Template talk:CT-1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This template is used in the Character/Symbol Chart/Box/Table, where multiple cells needs to be shown as One block for each specific character/symbol. It is helpful for cell and data grouping. ~ Tarikash 22:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC).

Currently using it in this page Miscellaneous Technical (Unicode). ~ Tarikash 22:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC).

[edit] This is ridiculous!

Making dozens of templates for the purpose of styling tables? If you find that the cell styles of wikitables aren't diverse enough for your purposes, you are better off making a case for new class styles to be added to Mediawiki:Common.css, not creating a batch of discordant templates.

The naming system of these templates don't follow any logical order or reason... How is one to know what a template named "CT-5" does within a table, or how it differs from "CT-9", without using this lengthy reference guide? Asking editors to remember what each of these indistinguishable templates do is a tall order, unless you intend to subst: each and every one of them (which I can't imagine to be much of a time-saver). In addition, these templates contain mostly arbitrary style changes, and they don't look like they meet any sort of consensus from WP:MOS or anywhere.

It's completely obtuse system—while it may save some time for the initial editor creating a table, it in turn makes the work of future editors much more difficult. Moreover, it seems their intented use is superfluous; if a table needs more stylistic alteration than HTML already allows, the table is too complication and should be reduced or reformatted, or styled directly into the table code itself if necessary.

Here's an example of why these templates are needless. The following table, using these templates, was found at Optical character recognition#Optical Character Recognition in Unicode:

  Symbol Name  
Hex
Symbol's Picture
OCR Hook OCR Chair OCR Fork OCR Inverted Fork OCR Belt Buckle
0x2440 0x2441 0x2442 0x2443 0x2444
Image:U+2440.gif Image:U+2441.gif Image:U+2442.gif Image:U+2443.gif Image:U+2444.gif
OCR Bow Tie OCR Branch Bank Identification OCR Amount Of Check OCR Customer Account Number OCR Dash
0x2445 0x2446 0x2447 0x2448 0x2449
Image:U+2445.gif Image:U+2446.gif Image:U+2447.gif Image:U+2448.gif Image:U+2449.gif
OCR Double Backslash   Not Defined   Not Defined   Not Defined   Not Defined
0x244A 0x244B 0x244C 0x244D 0x244E
Image:U+244A.gif - - - -

And here's a modified version of the same table, with the same cell information, using standard wikicode with CSS and no template calls:

Unicode Symbol Characters
Block: Optical Character Recognition
Hexadecimal Range: 0x2440–0x245F
Hex Number Dec Number Symbol Name Glyph Picture of Glyph
0x2440 9280 OCR Hook Image:U+2440.gif
0x2441 9281 OCR Chair Image:U+2441.gif
0x2442 9282 OCR Fork Image:U+2442.gif
0x2443 9283 OCR Inverted Fork Image:U+2443.gif
0x2444 9284 OCR Belt Buckle Image:U+2444.gif
0x2445 9285 OCR Bow Tie Image:U+2445.gif
0x2446 9286 OCR Branch Bank Identification Image:U+2446.gif
0x2447 9287 OCR Amount Of Check Image:U+2447.gif
0x2448 9288 OCR Customer Account Number Image:U+2448.gif
0x2449 9289 OCR Dash Image:U+2449.gif
0x244A 9290 OCR Double Backslash Image:U+244A.gif
0x244B

0x245F
9291

9311
Reserved

There was even room leftover for another column of more information!

My message is this: Keep it simple! —Down10 TACO 08:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)