Template talk:Cquote/Archive 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Look and appearance of template

Please don't modify the look and appearance of the template without consensus. If you think it's ugly, remove it from articles you don't want it in. If you want to remove it entirely, then put it up for VfD. -- Stbalbach 22:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

There is a reason I created this template, and that was to create a style editors may choose to use for quotations. It's not perfect, but it's everyone's preference to the style they use, however. — CuaHL ☺ 23:02, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Right. Editors choose to use the template because they assume it won't change, or will have a say if it does. -- Stbalbach 01:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I think this template is being used in the wrong places: it is fine for pullout quotes (also called drop quotes), an editorial device used mostly in magazines to give prominent exposure to a key phrase in an article; but people are using it for block (extended) quotes in encyclopedic articles. There, the enlarged quotation marks look out of place; the situation gets worse when editors use redundant quotating devices like setting the whole quotation in italics or adding quotation marks, or even both.

The customary way to set such quotations, especially in a scholarly work, is to offset the quoted material by setting it in one or two ems from the left margin while using the same typeface (albeit sometimes one point smaller) and linespacing as the body text.

The Wiki formatting command <blockquote> does all of this well, though it does not reduce the type size. Is there no Wikipedia template for this sort of block quote? I think one would be very useful. Jim_Lockhart 11:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

We had this discussion about {{quotation}} already. They should be the same style as each other. Using a style on only a few articles, or creating a fork template that only people who like it use, is bad. ("If you don't like it, don't use it", is not a solution.) What does this template do that is different from {{quotation}}? — Omegatron 16:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. As I've commented below, having different types of quotes for articles is bad policy. It detracts from the article itself and serves no purpose other than to make the encyclopedia seem disorganized and hodge-podged. I mean, seriously, soon we'll have categories for quotes: Category: Articles that use cquote template, Category: Articles that use quotation template, Category: Articles that use italics quotes. Bad, bad, bad. 66.229.182.113 17:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Large blank space

On the Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd., each usage of this cquote leves a large blank space at the top, which IMO looks ugly. How/why is this happening and how can it be fixed?

It does not leave any particularly large amount of space to me on Firefox. it's the same amount of space as appear under it. Circeus 00:45, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah I also get an extra line space at the top. I just get around it by not having a blank line between the cquote and the line before it. -- Stbalbach 00:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Of course! Putting extra line breaks generate a paragraph, which mean extra whitespace.Circeus
Well, for example with Template:Main we didn't have that problem. Actually see the old version of template main here: [1] which is more similar to how cquote is coded (I think). -- Stbalbach 01:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Everything OK for me. BTW, I'm using WebKit nightly from May 7 '06. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 02:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black quotation marks

I just wondered if this template may look better if the quotation marks were black rather than blue? Just a stylisitc point, of course. Adasta 08:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Light blue looks good in younger-folks articles, while Black would look good in more serious articles. Perhaps we need cquote-black and cquote-blue; or, a pass a command-line parameter for the color {cquote|color|quote} -- Stbalbach 21:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but what the hell does that mean? This is an encyclopedia. To make distinctions between "younger-folk" articles and "serious" articles is a slippery slope. While the idea of having a color parameter seems reasonable, it only leads to inconsistencies between articles, which in my opinion, isn't beneficial. 66.229.182.113 17:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
If the purpose of Wikipedia was to look exactly the same we wouldn't have this template. There are over a million articles and this template is used by less than two-thousand, this template is an extreme abnormality. In fact, most templates are abnormalities. Wikipedia is not consistent. Style issues are decided by editors in article talk pages. It sounds like you don't what multiple colors and want to enforce that on other people if they like it or not. I suggest if that's the case you establish consensus and make it a part of the Manual of Style. Good luck on your style wars, I can think of better ways to spend time at Wikipedia. -- Stbalbach 01:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The reason we don't use multiple styles for different areas of the encyclopedia is to avoid stupid style wars and concentrate on writing an encyclopedia. The style should be set site-wide and should look good in all articles. This template shouldn't even exist. We already have one for {{quotation}}s. — Omegatron 04:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Do you have a link to back this up? Sounds like this template and Category:Quotation templates should be speedily TfD'd -- in fact, having no style (or one style) is a style (like the Amish dress code) and those who say that {{quotation}} should be the only quote template are engaging in a style war. That is the paradox of style (for an excellent treatment on this topic see The Economics of Attention : Style and Substance in the Age of Information) - discussions of style on Wikipedia are never going away and the MoS recognizes that there will always be style issues on a per-article basis to deal with. -- Stbalbach 12:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alignment

For small quotes and large resolutions, this template looks a bit unwieldy. I think it would look better if aligned to the left, so that all copies of the left quotation mark image line up.  -- Run!  15:03, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unlinking the images

Is it possible to make the quotation marks non-clickable? As they are released into the Public Domain (they are quotation marks), they needen't be linked, and in fact distract from the text should someone try to copy them. Would it be better to perhaps use colored and different fonts, perhaps through a <div> style? I looked at the possiblity of using {{click}}, but found that the only way to make an image not link to something else would be to link it to the same page, which is just annoying and pointless. There really is no reason for these to be images, so if anyone knows a CSS hack to make the images non-clickable or thinks that they should be text, it'd be great. Thanks, Mysekurity [m!] 02:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I took a shot at it before (not remembering I had used only {{PAGENAME}} as opposed to {{FULLPAGENAME}}, making it not work in the Template: namespace), and gave up. I tried again, and I think it works perfectly. The images have been graciously released into the Public Domain by Cuahl, and therefore don't need to be linked to the image description page. This makes it much more usable, and doesn't treat text decoration as an image. YAY! -Mysekurity [m!] 02:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
It's possible with CSS. I started doing it at {{quotation}}, but the quote marks were removed. — Omegatron 13:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure {{click}} is a CSS hack. If you have any suggestions to improve the template, by all means, please do. Thanks, Mysekurity [m!] 00:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
It's possible to do with legit CSS, as demonstrated over at Template talk:quotation. — Omegatron 23:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to use a large-sized text span containing the quote characters, rather than an image at all? Then you could avoid the image linking issue. -- Bovineone 06:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
See Template:CquoteTxt. heqs 15:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for images

When printing an article with these quotes, the images will look very pixelated. Please use SVG for these kind of things. 82.139.85.48 13:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Attribution of quotes

Would it be possible to get an optional field for attribution of quotes? The extra line space looks rather unwieldy when giving authors of quotes.

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 22:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. I found that I had the template had broken a page because I attributed a quote in the third option space. Because the parameters are undefined, the template broke. I propose that it should be modeled in the style of Template:Rquote. —Down10 T / C 23:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Style

Generally quotations are set in a blockquote, or are italicized, or are set off with quotation marks. To use all three is overkill. Why isn't it enough to simply use a blockquote? -Will Beback 22:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Second and third parameters

It looks like there are undocumented second and third parameters. Maybe having to do with width and height? Someone who understands the template should document them. --teb728 05:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. Like, if I want to use the 4th and 5th parameters, but keep the 2nd and 3rd parameters as "default", what are the defaults? In other words, how do I use the 4th and 5th parameters without mucking around with the 2nd and 3rd? -- Stbalbach 14:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
You could always use {{cquote|Quote Text|4=Origin of Quote|5=Cited Source}}, as I've done in Edgefest. Hopefully the template won't be changed or else that'll break. Of course, it'd be better if named parameters were used... –Dvandersluis 13:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extra space at bottom

After recent edits to the template, it seems to produce an extra blank space below each inclusion (with Firefox, but not with IE). My knowledge of template coding is too scarce to figure out what's causing it. heqs 20:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

It does this in Safari, as well. — BrianSmithson 18:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I think I fixed it. Kirill Lokshin 03:00, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't work with IAST template

{{cquote|{{IAST|Vivekacūḍāmaṇi}}}} = {{cquote| Vivekacūḍāmaṇi}} doesn't work. --Babub(Talk|Contribs) 09:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Waaaay too much code

Yikes!

  <table cellpadding="10" align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; background-color:transparent; border-style:none;">
  <tr>
  <td width="20" valign="top">
  <div style="position: relative; width: 20px; height: 20px; overflow: hidden">
  <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; font-size: 100px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 100px; z-index: 3"><strong class="selflink">   </strong></div>
  <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 2"><a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" class="image" title="Battle of Smolensk (1943)"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6b/Cquote1.png/20px-Cquote1.png" alt="Battle of Smolensk (1943)" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" /></a></div>
  </div>
  </td>
  <td>[QUOTATION]</td>
  <td width="20" valign="bottom">
  <div style="position: relative; width: 20px; height: 20px; overflow: hidden">
  <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; font-size: 100px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 100px; z-index: 3"><strong class="selflink">   </strong></div>
  <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 2"><a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote2.png" class="image" title="Battle of Smolensk (1943)"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/33/Cquote2.png/20px-Cquote2.png" alt="Battle of Smolensk (1943)" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote2.png" /></a></div>
  </div>
  </td>
  </tr>
  </table>

Couldn't the code for this simply consist of something like the following?

  <blockquote class="cquote">
  [QUOTATION]
  </blockquote>

The styling could be applied in a style attribute, or better yet, in monobook.css. At the very most, this might require an additional div nested inside the blockquote, so that the two quotation mark images can be applied as non-tiling background images to the two different block elements. —Michael Z. 2006-07-28 02:52 Z

[edit] Missing documentation

What is the purpose of the following parameters. When should they be used? (why on earth pixel dimensions!?) What is the difference between "origin" and "source"—does origin refer to place, author, publication, or something else? Can we see examples of the template with the various parameters in use? —Michael Z. 2006-07-28 03:01 Z

  • quote width in pixels
  • quote height in pixels
  • Origin of quote
  • Cited source
Please, does anyone know how to really use the other parameters? I just came here looking for the same thing. —Mets501 (talk) 12:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I've tried, as best I can to document what's there. Catherine\talk 18:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New version: Cquote2

I'm playing with a new version as well, that has the options in a different order, uses named parameters, and some other tweaks. — Catherine\talk 18:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I think I've got it working nicely now -- see {{Cquote2}} and its talk page. It's very similar to this one, except it allows named parameters (so order of parameters doesn't matter), and moves the width/height params to the end where they can be easily omitted. Didn't make the tweaks here since I didn't want to break existing uses. Do you think the new one's better? Worth migrating to? — Catherine\talk 19:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I like it! I think we should migrate to the new one. What do you think about changing the author and source of the quote to a larger font (so that it's the same size as the quote)? It gets hard to see and is often important. —Mets501 (talk) 12:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Sure, format is easily changed; I adopted the small from {{rquote}}. So what's the best way to migrate? If the new one were to become the standard, should it become "cquote" (instead of "cquote2"?) And if so, what's the best/quickest way to update all the existing uses? — Catherine\talk 18:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Best way to migrate is using the new name for the new template forever (cquote2 — or whatever you like for the new name), because during the transition phase you need to have the two templates anyway and some uses of the old template are best kept forever (talk pages, archives and the like). I have some experience in migrating templates: I did the settings for AWB for the big move from {{book reference}} to {{cite book}} et al. Once there is consensus for the move, I would be willing to help with my AWB fork. This migration here is a bit more tricky than the book reference → cite book move because here are unnamed parameters involved, which are generally a pain to maintain. But this might be a good occasion to expand the MWB code as needed :-). cquote is currently included on 1,798 pages. --Ligulem 14:04, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd welcome some bot help; < 2000 is not too bad and I think the new template will be much easier for people who encounter it in articles to decipher. "Cquote2" is kind of awkward to remember. Anyone have a better suggestion? "Squote" for "simple quote"? "Fquote" for "fancy quote"? "Aquote" for "a quote"?  ;) — Catherine\talk 18:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. Names, names... How about "marked quote"? "quote in marks"? "quotemarked"? "in quote marks"? "mquote" :). Does anyone know what the "c" in "cquote" stands for? However, "fquote" looks like a good candidate. --Ligulem 21:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I believe the "cquote" is for "centered quote", compared to "rquote" which is aligned to the right. I think "fquote" or even "fancyquote" -- or both, with the right redirects -- is probably my favorite, but I'd wait for others to weigh in. — Catherine\talk 22:48, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Width and height in px? There is no reason that should ever be used. We already have a template for quotations with parameters: {{quotation}}. — Omegatron 15:31, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I don't think they're used very often, and I'm not sure why they were put there in the first place. Since the "big quotation marks" is a very graphic-designy look, I guess it's nice to be able to scale the size of the marks to the size of the quote, but it hardly seems necessary for a standard template. That's why I moved them to the end in the new version, since in almost all cases they can just be left off. — Catherine\talk 18:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please add a class, for end-user customizability

Please change the first line from

{| cellpadding="10" align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; background-color:transparent; border-style:none;"

to

{| cellpadding="10" align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; background-color:transparent; border-style:none;" class="cquote"

. Since the class hasn't been defined anywhere, this will do absolutely nothing for anyone who doesn't want it to do something (and thus should be completely uncontroversial), but it will allow custom CSS and JS to modify the quotes for their own personal viewing. Thanks. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. As a side note: would it be useful to think about listing such CSS classes somewhere to make sure there won't be any name clashes? I know there is Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes, but is that the right place? As I understand it, it currently contains only classes that are defined in one of the official style sheets. --Ligulem 05:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the best bet would be to get a tool to parse the stylesheets and collect them automatically. I doubt people are willing to manually maintain a list. But you never know, I guess. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Edit made.--Konstable 06:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The following CSS rules will now turn cquotes into regular blockquotes, to all appearances. (A browser supporting CSS 2.1 selectors, namely anything but IE/Windows, is required.) To use them, add them to Special:Mypage/Monobook.css, or whatever skin's page is appropriate.

 /* Die, cquote! Die! */
 table.cquote {
   text-align: left !important;
   display: block;
   border-collapse: separate;
   border-spacing: 0;
   padding: 0;
   margin: 0;
   border: 0;
 }
 table.cquote > tbody > tr,
 table.cquote > tr {
   display: block;
 }
 table.cquote > tbody > tr > td[valign],
 table.cquote > tr > td[valign] { /* Curly things */ display: none; }
 table.cquote > tbody > tr > td,
 table.cquote > tr > td {
   /* Look like blockquote */
   display: block;
   margin: 1em 1.6em;
   font-size: 93.75%;
   padding: 0;
 }

Unfortunately, the reverse will require lots of JavaScript to make the <blockquote> into a table, at the very least, with nested tags. (The current design can't be adequately represented by anything but a table in current CSS: only tables squash and stretch. For short quotes, a block-based box using will place the quote marks at the edges of the screen, when they should be close to the text.) It should be doable, though, if anyone's so inclined. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Making it look pretty with CSS doesn't change the fact that a table is for tabular data, and a blockquote is for long quotations. The same appearance, plus a properly accessible block quotation instead of 1997 state-of-the-art layout tables (see tag soup), can probably be achieved by nesting a span or two inside a blockquote and playing with the margins and background-images. Lots of weblogs do it this way for their comments; here's one tutorial.
But what is the point of making a call-out quotation look like a regular long quotation? This template is meant just for pull-quotes. Although I think the big cartoon quotation marks are much too goofy for an encyclopedia, the default rendering for a pull-quote should visually pull it out of the flow of the document (larger font size and italics is probably enough, in my opinion).
Remember, the format for actual in-text long quotations is dictated in the Manual of Style.  —Michael Z. 2006-09-27 02:28 Z
Agreed, I was just saying that those who find cquotes unsightly can make them appear as blockquotes if desired.
I see. But it doesn't bother me that I can easily spot them and turn them into <blockquotes> where appropriate. It does bother me that readers are coming to Wikipedia, and finding articles with Mickey-Mouse quotation marks in them. —Michael Z. 2006-09-28 20:40 Z

This should be a blockquote, not a table. — Omegatron 03:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried to make it a blockquote, but it didn't work. My impression is that the "squishiness" is table-specific in CSS 2.1: tables squish to fit their content, blocks expand to the greatest width possible. This makes the current layout very difficult to do without either using actual tables or using display: table;, which IE doesn't understand. If you can put together something that works, go ahead; I couldn't figure out a way. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I think I understand: you're trying to make the width shrink down if there is less than one full line of text. I can see how that would be difficult. You might try a nested element with the display:table or display:inline-block property, but I suspect that important browsers don't support that.
Another approach might be to style actual quotation marks with CSS and position them. Good luck. —Michael Z. 2006-09-28 20:40 Z

[edit] Edit wars over quotation style

I personally detest the cquote style and would never use it. I agree with the comments above that, what with the quotation template (producing a box), the blockquote function, and simple indentation with colons, we really don't need another option for long quotations. (Italicizing an entire quotation is not a good option.)

At a minimum, though, we shouldn't waste time changing quotations to the cquote style. I recently made this edit of a long quotation that used quotation marks and italics; I changed it to the blockquote style. Thereafter, another editor switched it to cquote, expressing a personal preference. My preference is that Wikipedia be consistent in never using cquote, but if its supporters prevail, they should at least be curbed in a way analogous to our rule about American spelling and English spelling: The first approved style that's used for a long quotation in a particular article should be the standard for that article. Editors shouldn't change a quotation style based on personal preference, but subsequent quotations should use the same style so that the article is consistent. JamesMLane t c 06:55, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Aaaagh! My eyes, they burn. 'Tis an abomination. But, I agree with your position about consistency. However, a Talk page consensus should be sufficient to change the standard for an article. Derex 07:19, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree, and in your situation I would have reverted "me likey cquote". I thought the documentation for this template clearly said it was meant for call-out quotes, and not for normal block quotations, but I can't find that now (perhaps it was one of the other variant templates). In the meantime, add your vote for bug 4827 and bug 6200, so blockquotes can get fully implemented in wikitext. —Michael Z. 2006-09-26 07:26 Z
Instead of reverting or discussing the specific edit to Chris Wallace (journalist), I wanted to try to get consensus that styles should never be mixed in an article. Confining cquote to call-out quotes was suggested in a comment above (in #Look and appearance of template). There seems to be substantial sentiment for so restricting the template, or indeed for never using it at all, but there's apparently been no formal attempt to ascertain consensus. Perhaps such an attempt should be made before this plague spreads any further. JamesMLane t c 08:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
No need for a vote on this template's usage: the intent is already stated at template talk:Rquote. I'll copy that to this one. The right way to do block quotations is set out clearly in the Manual of Style. Consensus is clear.
But I'd certainly vote to completely delete this and the "related templates". Perhaps an issue which affects the general appearance of Wikipedia ought to be discussed or promoted at the style sheet pages: MediaWiki talk:Common.css and MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css.  —Michael Z. 2006-09-26 15:46 Z
  • Delete this template. ;-) — Omegatron 16:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I would like to take a moment to apologize sincerely from the bottom of my heart. As the editor who engaged in an "edit war" by making the latest edit Mr. Lane has referenced to, I seemingly have deeply offended people here. I just liked it because it functioned like a blockquote but it had graphics of quotations. Apparently I am going to hell now for such blasphemous thoughts. I hope Mr. Lane continues his important crusade, as I can't possibly think of a better use of my time than to wage a global war against such a vile enemy as a quotation mark made into a graphic. --kizzle 21:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC) (disclaimer: there might have been some playful sarcasm in this last post, JML and I are mostly kids at heart, though he started it!)