Capitol Hill district of Seattle really localized slang}}. (In other words, they wouldn't have to know the answer to my question above about the location of the canonical list; they could just use {{cattag|foo}} for any tag foo, without having to know whether {{foo}} or Category:foo exists. And no, I don't know of any words that need to be tagged as "Capitol Hill district of Seattle really localized slang".)

But if we did make {{cattag}} smart enough to only populate categories for certain of its argument tag values, we might want to think about renaming it from "cattag" to, perhaps, "defntag". —scs 18:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Let Davilla work it out first. I'm sure he's doing something like this. Not really sure though. — Vildricianus 19:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

And it looks like the existing {{tag}} fills about the same need I was speculating "defntag" could be for. —scs 19:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)