Template:Sc/doc/Smallcaps and sc

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[edit] Comparison of Template:Smallcaps and Template:sc

At the root, {{sc}} is an extension of {{Smallcaps}}: {{sc|Your Text}} is exactly equivalent output-wise to {{Smallcaps|Your Text}}). The differences arise when using the segmented syntax of {{sc}}:

{{Smallcaps}} code Display (screen)
Output (pasted)		 Display (screen)
Output (pasted)		 {{sc}} code
The {{Smallcaps|Lord}} The Lord
The Lord		 The LORD
The LORD		 The {{sc|L|ord}}
  or:   The {{LORD}}
Danny {{Smallcaps|DeVito}} Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito		 Danny DeVITO
Danny DeVITO		 Danny {{sc|DeV|ito}}
Thesis - Advantages of {{sc}} over {{Smallcaps}}
  • {{sc}} is WYSIWYG for the copy-pasted text (or degraded text in older browsers, or text snippet in search engines), no more Easter Eggs: output will still give at least "LORD" or "Lord GOD" or "MAO Zedong" or "BC"/"AD" – whereas Smallcaps outputs "Lord" and "Lord God" (theological errors) or "Mao Zedong" (loss of surname disambiguation) or "bc"/"ad" (incorrect).
  • {{sc}} doesn't have the browser-dependent problems with uppercasing diacritics: most of the capitalization is done server-side by the dependable {{uc:}} (and if an error was found, it could be easily fixed in a centralized way by fixing the MediaWiki software).
Antithesis - Advantages of {{Smallcaps}} over {{sc}}
  • {{Smallcaps}} has a simpler call syntax, whereas using {{sc}} beyond a synonym for {{Smallcaps}} requires understanding the segment paradigm, especially on extreme cases:
    • José {{Smallcaps|Álvarez de las Asturias de Bohórquez y Goyeneche}}
    • José {{sc|Á|lvarez| de las A|sturias| de B|ohórquez| y G|oyeneche}}
Synthesis - Possible magic word {{sc:}}

However, the only advantage of {{Smallcaps}} is because it relies on the browser parsing the text letter-by-letter, whereas a template such as {{sc}} can't, and thus need to be told what to do with successive segments.

  • A server-side implementation of a new magic word {{sc:}} (on the model of {{lc:}} and {{uc:}}) would make the syntax easy again such as {{sc:Lord}}, {{sc:God}}, {{sc:Mao}} Zedong, Sinéad {{sc:O'Connor}}, Adolfo {{sc:Bioy Casares}}, or Danny {{sc:DeVito}} (parsing the text based on upper/lower case, as the CSS {{Smallcaps}} does in the browser).
  • Segments would become optional, and available for when additional control is wanted on the copy-paste/degradation output, such as {{sc:D|e|Vito}} (if one wants to output an underlying "DeVITO" instead of "DEVITO", as {{sc:DeVito}} would do).