Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax/Archive 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
This archive of contains discussions up to March 2004. It was created on 28 July 2004

I've gone through and added headers to each of the conversations on this page so that it's easier to navigate. Some of them duplicate one another, but I won't presume to rearrange other people's comments just yet. - IMSoP 21:10, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Contents

Do you have to provide a thumbnail image?

I'm confused: If you choose 'thumb', do you have to provide a thumbnail image, or is the "thumbnail" actually just a squeezed-up copy of the normal image, or is the Wiki software somehow generating a thumbnail image on the fly, or what? —Paul A 02:14, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The software generates a sized-down image, so it's not just the big image scaled down by the browser. The image is stored on the web server, so it's generated only once to reduce performance impact. -- JeLuF 10:56, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

Eventual move to meta / help namespace

Once this feature is included in a MediaWiki release, this page will need to be moved to meta:MediaWiki User's Guide. In the future, we will need to have a help namespace for MediaWiki-specific pages that would link to the user guide on Meta. --mav 00:20, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Supplying own thumbnail

Would it be possible to extend the new syntax to supply a seperate image to be used as the thumbnail? For some images I optimized the thumbnail manually to provide only a part of the full image to enhance the quality of the small image. For two Examples see my user page in de:.
It should be possible to implement this backward compatible as: [[Image:LargeImage.jpg|Image:OptionalThumbnail.jpg|options|caption]] -- LosHawlos 20:38, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I do that too. In that case, couldn't you just redirect the image page of the small image to the image page of the big image? --mav 00:03, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


How to use new Extended Image Syntax

How do I use the new extended image syntax please? I’ve read the Help but it’s still not totally clear how to use it. Here’s a screengrab of the code I’ve used up to now (from the Hawker Hunter article):
Image:screeenshot.oldcode.arp.jpg
Can some kind person tell me the new code to replace it? You might need to know that my thumbnail is to be 300 pixels across and my Larger Version is usually 750 pixels across (but both pic sizes can vary depending on the quality and aspect ratio of the source pic). Do I still have to upload a thumbnail myself or does the new code generate it? I need the choice of placing the thumbnail on left or right, for the Hunter pic it needs to be on the right.
Thanks,
Adrian Pingstone 17:51, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Well I would use the following, although it doesn't reproduce what you did exactly:
[[Image:Hunter.black.750pix.jpg|thumbnail|right|300px|A privately-owned Hawker Hunter photographed in England 2003]]
A privately-owned Hawker Hunter photographed in England 2003
A privately-owned Hawker Hunter photographed in England 2003


And no, you only need to upload the large version. Fabiform 18:24, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
You can put in the italic and center tags: [[Image:Hunter.black.750pix.jpg|thumb|right|300px|<center>''A privately owned Hawker Hunter, photographed in England in 2003''</center>]] -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:31, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Ah, excellent. I'll go and tweak the images I did in the last day then.  :) Fabiform 18:43, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Does this new system not work with special characters? See for example: User:Dori/Sandbox. It appears that this bug has been squashed. Dori | Talk 17:01, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)
Also, check out the alt text on the right hand image in Dori's sandbox, it displays as:
<center ><strong>Image:Butrint 2.jpg</strong></center >
fabiform | talk 21:01, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Thanks everyone, the new code works fine. Have a look at my first attempt (Morris Marina). I only had to upload the large pic, the thumbnail was created by the code so the work of image uploading is now halved for me. Thanks to whoever coded this improvement.

P.S. I notice that the thumbnail the code makes is a little large, it was 36K compared with the 20K I got when I made the thumbnail. So the new code will have a penalty in page loading times.Adrian Pingstone 23:13, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Left alignment

Is there a way to align left the image on Henri_Druey ? Currently the list interferes with the image (it probably also did in the previous version). -- User:Docu

Yes, there is away to improve the page, just shift the image over to the right where it looks much more natural! It's standard practice on Wikipedia to put the first image on the right so that the beginning of lines are not disrupted. I hope you like the result.
Adrian Pingstone 20:53, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
This solves the formatting problem. I usually prefer to have portraits look into the article, e.g. John Adams seems to be looking the wrong way, but Henri_Druey looks o.k. even on the other side. -- User:Docu
I guess I was just lucky that the pic still looks OK on the right. Even so, if the pic is public domain, you could flip it horizontally in your graphics program and then the person is looking the other way! I know this would not always look right if medals etc. or any writing got reversed.
Adrian Pingstone 09:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

<from User talk:Docu>

Personally, I prefer not to do this. BTW I found another solution on Richard_Greene: using <br style="clear:both;"/> before the list. -- User:Docu
Whoops, too late. I've already flipped John Adams and it looks fine. If you don't want it like that, just revert me. I'm sorry I did something you don't like but reversion is easy because the previous versions are still there.
Adrian Pingstone 10:19, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Unless it's a symmetric object, I'd leave the choice to the painter (or the photographer). Here I don't mind that much, since I picked John Adams primarily because I recalled that the template for US Presidents includes an image and he was just the first one to look to out of the article (BTW the third image in the article even more so). -- User:Docu


</from User talk:Docu>


Feature request

A couple of feature requests, posted at meta, comment if you want Dori | Talk 17:23, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

  • Just want to add that I also miss the option of making internal/external links within the caption. I also would prefer using "," as seperator for the options e.g. [[image.jpg|left,350px,thumb|some caption text]]. Great work whoever did this!

Can I get a caption without a thumbnail?

Image:Digital dec logo.jpg

Let me be more specific: I expected

[[image:digital_dec_logo.jpg|right|Logo of Digital Equipment Corporation]]

to display a full-sized image with the caption "Logo of Digital Equipment Corporation" underneath it (just as in the thumbnails, but without the magnifying glass).

It didn't do what I expected. Instead, it does what you see. Apparently the caption simply gets thrown away. (Why does MediaWiki think I put the caption there in the first place?) A bug, or functions as designed?

If the latter, is a way for me get it to do what I want? Dpbsmith 22:43, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Having 'right' or a specified width should tell the software that the last bit of text is a caption and not just alternate text. But in cases where the position or width is not specified the software must treat it the old way and not create a caption. --mav 23:10, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
To answer the question, I think it is functioning as designed: the caption text or alt-text or whatever you want to call it is not "thrown away", it is merely acting the same way as the old-style syntax of [[image:digital_dec_logo.jpg|Logo of Digital Equipment Corporation]] would do. In my opinion, using it as title, alt and an inline caption is somewhat overdoing it anyway... - IMSoP 00:52, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
There are a lot of articles in Wikipedia that have images or diagrams that are already sized to be displayed as-is, without thumbnails, and which also have captions. As soon as I found out about this new image syntax the very first thing I did was try to create such an non-thumbnail image/caption structure with it, and was puzzled when it didn't. I think it's not at all overkill to display the caption text as a caption too, since that's one of the main things I want to do with images. :) Bryan 00:41, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I had already proposed this before, my proposal was to add a 'caption' keyword to say that you want the alt-text as a caption, or a different caption. That is, [[Image:someimage.jpg|right|Image]] would have no caption and alt-text 'Image' (as it is now), [[Image:someimage.jpg|right|caption|Image]] would have 'Image' both as caption and as alt-text, and [[Image:someimage.jpg|right|caption:A crappy thing|Image]] would have 'Image' as alt-text and 'A crappy thing' as caption. JeLuF seemed not to think it would be useful, unfortunately. Andre Engels 18:46, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I think that sounds like a good idea, Andre - my point about overkill was that the more purposes you try and fulfill with the same piece of text, the more likely you are to fail in one of those purposes. This is why I was annoyed at the use of alternate text to cover both title and alt attributes (see above).
Talking of which, I hope I haven't caused unnecessary confusion by replacing that with caption text in the syntax descriptions; it was meant to apply generically to the 2 or 3 uses that text has, but does rather sound like it will be displayed as an inline caption. Sorry if this is what people thought it meant. - IMSoP 21:21, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It confused me all right. I and another author spent some time trying to get the "caption" to display on the Stratocaster images. It didn't occur to us that the meaning of "caption" had changed to mean alt text. Suggest reword if not already done to be consistent with previous usage. Andrewa 02:27, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree it should be reworded to avoid confusion, but I strongly disagree with returning to previous usage, for reasons stated near the top of this page. - IMSoP 02:30, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm. In a sense you are quite correct, a caption is a description of an image, so a good alternate text and a good subtitle are both examples of captions. But personally, I think you're just creating problems by changing its established usage within Wikipedia. The aim is to be understood, surely.
Confusing people will just discourage use of the new syntax. I'll be interested to see your rewording. Andrewa 03:01, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Well, my original intention was simply to pick a more appropriate term for the text in both versions of the image syntax - however established it may be, the use of the term alt-text in Wikipedia contradicts that defined by web standards bodies (it is used for other purposes besides the alt attribute). I can see now that caption text was an ambiguous choice of replacement, but still hold that a new term is needed which covers all uses. - IMSoP 03:26, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
<- resetting the indent to none...

Hmmmm. I've missed something here. Why is this 'new' term needed?

I've never once used the same text both as subtitle (previously called caption) and alternate text. Has anyone? They serve significantly different purposes.

Now if we must have such a term, how about image description text? The previous useage of caption within Wikipedia is important. Sure, it's good to be in step with the test of the Web too. But not at the expense of making it difficult for us to write and edit articles.

And I still preach caution. How will this term help to understand or clarify anything, when what it describes doesn't seem to be the way Wikipedia works, anyway? Food for thought? Andrewa 12:21, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, I think image description text sounds like a good term - or even just description. Secondly, I will try and explain why it is necessary. Before I edited, the first paragraph included the statement "and the alternate text is used as alt=-attribute for use as mouse popup and for screen reader." This immediately struck me as an example of a common misunderstanding, well explained by the Mozilla FAQ [1] - I could probably find an authoratitive statement from the W3C if I had time. In short, the alt attribute is not intended for mouse popoup/tooltip. However, the error in the statement with regard to Wikipedia's usage was not that no tooltip was displayed, since the title attribute is also set, for convenience, to the same description - providing a tooltip identical to the alt text on many browsers. I therefore wanted to stress that this was one piece of text being used for multiple purposes, rather than perpetuate the myth that this is all part of the job of the alt attribute. Caption was a bad choice, description is better, but alt-text is fundamentally incorrect.
(for an example of the misunderstanding being perpetuated, see the bottom of this talk page: "However the ALT text which shows when the mouse hovers over the image...")
IMSoP 14:16, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Could someone help fix... / standard thumbnail width

Could someone vistit Monument to the Royal Stuarts, and fix the nifty magnifying glass thing, which I copied from Athens, so that it leads to the big version of the photo as it is supposed to. The big version is uploaded as [[Image:ac.stuarts.jpg]] and the small version as [[image:ac.stuarts2.jpg]]. Obviously I have missed a step in the process somewhere. Adam 11:41, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

With the new version, you need just one picture. I changed it on the page. Hope you like the result. -- User:Docu

Many thanks. So I just upload the big version, and then specify in the edit box the width I want the small version to appear as, is that correct? Adam 11:54, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

  • Yes, but I haven't tried out all options yet. A quick way to do it, seems to be [[Image:ac.stuarts.jpg|thumb|Monument to the royal Stuarts, Rome]] -- User:Docu
Have you been here yet: Wikipedia:Extended image syntax? There are examples of the different options that you can copy and paste.  :) fabiform | talk 13:40, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Here's the code I'm now using for a large pic with its associated thumbnail, it seems to work fine:
[[image:yourfilename.jpg|thumb|right|300px|<center>yourpicturetitle</center>]]
Put double apostrophes around the picture title to give the italics.
DON'T UPLOAD A THUMBNAIL, the new code does it for you.
The result is a centred, italicised, caption and a nice-looking thumbnail 300 pixels wide and set on the right of the article. Go to Morris Marina to see how it all turns out.
Can I suggest that 300 pixels be the standard thumb width, it makes a thumbnail big enough so that the reader is not forced to view the big pic but not so big that the text is squeezed into a narrow channel on an 800 by 640 screen.
Adrian Pingstone 15:28, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I second this suggestion. A standard width of 300px would be perfect. Hadal 16:32, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Image position

There is now acres of white space next to the picture at the top of this page (at least on my not-excessively-high-res screen). A similar thing is occuring at Hutton Inquiry. Is this due to the new image markup? Could it be changed so that the text wraps around the pictures like it used to... I think it is less ugly that way. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:23, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It still wraps around the pictures just like it used to for me. While you're waiting for the techies to arrive, perhaps you should say what operating system and browser you're using... those are usually the first questions. (What I did to the Hutton Inquiry must look really bad on your machine, sorry!). fabiform | talk 09:10, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
IE 5.5 on Windows NT. (It doesn't look great - but I am slowly learning not to fly off the handle about these things - if something needs to be fixed then it will be soon enought) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:15, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
This was causing the problem: <br style="clear:both;"/> It was inserted when Hutton's picture was moved to the left. I have removed it, and now the text should wrap properly. --Minesweeper 09:17, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I left it there when I moved the pic to the right again assuming it served a useful purpose... sorry. But you said the pic looked all wrong on the village pump as well? fabiform | talk 09:32, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Post hard refresh (ctrl+f5) it now appears fine on both this and the Hutton page. I don't know if there has been a change on this page or if it was just the refresh that sorted something. Thanks for all your help guys. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:04, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Oddly, it seems I have to hard refresh every time I come to this page to get the correct layout. i.e. I load the page, get whitespace, hard refresh, no whitespace. Something local to me? Something squidy? Something with the new image code? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:11, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think the <img> tags that are produced should have an implicit style="clear: both" attribute. Otherwise they are printed next to each other when the are too close together. – Torsten Bronger 21:21, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Code for pics in a column

Help, please, with putting 5 pics in a column on the page. In Sistine Chapel I need to know the new code to put the 5 pics in the same vertical arrangement as you see on the page now.
Thanks.
Adrian Pingstone 11:18, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I tried a version, leaving the <div> in. Personally I would probably have kept the previous version, it looked great already. -- User:Docu
But you do not need the "text-align:center" section. The syntax makes a left alignment of the text anyhow. Den fjättrade ankan 15:05, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, that's exactly what I wanted (and I'm sorry I made you type it all in!). I wanted to change to the new code because if we have a mixture of the old and the new look in different articles, then (IMHO) Wikipedia is going to look amateur.
Will anyone else tell me if they think a mixture of the two pic styles (not within the same article, of course) is OK?
Adrian Pingstone 13:11, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Please don't post screenshots of wikitext. Just surround the text with <pre> and </pre>. Especially not as a 43 KB JPEG. -- Tim Starling 13:18, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, screenshot removed.
Adrian Pingstone 16:09, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't that be <nowiki></nowiki>? - IMSoP 17:03, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Either way, they have basically the same function. <pre> is better for preserving line breaks, and uses a fixed rather than proportional font. e.g.
<div style="float:right; margin-left:10px; margin-right:10px; width:200px; text-align:center">
[[image:sistine.chapel.entire.500pix.jpg|200px|none|thumb|''The interior of the Sistine Chapel'']]
-- Tim Starling 23:43, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)

Bug in the image resize code

Sennheiser points out a problem with the new image resize feature. Please see Igor Kurchatov to fully understand the problem.

Is that <center> tag allowed? If you take it out, the problem goes away. Not sure the new thumbnail feature allows that formatting. Fuzheado 14:47, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
the center is fine (although it shows in the alt text!), the problem is the "". I just chucked the pic in the Wikipedia:Sandbox with the "" and then replaced them with ', and it worked. You can't wikify the caption either, and I imagine that you might have a problem if the caption should read thumb, or right.  ;) (Wonderful beard, by the way!) fabiform | talk 14:52, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


"Thumb" image function annoyingly buggy

At least in my prefered browser Opera, the "thumb" function for images seems not to be producing the desired results. The smaller version of the pic is in the article all right, but the little "enlarge" icon is seldom anywhere near the pic, sometimes paragraphs away, often over irrelevent text. Could we please stop converting images to this new system until it works better? Thanks, -- Infrogmation 05:47, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No such problem in my current version of Opera 7.50 preview. Jor 17:19, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Take a look at the front page of wikipedia on the Macintosh version of Internet explorer 5. It looks terrible, but it works fine on every other browser so we haven't done anything about it. Perhaps you could find another browser(s)? Mabye one that is open source. Or, you could just use Internet explorer 6. Sennheiser cringes at this suggestion, deciding to strike it out and replace it with an advertisement for the Mozilla Firebird .7 browser. Sennheiser! 22:11, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Delete "thumbs"?

Take the iMac article. Please I don't want it. Sorry. Take a glance at the iMac article. It has a large "thumbnail", and a link full-sized version. Should the "thumbnail" be deleted, and replace with this code, or do we leave it as is, and only apply this code to new uploads? - user:zanimum

It's quick to change to the new code so I've done it. Looks good, I think. The original 300px thumbnail looked far too big (becaise the pic is almost portrait format) so I've used a 250px thumb. For landscape formats, 300 px remains best.
Adrian Pingstone 17:14, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
But, so we do delete all thumbnail files, right? -- user:zanimum
I've been putting old thumbnails up on Wikipedia:Images for deletion as I've been orphaning them, so yeah, that's my opinion. Bryan 16:21, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Don't like it

I'm sorry, but I really don't like this new thimbnail thing and I'm going to be very rude about it for which I apologise in advance. The magnifying glass icon is just horrible. Having it stuck in the bottom right corner pushes the caption to one side making them (and the whole picture) look lobsided. The Hutton Inquiry just looks awful. Can we not make it look more like a normal image and have an enlarge link underneath above or somewhere else other than stuck in the corner? Mintguy (T)

I don't like it either. This new syntax doesn't do what I want at all. Nearly all of the articles to which I've added images merely want an image to the left or right, with the text wrapped around, and a caption. The new syntax just clutters the page, in fact I find it downright ugly.
It may work really well for taxboxes and the like where the size of the image is strictly limited, and linking to a larger version is good. But IMO there's still a need for a new syntax to do the simple things more simply.
Maybe this one can be extended to do it, but it sounds a risk, doesn't it? Maybe better to start from the ground up, and KISS. Meantime I guess I have no choice but to continue using the old method. Pity. Andrewa 02:40, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. The magnifying glass is very intuitive and helpful. If you don't want a zoom, don't scale down the image! The only thing I would change is italicize the caption by default.—Eloquence 12:26, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. I think that should have been indented. What are you strongly disagreeing to? All I'm asking for is an easy way of doing what we've been doing for years with difficulty, and achieving good results in the process. Those who like this new syntax and its results are free to use it, and I'm sure they'll use it well. NB the comment immediately below this, although now indented one more than this, actually refers to my comment further up. Andrewa 13:52, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
If you don't like the frame around the thumbnail, don't use it.
Then I get no whatever-it's-now-called-but-it-used-to-be-a-caption, and I normally want one. Andrewa 13:52, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[[Image:Giant Panda.jpg]] gives you the full image:

Image:Giant Panda.jpg

[[Image:Giant Panda.jpg|thumb|150px|Panda]] gives the new thumnail:

Panda
Panda

But [[Image:Giant Panda.jpg|150px|Panda]] gives a clickable thumnail without the boarder. You'll have to stick it in a table and add a caption if you want one though:

Panda

Thus:

{| align=right
|[[Image:Giant Panda.jpg|200px|Panda]]
|----
|align=center|A panda <br/>''(click image to enlarge)''
|}

Gives you:

Panda
A panda
(click image to enlarge)

--fabiform | talk 06:07, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


I don't like this new Image tag in the current form because it has two very serious limitations:

  • You can't have a caption without a thumbnail (see discussion above). So a caption option is missing.
  • You can't have arbitrary markup within the caption (also mentioned on this page before). This is a fatal mistake. In DTDs one would say that you've mixed up "attibute" and "element". A caption must be an element but you defined it as a mere attribute. This way it is of very limited use I'm afraid.

However when these concerns are met I like this thing very much. It is more systematic which is a very good thing for Wikipedia. I also like the resulting layout (apart from the "clear: both" bug above). – Torsten Bronger 09:20, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

HTML tags show in ALT text

See e.g. Ko Phi Phi Lee, there the image caption was made in italics using something like [[Image:Ko Phi Phi Lee.jpg|thumbnail|150px|none|''Mahya Bay'']]. However the ALT text which shows when the mouse hovers over the image then shows <em>Mahya Bay</em>, which is a bit ugly. Thus we either have to avoid anything except plain text in the description, or the HTML tags need to be stripped in the ALT text. andy 10:38, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've noticed this too. I often see <center></center> in the alt text on these new thumbnails. Using <em></em> is a bit silly though as you could use ''double apostrophes'' which would look like "quote marks" in the alt text - perfect! fabiform | talk 21:35, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The problem is that the wikitax ''apostrophes'' get turned into HTML <em>tags</em> before the alt- and title-text are generated (note that the pop-up text is the title, the alt is an alternative for users who can't see images). So it's the HTML version that shows up. The software could indeed spot these and trim them out though; it also adds further weight to the idea of allowing the subtitled caption to be distinct from the alt/title text. - IMSoP 23:46, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Oh! Now I see, whoops. fabiform | talk 00:34, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

As of today, the HTML tags show up in the caption on the page too, not just the ALT text. This wasn't the case yesterday. See, for example, L'Encyclopédie, which should have an italicized caption, but has an <em> caption instead. Ideas? --Delirium 12:45, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

This is the result of a bug report I sent to wikitech-l reporting other strange html tags showing up around images which contained both quotation marks (") and apostrophes ('). That was fixed, but now the problem of 'em' tags replacing apostrophes has surfaced. - snoyes 19:54, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Help with new image syntax

from the village pump

I've reformatted the Stratocaster article using the Wikipedia:Extended image syntax and the image captions have disappeared. Can someone please tell me what I've done wrong? They are quite important to the article. Andrewa 15:49, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Caption do not work without thumbnails in the new image syntax. On Wikipedia talk:New image syntax this has already been discussed, with a proposed syntax from your not-so-humbly. For now, you'll either have to make it a thumbnail (with the grey area and the microscope image), or not use the image syntax to get it to the right (but use table or div as before). Andre Engels 16:37, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll continue this on the talk page, and meantime I've used the workaround suggested there. Andrewa 20:46, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
...and I've now gone back to the old standard. Of the three versions of this article, the one that uses the cumbersome old syntax is by far the best, and it's not obvious how to get the same result with the new syntax.
Pity. Andrewa 02:19, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Amen, brother. Dpbsmith 16:09, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

align center/centre ?

A nice addition would be if one could use:

[[Image:Jersey_flag_large.png|center|Flag of Jersey]]

instead of

<center>[[Image:Jersey_flag_large.png|Flag of Jersey]]</center>

--User:Docu

It would be. If I'm right about how this image syntax is implemented, though, the "right" and "left" keywords are currently implemented using a CSS property that is only designed to display things on either side of the page, so adding a "center" keyword would mean designing and implementing a separate mechanism just to handle that keyword. Which means more work for the developers, which means: don't expect to see it any time soon. —Paul A 02:11, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Magnifying glass and IE6

There is a white box around the magnifying glass in internet explorer making it hardly asthetically pleasing. No one should be using internet explorer(except at public libraries), though so I don't know if this is our problem. --Sennheiser! 17:56, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It buggers up in Opera 6.x also. Tannin 18:00, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Is there not supposed to be a white box around the magnifying glass? It didn't occur to me that this was a bug. I use crazy browser, but it uses IE to render the pages I think. Perhaps we should compare screenshots? fabiform | talk 20:23, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Brion changed the image so it's now an 8-bit png. In my browser at least (IE), the background is transparent now. Yay! fabiform | talk 01:30, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Image quality

(Copied from Talk:Black-winged Stilt)

Auto (software) thumbnail
Auto (software) thumbnail

Image:Black-necked Stilt-252.jpg
Manual thumbnail.

I have a problem with the new thumbnail code. It just doesn't produce a quality result. Compare the two images. The difference speaks for itself. Tannin

(More discussion follows, but the bottom line is that the auto-generated thumbnails simply don't result in a quality image. Tannin 18:00, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC))

What resample filter did you use when you resized it manually? --Sennheiser! 21:46, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I didn't use Photoshop. Doubtless a proper Photoshop jockey could do a substantially better job. Tannin
What did you use? I use the GIMP to resize my images. --Sennheiser! 21:50, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There's probably room for improvement. Right now we use ImageMagick with the option "-geometry [width]". The image blow was created with the additional option "-sharpen 1":

Image:Stilt-small.jpg

As you can see it's pretty much the same quality as Tannin's manually generated image. I'm not sure if this is consistently so for all types of images (documents etc.). Would there be any problem with turning the sharpening on for all thumbnails? Keep in mind that sharpening also makes JPEG artifacts more visible.—Eloquence 01:53, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

It's close, Eloquence, but still not as good. Most images—about two-thirds of them—respond well to a mild sharpening, and making that the default behaviour would certainly improve the average reproduction. Nevertheless, that would leave a substantial number of sub-standard images on display. The reality is, we won't have good thumbnails without a human being in the loop. Visual presentation is very important to any publication, and we should strive for quality in everything we do here. So, yes, a mild sharpening of all auto-generated thumbnails would be a very welcome step in the right direction, but I (and all other editors who care about image quality) will continue to replace auto thumbnails with hnd-generated ones. Tannin 22:00, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Unexpected performance

I didn't even mean for the image on Unit 731 to be in the space it showed up in, but it fits perfectly!. --Sennheiser! 00:06, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(from the village pump)

Line Breaks in Extended Image Format

Anyone know of an elegant way to force a line break between two images using the Extended Image Format. Right now I'm using:

<br style="clear: both;" />

It's basically the same hack as in CSS for floated images, but I was wondering if there is a "built-in" way using the new format. -- Decumanus 02:33, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

that hack doesn't work when you want to float text around two vertically stacked images in the extended format. Right now only a table or div works (old method). Any ideas? -- Decumanus 02:46, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
IMO it's just another instance of the new syntax failing to provide the facilities we need to write articles. The new syntax seems to have been used as a vehicle to promote some ideas of the way articles should be formatted, and in particular the way images are presented. If you don't agree with these ideas, stick to the old syntax. That's what I'm doing. I think I've given the new syntax a fair go, and it is simply not suitable for my purposes. Hopefully, some day some developer will give us what we want: A simple way to wrap text around a simple image, with an optional caption (that's 'caption' in the long-standing Wikipedia sense of an italicised subtitle), so as to make the articles look great on any screen width. Andrewa 09:10, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I like the autothumbnailing, but the lack of a caption capability on the non-thumbnail images is a serious problem for me. Also, the lack of markup options within the caption are a bother too - many of the images I'd like to convert to the new markup format have links in their captions, for example, and I think it's important to preserve those. Is there a good place to go to present votes on this kind of thing? Bryan 01:32, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

How to center an image?

I've tried using the center tags on either side of the image markup using the new syntax, but the image still persistently aligns with the right. Is there any way to force center alignment with the new syntax? -- ChrisO 20:13, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I can't be sure without an example, but I assume you're specifying a thumbnail, which is automatically right-aligned (with CSS, which over-rides the center tag). You need to specify the "none" property, which will tell the parser not to apply any CSS alignment, and then your center tags will work.
e.g. <center>[[Image:Westminstpalace.jpg|thumbnail|none|(caption)]]</center>
(caption)
(caption)

—Paul A 02:10, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Shall we delete wikipedia:image markup and move this page over the top? I don't see any benefit in the old markup style... Martin 22:18, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The old style still has a lot of life in it, I think, and the new markup isn't as yet without problems. It'd be better to merge the two pages &mdash sections on "New Markup" and "Old Markup", let people choose between them. Neither page as they stand at present is so bulky as to make that a problem. &ndashHajor 01:36, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Some people do still use it. I'd rather it stay in the page history than just be deleted so I'd recommend a page history merge if this one is moved. Angela. 02:54, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Italicization of the caption by default

I like the extended image syntax with thumbnails, etc. One small thing, I think it would be even better if the caption is italicized by default! Flyingbird 19:16, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Seconded (and with the caption centred and with links operational).
Adrian Pingstone 20:13, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree too and if I read Eriks comment above correctly he also favours italics. -- mkrohn 02:00, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Agree. —Noldoaran (Talk) 05:35, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)
I don't think that this is a good idea. It is very unusual in typography, and the frame sets the caption apart enough in my opinion. – Torsten Bronger 08:59, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Height

I don't suppose there's any way, or any plans to make a way, to specify the height of an image thumbnail rather than its width? At the moment this all seems to be geared towards putting images in columns, but for relatively short articles with multiple images it would be better to have them in rows, and if the height can't be controlled these don't work very well. Josh

Thumbnail size

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on February 21, 2004.

This was posted on the talk page, but I think it was intended for here - IMSoP 17:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Timwi and I are having a discussion on the best thumbnail size for pictures. We cannot agree so please put your opinions here. The discussion so far is at User talk:Timwi. To help your thoughts I have put one pic on Wing to 180px wide and one to 250px wide.

My argument is that 250px is best, as a compromise, so that clicking on a larger version (if any) would be rarely necessary and page loading time would still be reasonable. (I used to say 300px but, for some reason I don?t understand, that does look too large with the new image code).

Timwi?s argument is for a roughly 180px thumb. He says that you can see just as much detail on that size as on a 250px one and that 250px looks bad on a 640 by 480 screen because it occupies half the screen width.
(Timwi, if I haven?t put your argument properly please add to it here).
Your opinions, please.
Adrian Pingstone 17:30, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What would be interesting is a page of statistics showing the breakdown of the different screen resolutions browsers use to access the site: are most people using 640x480 or 1600x1200? Is there a page like that anywhere? And what would resolve a lot of this thumbnail angst is a command in the image markup to allow pics to occupy a specified percentage of the screen width (eg, "width=33%"). Is that feasible? –Hajor 17:47, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The problem with having it as a percentage (even if that were possible, which I'm not sure of) is that everyone would have to download it at full size, and let their browser scale it down, because there'd be no way for the server to know what size thumbnail to generate. So we'd lose the advantage of thumbnails for slow connections and overworked wiki-servers. - IMSoP 17:58, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC) [who nearly added this to the wrong topic - what's with the section edit links?] [Edit: I've fixed them now.]

I've been putting a lot of images up lately, so I think I can speak with some authority on the situation. And the answer is - it depends. My advice is to use the preview button to see what looks best. I usually go between 200 and 300, but there are sometimes where you have to go with something different. University of Delaware, for instance, was a tricky one. →Raul654 18:00, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it depends; try a few different sizes and see what works best (the extended image syntax lets you define a thumbnail size within the image markup, so it's trivial to try alternate sizes). As for statistics on what size screens people are using, that's tricky to measure; those with large screens (like me) may tend to browse in a small window that is effectively only 600-800 pixels wide or smaller. PDAs and cell phones are becoming a popular web-access method too, and their screens are often tiny, so I'd say when in doubt, use a smaller thumbnail. -- Wapcaplet 18:14, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm not so sure - you can very much make thumbnails that are too small. For instance, the latest incarnation of Mozilla Firefox has an absolutely tiny one, that just looks silly if you ask me. If the image becomes so small you can't really see any of the detail, what's the point of having the thumbnail there at all? And while cell phones do indeed have tiny screens, they are unlikely to deal with the page in anything like the same way anyway - for all I know, they'll completely miss out inline images - so I don't think we can really expect to cater for them at the same time as "traditional" browsers. - IMSoP 18:29, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Idealy the thumbnail should be just big enough to show the detail, so people on dial-up don't *have* to click on the thumbnail but still get the benefit of seeing whatever the picture is supposed to illustrate clearly. A "standard width" would not be useful because, for a start, it makes a big difference if the picture is landscape or portrait (longer width or length). fabiform | talk 18:33, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
250px seems a good compromise, but why not have a "text-only" button in the preferences for really slow users^wbrowsers? Yes, I know, browsers can do this at their own -- but a global switch that allows to see pages text-only withouth nasty "empty" pics would be helpful sometimes. -- till we *) 18:39, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The question of "what screen resolutions are used by Wikipedia users" is relevant. I can say from past personal experience that a person with a 640x480 pixel screen is going to experience enormous frustration and annoyance browsing most presumably-professionally-designed commercial websites, and 800x600 isn't much better. On the other hand, a 1024x768 screen works just fine; it's very rare that I have any urge to use a higher resolution. Also, most laptops manufactured in the past four years or so have 1024x768 or better. The Mac 6400 I bought circa 1994 had built-in video that went at least to 1024x768, I believe higher, and the CRT I bought, which was the bottom-of-the-line as of 1994, could display 1024x768 and maybe higher, but did not look good at anything about 800x600. Finally, most video cards for the past, um, decade go to 1024x768, so someone with a 640x480 screen need only substitute a new CRT.
In other words, I think it's reasonable to design and preview for 1024x768 for the following reasons: a) I isn't going to prevent many people from using Wikipedia; b) I think it is a very mainstream setting these days; c) people with smaller screens are going to experience minor annoyances everywhere, not just on Wikipedia.
A much more serious question is download time on dialup, and I think this, rather than visual appearance, should govern decisions on thumbnail size. I think the percentage of Wikipedia users on dialup is far, far higher than the percentage of Wikipedia users with screens of resolution lower than 1024x768.
I'm quite prepared to be told I'm utterly wrong about this. Dpbsmith 20:24, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Designing for 1024x768, with in-article illustrations of between ¼ and 1/3 of screen width, would give us thumbnails in the 250 to 350 px range. That's the kind of range I try to aim at. I don't know whether Dpbsmith is utterly wrong or not, but I hope he isn't. –Hajor 17:21, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Just to add another point of reference: I personally try to aim for the 200-250px range, though it depends on image orientation (a portrait aspect-ratio image can be narrower, while a landscape one should be wider). In my guesstimation that gives a good compromise between size and various screen resolutions (250px is around 25% of a 1024x768 monitor, but still only 39% of a 640x480 monitor). --Delirium 06:25, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

Terrible bug...

related to right aligned images and bulleted lists. Needs to be fixed soon! The text in the bulleted list doesnt wrap under the image, but stays in a column. Look at example: User:Perl/example Perl 00:18, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That wraps fine in my browser. You should say which browser and operating system you're using.  :) fabiform | talk 00:46, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I have the bug in Firefox .8. (text wraps fine in IE) Perl 01:17, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)~
You should at least consider the possibility that the bug is not in Wikipedia but in your browser (particularly considering the release number). --Paul A 02:13, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It's Bug 143162 I suppose. – Torsten Bronger 07:20, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

New bug in syntax

Yhe picture in Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax#Thumbnail_with_caption_text_underneath_that_has_one_or_more_links is today centered, with the text aligned to the left. A few days ago it was rightaligned ad the sentax says. Some most have messed around with the MediaWiki software. Den fjättrade ankan 14:56, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Fixed by E23. Den fjättrade ankan 16:40, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That's an ugly hack anyway. The current CVS version supports links in captions, see http://jeluf.mormo.org/testwiki/wiki.phtml?title=London.—Eloquence 15:01, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)
Excellent, I knew JeLuF was working on that.  :) fabiform | talk 15:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Don't work at Swedish Wikipedia yet. Den fjättrade ankan 16:40, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Design competition for Thumbnail Boxes

JeLuF has launched a design competition at meta:Image Box for people interested in changing the way thumbnails are displayed using the extended image syntax.

Note, this is for people who want to change the CSS which creates the (currently grey) boarder around the image, and what icon to use, if any – not for dicussing the ins and outs of how the images are resized and compressed on the fly. Voting is expected to begin on March 15, so all suggestions should be made by then.  :) fabiform | talk 15:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Some kind of boilerplate for the "standard, plain vanilla, recommended" style?

I want a nice simple way, not much harder than typing two apostrophes for emphasis, to markup up images so that they will be displayed in whatever people think is the best style for standard, plain vanilla pictures. This currently seems to be a right-aligned picture with text wrapping around it and a caption underneath.

  • In the common case where the picture itself is about the right size (e.g. 300 pixels wide) and there is no larger image available or needed, there should be no need for a magnifying glass icon.
  • The caption should by default be in smaller type than the main text.
  • It should be possible for a caption to be several lines long and contain emphasis, common Wiki markup, and links.
  • It should be so simple that the average newbie trying out images for the first time using the hints on the "How to Edit" page will typically do the right thing.

As nearly as I can tell, the current extended image markup does not yet meet these desiderata.

Just as we have {{msg:whatever}} to take care of "boilerplate" notices--and to allow for mass change of such notices--we should have some kind of "boilerplate" image markup.

Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith 15:58, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The new syntax does not support cross-language images

Hi,

We are in the Hebrew Wikipedia use very frequently images from other languages (mainly English). We do it by simply pasting the English image URL. I guess that most of the pictures in Hebrew Wikipedia are inserted in that technique.

I think that it MUST be solved in the new syntax (along with the caption problem). If we would have to separately upload every image, it would enlarge the number of images in the DB and on disk.

MeirM 16:40, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Most Wikipedias have turned off external images, so the only way to use ones from the English Wikipedia is to re-upload them. I'd recommend this rather than changing the syntax to allow external images as if you use a picture from here, you have no control over it and won't know when it is changed or deleted. Re-uploading to your own Wikipedia also means you could have the image description page in your own language, which is likely to be more useful to the people editing that Wikipedia. Angela. 00:51, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

Caption text, alignment; 3 bugs?

I've tried wading through all of the discussions above. I'm still left puzzled and befuddled by the following issues and it's not clear to me whether these remain as bugs, or whether there are features implemented that didn't make it onto the meta page, or whether it's "tough luck charlie"?

  • Captions disappear when it's not a thumbnail. So [[Image:AustrCattleDogBlue_wb.jpg|thumb|100px|This is my caption]]
    This is my caption
    This is my caption
    gives me a photo with a caption, but simply removing the "thumb" part makes the caption vanish.This is my caption I don't care whether it's implemented as alt or title or who knows what--I just expect it to be consistent!


This is my caption
This is my caption
  • Although wiki style seems to be to always use italics for captions (I think if we do it for one size, we shd do it for all sizes), the default caption (as you can see) is *not* italic, and inserting the tic-tic ('') makes the caption display with <em> tags. [[Image:AustrCattleDogBlue_wb.jpg|thumb|100px|''This is my caption'']]


  • I cannot find a way to get a thumbnail to center properly inside a table. If I specify that the alignment is "none" and center the table cell, it adds a whole bunch of space on either side apparently based on the length of the caption text. (On the off chance that this is an artifact of my browser--I'm using Netscape 7.02 on Mac System 9.)
This is a really long caption that goes onto more than one line (normal alignment)
This is a really long caption that goes onto more than one line (normal alignment)

[[Image:AustrCattleDogBlue_wb.jpg|thumb|100px|This is a really long caption that goes onto more than one line (normal alignment)]] inside a table produces the first table--which is the same width as the thumbnail box.

[[Image:AustrCattleDogBlue_wb.jpg|thumb|100px|none|This is a really long caption that goes onto more than one line (centered)]] inside a table produces the 2nd table, which displays about 3x as wide as the thumbnail box.

This is a really long caption that goes onto more than one line (centered)
This is a really long caption that goes onto more than one line (centered)

Elf 21:11, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi. The rendering problem is because the magnifying glass image [2] doesn't have the appropiate file access permissions. It seems that MSIE doesn't care about this and shows the image anyways, but Mozilla (and probably Netscape Navigator) doesn't show the image because it can't access it, so it generates a text that causes an overflow on the width margin (which creates the extra space). Don't worry about that, it is pretty easy to fix.
About not showing captions, you may want to post that on the Request a feature page (read the instructions given on that link). Right now, captions are generated only when the thumb attribute is given. If you remove it, the caption is used only as an image alternate text (just put the mouse over the image and wait a few seconds, the caption will show as a floating box).
About the italics, that is just a style. :) Usually, italics are used when the caption is not inside a box. That is probably why the font-style was left as normal, because in that design the caption is inside a box. I would say that in the case of no thumbnails, the text should go in italics.
Hope that helps! =)
--Maio 06:11, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)


Thanks! I'm not sure what the magnifying glass has to do with the extra table width--if it were only that, I'd expect both tables above to be the same width no matter how long the caption is. But noooooo--the first table is always the same width no matter how long the caption; the 2nd gets wider & wider as the caption gets longer.
And on italics--sure, it's a style, but it shouldn't display "<em>" as text when I attempt to apply italics! I'll try to go back & edit preceding stuff so markup is next to examples...
Elf 06:37, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The fact it displays "em" in the caption is not so much a bug as the natural result of the fact that the thumbnail captions currently support no wikimarkup/html. I think this is being worked on at the moment (so we can have links etc in the caption). As a workaround, type ''[[Image:AustrCattleDogBlue_wb.jpg|thumb|100px|This is my caption]]'':
This is my caption
This is my caption
Although you should bear in mind that italics are harder to read. By the way, the idea of making captions italic by default is one being discussed on meta:Image Box, you could vote in the straw poll.
And the new markup didn't intend to make captions around non-thumbnail images, so again, not a bug, but a much requested feature.  :) About the centering issue in tables... I have no idea. fabiform | talk 14:16, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
So we still need to use div tags to put captions on images? How is this a good thing? Who would request such a "feature"? It should either have:
  1. An option in the markup to specify whether the alt text should display as a caption or not:
    • [[Image:image.png|right|caption|This is the alt text which will also be displayed as a caption.]]
  2. An extra field to specify a caption apart from the alt text:
    • [[Image:image.png|right|This is the caption.|This is the alt text.]]
Seems to me like one of those could be made backward compatible easily enough.
Or allow both. Although 1 could be incorporated into 2 by simplifying the same way namespaces are: [[Image:image.png|right|This is the caption and alt text.|]] - Omegatron 16:28, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)


> I'm not sure what the magnifying glass has to do with the extra table width--if it were only that, I'd expect both tables above to be the same width no matter how long the caption is.
Not quite, although the 2 objects look the same, they are different in terms of stylesheets. The first image (without "none") is really a floating object, and well, floating elements behave like a freshman college girl: crazy, just crazy. The second image (with "none") doesn't have a floating attribute which makes it a static object and creates the extra margin. You can report the image error at Bug reports (read the instructions there) just tell them that when you try to access the image, a Forbidden error is generated. --Maio 16:06, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks again for being patient. Good tip on surrounding the whole thing with italic markup--didn't think of that (didn't know it would work). I did vote as you suggested. :-) And as for the xtra table width--it's displaying correctly now, so someone must have fixed something. Elf 19:26, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)