Template talk:Okina

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Hawaii Portal

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1 TFD
2 Disruption to articles
3 Template:'okina?
4 My latest modifications to {{'okina}} and {{okina}}
5 Don't specify fonts for other browsers
6 HTML

[edit] TFD

‹ The template below (Okina) is being considered for deletion. See templates for deletion to help reach a consensus. ›

The template was kept. See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 January 18. -Splash^talk 23:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disruption to articles

I don't have an opinion on the merits, but Kauai is almost unreadable with the text < ‹The template Okina has been proposed for deletion here.› inserted in almost every line and caption of the article. Isn't it possible to proceed is a less disruptive manner? --Walter Siegmund (talk) 07:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the TFD notice here to the talk page to avoid disrupting pages using it. --Angr (tɔk) 12:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Having [] boxes all over the place for all Internet Explorer users on Windows is unacceptable. This template needs to be replaced by a symbol like ` that more than 20% of Internet users can view correctly, while the template is removed in Hawai`i articles over some period of time in favor of the symbol. Then once that has been done, delete the template. The only reason the vote for deletion didn't go through was because it messed up existing articles that used the template. But they're already messed up. Hawai[]i looks terrible. It doesn't matter if it's Windows' fault or Microsoft's fault or IE's fault. If this were a printed encyclopedia would the reader care about technical details like that, if they had to put up with "Moloka[]i"? -socalifornia 08:50, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I can't see it either (on a new computer with IE 6.0.2900). See also debate on Hawaii. I changed this into a simple ' character for now which defeats the purpose of the template but at least it works. If anyone can make a template which actually works for this, perhaps it might be good. Rmhermen 15:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but not without reservations. We all hope that there will be one day that mister Microsoft will repent, I look forward to it, but until the day that unicode 0x02BB is generally available (I would say on 90% of the computers), we shall have to live with the { {okina} } template. Well, it could be worse. But please do not take 0x0027 as replacement, then at least 0x2018.

Perhaps the idea of User:Agent_X in Talk:Okina is not so bad after all. --Tauʻolunga 21:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No. If there's a problem, you fix the browser, you don't "fix" Wikipedia. I'm making sure it stays the proper Unicode ʻokina. - Gilgamesh 21:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Is this a wise decision? In that case people who see [] (boxes) may change articles, resulting in even worse edit wars with those who see ʻ (apostrophes), as in fact now already happens. Using 0x2018 then at least is a compromis for the time being. --Tauʻolunga 03:24, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

If other users change them, they are wrong. Using the one cross-platform standard is neutral point of view. Catering to one browser on one operating system is majoritarian, and thus quite POV. By changing just for broken non-standard browsers like IE, you're letting IE alone—rather than the international standards—dictate policy on Wikipedia, breaking the NPOV rules. I'm very sorry that IE is broken as it is, but if you have a problem with it, you either report it to Microsoft, change your browser, or live with the rectangles. I will abide by existing transparent international standards—the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Unicode Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the various authorities for language standardization. This is standard Hawaiian, in standard Unicode, which uses standard ʻokina, and that's the way it is. This has been a known issue in IE for a long time, and it hasn't been fixed in years. I would suggest you install Unicode fonts like Code2000, and also use a browser like Mozilla Firefox with a tidier text display engine—unlike IE, it will scour your installed fonts for missing font glyph mappings, and mix and match multiple fonts in the same text if necessary. - Gilgamesh 12:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

It is fine with me, Macintosh users do not have this problem in the first place, and I am a big promotor of 0x02BB myself. But most people are not as enlightened as you are. I found some other people getting very angry on ME when I use this template because THEIR computer cannot do it. --Tauʻolunga 05:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Anger is human nature, and those who get angry at you are misdirecting their anger. Those who can understand, will understand, and direct their attentions where they will be productive. Those who prefer to stay angry at you are choosing to be boorish, and they indulge their fundamentally inadequate software rather than fixing their situation for themselves on their end. You can either try to please everyone whether it's right or not, or you can just do the proper thing, and let the chronically displeased make their own choices. And who knows...maybe if the box problem keeps lingering with IE, people will begin to see the box as a glyph variant of the ʻokina. - Gilgamesh 08:07, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:'okina?

Why is it that this template uses another template within itself, and why is it that the first template uses the glyph that is incompatible for IE users, instead of the Unicode variant (and is named via the use of an apostrophe)? Ryulong 02:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I recently editted Template:'okina so that instead of the symbol, I made it ʻ, which still creates the symbol when used, to the best of my knowledge, as I use Internet Explorer.--Ryulong 02:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The {{okina}} is the general-use template for most situations, especially for Hawaiian English, and it is equivilent to {{Unicode|{{'okina}}}}. But since the {{Unicode}} template uses the HTML <span></span> tags, using this template in other templates that use these HTML tags will cause it to break. So, in such circumstances, it is more appropriate to use {{'okina}} itself, even though it is slightly less IE-has-been-broken-for-years-friendly. - Gilgamesh 02:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

So it is more useful to use {{okina}} which in its own coding uses {{'okina}} which used the unitelligible symbol (to IE users, the broken box) instead of the Unicode hex values? Because {{okina}}(ʻ) looks like a skinny box, {{'okina}}(ʻ) looks like a fat box, and {{okina}} when bolded (ʻ) looks like this [, but shorter. Ryulong 03:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's because of the {{Unicode}} tag. It references a stylesheet that specifies a list of readily available fonts that display a large variety of Unicode characters. The browser displays the first font in the list that's installed on the user's system. And this is how IE is broken—when any font is specified (including Wikipedia's basic display stylesheet such as Monobook.css that, if I'm correct, specifies Verdana by default, which does not support ʻokina), IE displays the contained text in that font and only that font, even if the text contains characters the font doesn't support. Mozilla-based browsers and Safari go through this font selection process for every single character in the text (and looks for additional installed fonts if none in the font list support a character), which allows elegant implicit mixing of fonts in the same text as needed. This is broken in IE because this behavior—as with so much other IE behavior—has been left all but unchanged for years. When IE became the dominant browser, they stopped adding new features for years, because they weren't being forced to. They have only been forced to gradually add new popular features with the rising popularity of Firefox. - Gilgamesh 06:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. So, once again, it's all Microsoft's fault. Ryulong 06:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My latest modifications to {{'okina}} and {{okina}}

I have recently editted {{'okina}} so that the okina is shown through a font that Windows has and can be seen through Internet Explorer. Now users of IE will not see the evil box, and will instead see the 'Okina that WikiProject Hawaiʻi has strived for. Ryūlóng 20:01, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I had no problems before, so I cannot test it, but would this then finally after all these months, years, and all these angry words and heated debates, be the solution? --Tauʻolunga 06:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I use Internet Explorer, and I see the ʻokina fine now. It's no longer a giant box, or a small box. It's what it should be in any internet browser, as long as Lucida Sans Unicode is on someone's computer. Ryūlóng 08:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I am somewhat confused here - shouldn't the ‘okina be ‘ instead of ʻ as done by this template? Or does the correct ‘okina not work properly with the wretched MSIE? Dysmorodrepanis 19:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't specify fonts for other browsers

Since this template is meant to work around a bug in MSIE, it should be changed to use the same technique as template:IPA and template:Unicode, using styles in common.css to change the font specification for MSIE only, and not affect the display for other browsers. —Michael Z. 2006-08-16 19:05 Z

[edit] HTML

{{editprotected}} Why don't we use <span style="font-family:'Lucida Sans Unicode'"> instead of <font face="Lucida Sans Unicode">. This way, it would be more standards-friendly and XHTML-conforming. It would still work in IE. --Ysangkok 20:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)