Template talk:Xyzy

Adding more languages

How about adding Old Armenian (code {{xcl}}) to this list? Admittedly, the language is not terribly important, but the default font (Sylfaen) and size (too small) of Armenian letters in all versions of Windows is extremely badly chosen, unlike Cyrillic or Georgian, so it is important to have sc=Armn always forced. --Vahagn Petrosyan 06:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

As noted above, we should consider a few additions but very carefully; the tradeoff is between template code that is parsed millions of time (if one was to re-render the whole database) vs the number of useful cases. Adding another code for a script already in the switch is less expensive that a new script. The other issue is that removing a case would be painful, as there is no automatic way to find the uses. Robert Ullmann 09:49, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

It is CRITICAL that this list be revised very carefully; just throwing in a bunch of "reasonable" additions will cause overhead that makes the template a de-optimization. And it is very difficult to remove things. Add to the list below and we will look at the stats and add some presently. Robert Ullmann

So for now, suggested additions:

code	script	language	comments
xcl	Armn	Old Armenian	default font (Sylfaen) and size (too small) of Armenian letters in all versions of Windows is extremely badly chosen, done
ur	ur-Arab	Urdu	probably a good idea, especially as Nastaʿlīq script is distinctive, done
cu	Cyrs	Old Church Slavonic	would be a default (all others are known, not defaulted), display w/o it is okay, done
got	Goth	Gothic	Opera and IE apparently display boxes even with font installed w/o this, done
bn	Beng	Bengali	under consideration, ~180 entries, ~350 trans, bn.wikt
mr	Deva	Marathi	under consideration, ~90 entries, ~450 trans, mr.wikt
gu	Gujr	Gujarati	under consideration, ~60 entries, ~300 trans, gu.wikt
ka	Geor	Georgian	under consideration, ~800 entries, ~1400 trans, ka.wikt

Others: cu Old Church Slavonic would be a good idea, but has two scripts (Glagolitic and Cyrillic) with probably no useful default. We might decide to default it to Cyrillic and require sc=Glag on the others; this sort of thing (defaulting) has not been considered carefully yet.

Note, cu Old Church Slavonic should default to {{Cyrs}}, not {{Cyrl}}. And Glagolitic is used much, much rarer so it would indeed be a good idea to explicitly require sc=Glag everytime needed. --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Added above: note that by treating Cyrs as the default (rather than always correct) script for cu, this is modifying the semantics of the template a bit. Probably an okay idea. Robert Ullmann 07:40, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

As Hindi and Urdu are essentially two dialects of one language and while working on one, I frequently edit and make use of the other, I am going to re-add ur=ur-Arab to the template. A month of indecision is quite enough for at least this one edit. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 23:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC) I could take this opportunity to be myself, but I'd rather just leave it to an investigator to see what the hell this strike was for. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 23:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Deletion debate

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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Template:Xyzy

Problematic template. Though very widely used, only used via very heavily used template such as {{term}}, {{l}} and {{t}}. So in actual fact, it could be orphaned very quickly. The problem is, as I understand it, that it slows down the loading of pages too much, and it only contains a handful of languages, because to contain more than that it would make entries so large, you'd be unable to read them. So I spend a lot of time adding sc= parameters to bypass Xyzy, therefore saving space in entries. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

A while ago I proposed moving the script information into the language templates themselves, so that each language could be 'queried' for its script and other related information. That would make this and other templates redundant. —CodeCat 18:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

It also kills the AutoFormat bot. Just another reason to get rid of it. -- Prince Kassad 16:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a "Be bold" kind of situation. How about someone who knows how to make a bot just takes {{langscript}}'s pile of language-script listings, autocreates things like {{sc:en}}, {{sc:fr}}, {{sc:he}}, etc. (with the four letter script code as its content), and fill those not covered by langscript with "None". Then we can deprecate Xyzy and other templates. --Yair rand (talk) 17:15, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm totally in favor of something that effectively and efficiently reduces or eliminates the need to specify sc=, but this template....really sucks at it. Kill it with fire. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:21, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Discussion has been moved to WT:GP#Replacing {{Xyzy}}, {{langscript}} and others

Failed. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

So, this needs orphaning and deleting? -- Prince Kassad 14:48, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposed new version.

See Wiktionary:Grease pit#Script support. A proposed new version would not have a magic list of hard-coded languages, but would instead use {{en/script}} and so on. Also, it would offer a sc= parameter, so that other templates can do something like {{ Xyzy | ... | sc={{{sc|}}} | lang={{{lang|}}} }} rather than something like {{ {{#if: {{{sc|}}} | {{{sc}}} | Xyzy }} | ... | lang={{{lang|}}} }}. —Ruakh_TALK 20:38, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

It seems that it would turn the template into a generic way to use script templates much in the way that {{language}} is used for language codes. —CodeCat 21:30, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't {{langscript}} already do this? Could we just redirect Xyzy to that? --Mglovesfun (talk) 21:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

{{langscript}} does only a very small part of what is needed: it doesn't support face= (which is necessary) or sc= (which is desirable IMHO, for the reason I gave above), and only partially supports lang= (whereas full support would be desirable); and it breaks horribly when lang= is not specified (which currently occurs in {{Xyzy}} in all instances of {{term}} where neither sc= nor lang= is specified, and who-knows-where else). If we make my proposed change to {{Xyzy}}, then I think we'll be able to redirect {{langscript}} to {{Xyzy}} without harm; but if we were to redirect {{Xyzy}} to {{langscript}} right now, without greatly enhancing the latter, then we would cause noticeable breakage in a lot of pages. —Ruakh_TALK 23:39, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, correction: {{langscript}} does something a bit different. It is equivalent to the new {{Xyzy/script}}. —Ruakh_TALK 15:59, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Something is wrong in Ἀράξης. --Vahag 20:31, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

That entry referred to the script-template {{Zyyy}} ("Code for undetermined script"), which didn't exist. I've created that template, but also changed the page not to use it, since we're giving the word in Latin script. Thanks for pointing it out. —Ruakh_TALK 22:13, 25 July 2011 (UTC)