Some thoughts about the new format:
- I kind of miss the pre-formated text gray background that screams, "It's a quote!"
- With a horizontal rule separating the Japanese text from the English translation, it isn't immediately obvious whether any other horizontal rules are part of the text or separating distinct blocks of text (like in Kaguya's profile)
- a second-level heading (=== text ===), with only bold text and a slightly larger font, isn't very good for skimming (I suppose it's okay anyway since the table of contents auto-links to each subsection)
- Nothing at all seems to separate different profiles from the same source (like the last two entries in Reimu's profile)
- Japanese text is indented but its English translation is not
I don't have anything constructive to offer at this time, but someone else might.
--Deciare 16:22, 21 May 2005 (PDT)
I'm trying another experimental format at User:Deciare/Testing_Something, based on Leviathean's. I've tried to address the issues I pointed out above. Mainly:
- character portraits are now positioned to the right of the Japanese text
- both Japanese and English text are left-justified
- no wasted space on the left column
- Return of the Gray Boxen *cue cheap horror movie music*
- very obvious indication of quoted text (for the next profile/source)
- no need to separate Japanese text and English translations with horizontal rules
- different profiles from the same source are now separated by blank lines and a horizontal rule (see last 2 profiles from the article linked above)
- come to think of it, this defeats the purpose of the previous point. Maybe we can do without the ---- between profiles from the same source since gray boxes are already acting as indicators that a different profile is being quoted
Comments?
--Deciare 17:48, 21 May 2005 (PDT)
Well,
- I don't really want to use the pre-format gray-boxes if possible, since it forces the page to be "wide" (i.e. doesn't word-wrap automatically). Not good when we're trying to make this work for all browsers, screen-sizes and so on.
- Hmm. I don't think there's any other profile that uses horizontal rules inside a profile text except for Kaguya's. I offer the alternate suggestion that the horizontal rules in Kaguya's official profile could be changed to maybe some centered text, as those seperations in the story text are not as important as seperations for other purposes.
- For the various profiles, the second level heading (=== text ===) used for subsections is appropriate for their relative importance. I guess maybe an additional horizontal rule would be good?
- Seperating two profiles from the same source seems to be something I forgot. I don't feel it's a big deal, but I'll experiment.
- Japanese text was always this indented, even in the quotes. Maybe it can be thought of as another way to seperate the English from the Japanese text.
I will be making some of these requested changes in Marisa Kirisame's article shortly. We can continue to reach concensus by adjusting between those two.
--Leviathean 17:59, 21 May 2005 (PDT)
Thanks for responding. I agree with most of your points, and would like to elaborate a few things:
- The gray boxes on the my test page don't contain pre-formatted text. It's a style attribute inside the <tr>. I work with an 800x600 window and don't like horizontal scrollbars either
- Mokou's profile also uses section breaks (horizontal rules). I can be blamed for both offences ;)
- a centred separator of any kind would work as well as an <hr>. What do you suggest? I used separators mainly for 3 cases:
- 2 or more consecutive line breaks in the Japanese text
- centred "--" in Japanese text
- paragraph preceded by "--" in Japanese text
- It'd be consistent, section-separation-wise, to use anything but horizontal rules to separate ===subsections=== and other small divisions. Boxes, dotted lines, shaded backgrounds, pictures...
- Oh, right, Japanese text has always been indented. But it didn't bug me as much because the box containing the text was in alignment with the English text.
--Deciare 18:18, 21 May 2005 (PDT)
Arg, you posted before I did. Okay, let's see.
- Ah, the gray box isn't the preformatted-text box like I feared, but just a background color change inside a table. Smart.
- Let's keep the table simple. Instead of having a colspan=2, why not just end the table after the picture and write the translation underneath?
- What is the class="ProfileQuote" supposed to do?
--Leviathean 18:14, 21 May 2005 (PDT)
Oops, and then you posted before me. Um... I think the posts are in chronological order now. Anyway!
- Thanks
- I don't know. I guess I'll try that now
- class="ProfileQuote" might be useful if we change the default site-wide stylesheet to tint its background, italicise its text, or somesuch. So we don't need a separate style attribute for each <tr>
--Deciare 18:18, 21 May 2005 (PDT)