User talk:Rodasmith/Archive 5

Welcome Back!

Welcome back! --EncycloPetey 07:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks like most of the good old crew is still around. Just dropping by to deposit a synonyms.  :-) Rod (A. Smith) 07:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:possessive of

...What languages other than English were you considering to use this template for? Most inflected languages use the genitive to express possession, though not all do. And even mong those that do, some have more than one form of expressing possession depending upon the specifics of the construction (e.g. Latin). Some inflcected languages don;t have a possessive case for nouns (e.g. Spanish). --EncycloPetey 23:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of any specific language other than English, but just based it off of {{plural of}}. I'm really just looking to remove entries from Category:English nouns that lack inflection template. I'm not possessive about the template so feel free to restrict this template to English, rename the template to {{genitive of}} or change it in any other way you see fit.  :-) Rod (A. Smith) 23:45, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

No,it's not that I think the template should be renamed. I'm not not sure there's much call for having the template, since we tend not to include English possessive forms, and the template won't apply much (if at all) outside of English. I think it would just be easier to hard-code the category into the entry and leave it at that. Also, a template for {{genitive of}} would have problems in that both nouns, pronouns, and adjectives have genitive forms, and in some languages even articles have genitive forms. Languages with a genitive also have to worry about whether the word is singular or plural, and often have gender issues as well. Such a template would be rather complicated to capture all that and the language as well. --EncycloPetey 23:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. I'll delete the template. Rod (A. Smith) 23:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

thanx

thanx for your help, entry looks good now. CeilingCrash 00:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About Persian

Hi, I noticed some of your edits of Persian entries, I am new to Wiktionary and want to work on adding Persian entries but I wasn't sure about which transliteration system should be used, so there is a new discussion started which might be of interest to you, as I noticed you asked this question previously. Thanks :) Pistachio 23:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Template question

A question for you about the difficulty and time required to write a potentially useful template: How much would it take for you to create a general "form of" template that could accept parameters and interpret and assemble them as follows:

Input:

{{anulare|ānulāre|n|nom|s}}

Output:

neuter nominative singular of ānulāre.

The first two parameters in the template are the link form and display form for the entry. The remaining parameters are a series of grammatical abbreviations. The key is that we need a form of template the can accept a series of parameters in abbreviated form (for ease of editor entry) and convert them to full form (possibly linking to an entry or Glossary for individual terms like "neuter". The snag is that number of following templates would vary, depending on the part of speech and complexity required. Ideally, the template would default to simply display parameters "as is" that were not part of the interpretations list, and it should be straightforward for a user to add new parameter interpretations without having to know how to read subtle complexities in the template script.

So, at a first glance, how complex do you think this would be to write? --EncycloPetey 01:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

See the very simple proof of concept at User talk:Rodasmith/inflection. We can augment the template to include specific tags (e.g. "m"->"masculine", etc.), but sticking with that approach will cause the template to grow quickly to accomodate the various tags and their various permutations. We can overcome that problem by creating supporting grammar tag expansion templates, e.g. {{grammar tag n}} could expand to "neuter", {{grammar tag nom}} to "nominative", etc., and the template could insist that each grammar tag be defined before it is used. Rod (A. Smith) 01:24, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. How long would something like this take to be functional? --EncycloPetey 01:28, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I could have a functional version within an hour from now using the grammar tag expansion route. The longest portion of the process for getting it into production would be the collaboration phase (waiting for feedback from the other folks in WT:GP). Rod (A. Smith) 01:32, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

That could be speeded up given that I can name three users besides myself who could make extensive use of this template (Atelaes, Medellia, and Saltmarsh) for Greek and Latin. --EncycloPetey 01:42, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

See {{inflection of}}. Adding new grammar tags is a cinch. Can you list the tags you need and how they would expand? Rod (A. Smith) 01:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

To jump in... "voc" for vocative and "abl" for ablative would be nice! Thanks for making it; that template will really come in handy. Medellia 02:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's a basic list:

• masculine (m), feminine (f), neuter (n), common (c)
• nominative (nom), genitive (gen), dative (dat), accusative (acc), vocative (voc), ablative (abl), locative (loc), instrumental (instr)
• singular (s), dual (d), plural (p)
• animate (anim), inanimate (inan)
• positive (pos), comparative (com), superlative (sup)
• mutated form (mut), lenited form (len)
• first person (1p), second person (2p), third person (3p), polite form (pol)
• possessive (poss)

...and I think that "definite" and "indefinite" might be needed for certain Scandinavian languages. I'm trying to come up with all the major parameteres for European languages only (excluding Ural languages).

The only additional weird bit I can think of right now is a need for masculine and feminine. If this works well, we might do a similar (but separate) one for the conjugation of verbs. Separate because the grammatical overlap with other parts of speech is minimal, and it would keep the template list shorter on each. --EncycloPetey 02:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. When that list is ready, just list them here with the desired abbreviations and I'll add them to the template. Rod (A. Smith) 02:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got the major ones already. We might just need to advertise in the Grease Pit for further needs. I've added the desired abbreviations above. --EncycloPetey 02:16, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

A few more for Finnish cases: partitive (part), inessive (iness), elative (ela), illative (illa), adessive (adess), allative (alla), essive (ess), translative (trans), instructive (instruc), abessive (abess), comitative (com) Medellia 02:20, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

...and there are even more in Hungarian. I myself think including the Uralic languages would push the template beyond easy usability. --EncycloPetey 02:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed your note about Ural languages. Sorry! (Are there even significant contributions in regards to non-lemma forms of Uralic languages such that their inclusion would be warranted?) Medellia 02:23, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

No. We've had only a couple of active Hungarians, who added lemma forms primarily. We have a few active Finnish editors, but they too focus primarily on lemma forms. In the case of the Finns, it might be the lack of a template holding them back on creating pages for non-lemmas. I don't know. We also has one or two active Estonians, but they've gone to working primarily on the Estonian Wiktionary now. --EncycloPetey 02:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for jumping in a bit late on this conversation. Perhaps a practical approach to this would be to have the main template be more of a redirect of sorts. The first paramater could be the language code. This first input would then tell the primary template which of its subsections to access. This would allow a bit more customization and flexibility. This would allow for the possibility of doing things with Uralic languages without having to deal with that box of worms just now. The second paramater would be what type of word we're working with (verb, adjective, noun, etc.). An additional benefit of this would be that the template would now know exactly how many parameters it's looking for. Additionally, it could automatically put the appropriate category in (xlanguage POS forms), and allow for certain conventions specific to languages (such as Greek needing ἀπό sorted as απο). I realize this adds a great deal of complexity to the project, and I apologize for this, but I think it really is necessary for widespread use. Having said that, I am completely and absolutely not up to the task of writing the programming for such a monster. Perhaps you might be Rodasmith? Atelaes 06:20, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

The current concept for the template is one that is intended to be largely flexible. You have to add the entry and display form up front, but the remainder of parameters may come in any order that reads well. I think your suggested approach would be far more complex than you realize. First, it would add several parameters as necessary for the template to work. Those parameters would have to be placed in the right order too, unless we added lang= and pos= calls, which would necessitate more interpreting script. This addiitonal complexity of coding is not necessarily bad, but it causes some additional headaches that we have with the current inflectional templates.

Consider that plural nouns are put in Category:X plurals, not in a category using the word noun. We don't have a way with the current {{plural of}} template to distinguish whether the entry is a noun, adjective, or other plural. We don't have a way to categorize comparative and superlative inflectional forms (and in Greek and Latin there are a lot of them for each adjective). So, we'd have to have a whole new set of codes to designate all the possible POS sorting categories and subcategories built into the template. And we'd have to make this kind of sorting customizeable for each language? And we want to be able to expand the template to cover all languages? I think that's far more than a single template needs to do. There are too many language-specific variations for every aspect imaginable (and some unimaginable).

Personally, I'd rather just add the POS category by hand, or else have someone develop a 'bot that can read the inflection templates and add the appropriate category. This template can serve as a general one, without specifying the language or POS. However, for those who want automated categorization, there is nothing preventing someone from creating a new template like {{hu-inflection of}} that is modelled on the generic template, but that adds categorization features specific to Hungarian. --EncycloPetey 14:40, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

You might want to compare {{infl}} ... Robert Ullmann 16:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

That template is inadequate for the needs of Latin inflection, and the documaentation notes that it is only for simple uses. There are too many permutations and parameters needed. --EncycloPetey 19:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

EP: I'm not saying that; only that it would be useful to compare! (I.e. what I said ;-) Robert Ullmann 23:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

re: Appreciation

Thank you ;-). We've missed you ...

Might you take a look at User:AutoFormat and tell me what you think? Robert Ullmann 16:16, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

ko sort order

I'm pretty sure, given my recall of what we were doing in Unicode with Hangeul blocks, that ㄷ더블린 will give the same net sort order (if used for all entries) as ㄷㅏㅂㅡㄹㄹㅣㄴ. So we could just use hidx=ㄷ and add {{PAGENAME}} in the template? The only visible effect either way is the single letter keys? Would make life easier. Or is there something else we want to do with the hidx key? Robert Ullmann 16:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Much easier. Rod (A. Smith) 17:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Part of speech for 있다

Das taugt nicht. (That is of no use.) In this case, the German verb taugen "to be fit, useful" is not a real but so to speak adjectival verb. Latin also has the like, but the Modern English has not, corruptedly or not. Most if not all Korean adjectives are such verbs but rather called adjectives instead. They conjugate almost like verbs, but not exactly. Remarkably, they use the infinitive as the present tense, while verbs don't. (The present tense of the infinitive verb 가다 "to go" is 간다.) So do the verbial 이다 "to be," and 있다 "to be, exist," so that these also would better be regarded as adjectives.

English stative verbs and Korean adjectives would be the more or less similar if not the same kind in that the latter are not dynamic but static states by nature. Anyway, comparative efforts in terms of identity and difference would be rewarding, I guess. Cheers. --KYPark 10:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

My third reply beginning with "Right" --KYPark 09:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

My 4th reply beginning with "The best text" --KYPark 01:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Removal of headline templates

Hi, anon. I'm confused about your edits like this. Are they just attempts to make the words categorize correctly? If so, note that the hidx parameter on the {{ko-verb}} template already does that. Rod (A. Smith) 21:27, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Really? Didn't know that, thanks a lot. 80.109.117.16 20:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but Korean category sorting is still imperfect. (See Wiktionary talk:About Korean#Category sorting.) Thanks for your help with Korean entries. It's fine to work anonymously, but consider creating an account. Registration is free and it helps us communicate more easily. If you still want to work anonymously, though, that's OK. Thank you for your help. Rod (A. Smith) 23:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Done - I did just sign up. Damai 20:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

ety levels, defaultsort

With one (or "zero") etymology, the POS stay at L3 ...

About defaultsort; very handy, but what exactly do we want to do? Set back to default/other language sort at end of section?

If in Han char space 大學校 it should get set to rad/stroke by default (or maybe so). See this entry, you have it reset before the topic cat at the end.

We need to figure out how to use this. (Which is why I had been ignoring it ;-)

Cheers! Robert Ullmann 23:53, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in the Han char space, DEFAULTSORT should use the radical/stroke count. The best convention I know of is to set DEFAULTSORT immediately after each (L2) language heading that requires a sorting other than Unicode, then to reset it at the end of that language section. That's what I had done in 大學校 but MW seemed to ignore my effort because even though I had only reset DEFAULTSORT at the end of the entry [1], MW kept sorting the entry in the Unicode position of the pagename within the Korean categories. Maybe a second DEFAULTSORT confuses MW. In any event, AutoFormat should probably recognize "\{\{DEFAULTSORT[^}]*}}" as a non-movable element. Rod (A. Smith) 00:12, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%B8%E6%A0%A1. Only the last DEFAULTSORT on a page has any effect. I guess we shouldn't use it.  :-( Rod (A. Smith) 00:27, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

by ignoring it, I mean I was not trying to use it because I wasn't sure how, nothing to do with AF (AF considers any unknown template or parser function as immovable). If it worked, as you say it could be set at the top of each language section (probably never needs to be reset, the next language in these entries would set it. Wonder what's with it. (Really should go back to looking at the MW code ;-) Robert Ullmann 14:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The documentation at meta:Help:Category is wrong, at meta:Help:Magic words is correct: it applies to the whole page, including categories preceeding it. See revision 18629. Robert Ullmann 15:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, replacevariables is called for the whole page before replaceinternallinks, which sets the cat keys. Robert Ullmann 15:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

userpage

Hi Rod, could be an ass and ask you to remove your user page from Category:English proper nouns? --Keene 10:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you still IRC?

There is still a #wiktionary channel...  :-)   --Connel MacKenzie 03:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite, Connel. I have been away but intend to hop back onto freenode when time affords, hopefully soon. Cheers. Rod (A. Smith) 05:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I must have mistaken someone with a similar IRC nick on #wm-tech. --Connel MacKenzie 17:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Rod,

Just wanted to say thanks for the improvements to {{ko-conj-verb}}. I'd been thinking that something like that would come in mighty handy, and it certainly does. Cheers, -- Visviva 07:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC) PS. By the way, I've been mulling over User:Robert Ullmann's objections to {{ko-pron}}, and trying to think of a way to retain the basic Pronunciation:Romanizations structure without conflating the two. Comments/improvements to {{ko-pron/draft}} would be most welcome.