User:Caroig/Geobox Town

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Borough of West Chester
Borough
none
Country United States
State Pennsylvania
County Chester
Area 1.8 sq mi (4.7 km²)
Center
 - coordinates 39°57′31″N 75°36′18″W / 39.95861, -75.605Coordinates: 39°57′31″N 75°36′18″W / 39.95861, -75.605
Population 17,861 (2000)
Density 9,703.3 /sq mi (3,746.5 /km²)
Mayor Richard "Dick" Yoder
Time zone EST (UTC-5)
 - summer (DST) EDT (UTC-4)
Area code 610
Location of West Chester in Pennsylvania
Location of West Chester in Pennsylvania
Location of Pennsylvania in the USA
Location of Pennsylvania in the USA
Website : http://www.west-chester.com
Edit the Geobox

Contents

[edit] Issues

The template solves some of the issues that have been recently discussed or dealt with for Infobox City.

[edit] Unit conversion

The template automatically converts all units to their metric/imperial counterparts. The basic field (e.g. area) is always supposed to be metric, if you wish to input the imperial value use the same field name with _imperial suffix (i.e. area_imperial). Whichever is assigned it is displayed first and the other value is calculated automatically. If needed, the base unit can be altered (e.g. to display hectares instead of square kilometres set area_unit), assigning area_round you can set the rounding precision for the conversion. As of existing pages where both metric and imperial units are assigned either erase the one you wish to be displayed second or assign appropriate area_unit. The input values must be raw numbers, i.e. with no commas.

[edit] Automated links

Nearly all input values are first checked whether a page of the same name exists and if it is so it automatically links it to it (thus there's no need to put the value between [[ ]]). This applies everywhere, even for the Flag, Shield, Seal labels so the template doesn't produce any unnecessary red links.

[edit] Notes

For all values there can be assigned an additional field with the _note (e.g. area_note) which gets displayed after the value and which can be used e.g. for references or any kind of additional information (though the author of this template believes the <ref></ref> syntax is very poorly implemented and shouldn't be used in infoboxes).

[edit] Location maps

Three ways of including location maps can be used:

  • Standard way with a specific location map in the map (or the legacy image_map).
  • Using locator_x and locator_y which are coordinates of the locator dot in percents of the map width (thus they don't depend on the actual map size).
  • Fully automated way using the coordinates and the map_locator field (it contains parameters for the location dot calculation). As with Location mapTemplate:Location an appropriate Geobox location NAME template must be defined. This system requires fewer arguments than the one currently implemented in Infobox City, it however suffers fro the same drawback: it is only applicable on maps using orthogonal projection. It shouldn't be difficult to create the formula even for conical projection but I haven't been able to figure it out.

[edit] What doesn't work

  • When the numeric fields aren't raw they produce an error.
  • It allows for only two symbols: flag and either seal or shield/coat-of-arms. This reduction has been intentional, most existing templates have just two fields. Logo has hardly been used as well as seal and shield/coat-of-arms at the same time.
  • pushpin_map as the template uses another, simpler system.
  • elevation defined as range, however highest_elevation and lowest_elevation can be used

[edit] New features

  • Especially with larger cities I've always wandered what point in the city the coordinates relate to. This template expects them to be in the center, which can be named using the location field (e.g. a square), if it is not the center but e.g. a town hall, the label can be redefined using location_type.
  • Fields for defining the lowest and highest point.

[edit] Display changes

There are some changes in the way how some fields are displayed and sorted (similarly to an older version of the Infobox City where e.g. Mayor was displayed lower in the table than it is now.) Map is shifted to the bottom as in other Geobox templates.

[edit] Blank templates

There are short and long versions of the blank templates. With smaller towns or villages it is not necessary to copy the full table. Many fields also don't require the type or title property to be set and displays a default value instead (e.g. country, region, mayor, postal_code etc. ) and makes the template easier to use.