Template talk:Infobox saint

Newline

Melchoir, I just don't see what you're talking about. What's the problem? But now that I look around I see that numerous infoboxes omit a newline in that place; I have to assume some kind of widespread browser non-conformance. What browser are you using? TCC (talk) (contribs) 04:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

If a template includes an extra newline at the end, and an article includes an extra newline after the template, then Mediawiki puts those newlines together and forces a paragraph break where neither editor intended. In the case of an infobox, that creates a big white strip between the title and the introduction, and the introduction is thrown out of alignment with the top of the infobox. I've seen it in Safari and Camino, and I assume that it's server-sided and universal. We can run tests if you really insist.

Now, ideally no one would use more newlines than they have to. In practice, it's easier and less painful to regulate the bottom of a single template, whose code is already esoteric, obscure, and largely static; than it is to regulate the tops of a hundred articles, whose code is highly visible, needs to be easy to read and edit, and gets screwed up on a daily basis. Therefore we don't put extra newlines in infoboxes. If you find any others, please fix them! Melchoir 04:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I did not see that effect anywhere. Perhaps I just got lucky WRT placement of actual paragraph breaks. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it's certainly a rendering issue. I just tried it out in my sandbox, and cannot duplicate the effect in either Firefox or IE. But we obviously have to accomodate it, and I hadn't even looked at Category:Infobox templates before where it says to avoid this. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be fair, I seem to have been the first to add an explicit warning to Category:Infobox templates in this edit back in May. But I'm sure that I saw such a warning elsewhere before, and it was already a common practice. So, you don't get a difference between [1] and [2]? Melchoir 06:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm seeing it in Firefox, IE, Netscape, and Opera, as well as Camino and Safari. Melchoir 06:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

That's surprising. Regardless of the version of that test article, they're both referencing the current copy of the template in my sandbox, which has the newline. They should look identical. Also, at my preferred browser width the bottom of the template occurs at a section break, which would tend to conceal the problem if it existed. However, the current version cuts some material out of the template so that its bottom occurs in the middle of a paragraph, and it transcludes the current "production" template which lacks the newline. [3] The previous version [4] transcludes my sandbox copy, which has the newline. These also look identical to me, but if the problem is visible to you they should look different. TCC (talk) (contribs) 07:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

No, your links look the same, because in order to cause the breakage you have to make two mistakes at the same time. In the template, you have to write

end code of bad infobox
<noinclude>

instead of

end code of good infobox<noinclude>

and in the article, you have to write

{{bad infobox}}
 
 '''Test''' is a test...

instead of

{{bad infobox}}
 '''Test''' is a test...

And the breakage doesn't occur at the bottom of the displayed infobox; it occurs at the top of the article, which is just after the infobox in the code. You're saying that my two links have the exact same spacing above the line "Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco was a noted"? This is what I get:

File:Bad noinclude.png

Melchoir 18:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it occurs to me that I named those images badly. They both transclude the same template, which as you point out contains the extra newline. It's the article code that's different. The point is that something happens. Melchoir 18:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that I do, but I don't think of this as breakage really. When I notice it I just remove the extra newline after the template transclusion. TCC (talk) (contribs) 19:14, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

That works too, but it makes the start of the article's lead section a little harder to locate within the code. Melchoir 19:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Prayer

I would suggest that the section for a "prayer by the saint, or a characteristic prayer to the saint" should be removed. Having this section makes editors think it needs filling and often this means that an arbitrary prayer attributed to the saint is given undue prominence by being included in the infobox. This is causing unnecessary friction in a number of articles where some editors are adding prayers (for the good reason that there is a space in the infobox to do so) and others are removing them (for the equally good reason that it makes it look like wikipedia is actually encouraging veneration of the saint rather than merely reporting facts).

There are prayers specifically prescribed by church authorities to be used in veneration of particular saints but these can very easily be mentioned in the article text if needed, as can any particularly notable prayers penned by the saints themselves. Putting it in the main text gives more scope for explaining context as well. --Spondoolicks 14:14, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• I say keep the pryaer box ... but encourage people to not put a really long one there ... --evrik ^(talk) 17:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

If there's a choice of prayers, why highlight one by putting it in the box? It makes it look like it's one of the fundamental pieces of info about the subject like name, DOB, etc. As Atilios tried to say in the John Bosco talk page, it would be strange to have a random selection of a poet's work picked out and placed in the infobox and it seems to me to be the same here. Anything you want to achieve by putting a prayer in the infobox can be achieved better by putting it in the text and adding more information. --Spondoolicks 18:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I put this into the template because it existed in the original infobox. There was actually an extended discussion of this on the project talk page, whether to include it in the infobox or not, that predated the creation of the template. The consensus (more or less) was that they were OK to include since they were illustrative of either the saint's spirituality or of how a faith community venerates the saint, but that to be useful for either purpose it must be attributed. This is why it does not display if the attribution field is not filled in.

I have come to be of two minds on the subject and therefore don't feel strongly about it either way. Perhaps it would be worth inviting wider participation in the discussion by re-opening it on the project talk page. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I just had a look back at the discussion you mentioned (in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Saints/Archive3) and much of it seemed to be about whether prayers should be included full-stop and I don't think the specific problems of having them in the infobox were sufficiently addressed. I'm copying this discussion to the project talk page to carry on there (and I hope it doesn't get as messy as last time). --Spondoolicks 21:31, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Birth and death - Syntax bug

Several saints, including several of the Twelve Apostles, have only the country where they were born or died listed in their infobox. The current syntax of the infobox forces a comma before their country names, apparently expecting a city to be entered. See Bartholomew the Apostle. MrZaius^talk 22:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

No, it's expecting some entry for the date. But that could be handled better, yes. I'll get on it in a day or so. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I should add that the birth and death dates are clearly listed in the documentation as required parameters, so if you don't add something there you can expect odd behavior. You could put "Unknown date" in for it and that should work OK. But it's worth reconsidering whether they should be required, since there are many saints for whom these dates are not known. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixed the case where no birth date is given. You can just leave it empty now. --Drieakko 09:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Size

Is there any chance of shrinking the default size of the entire infobox (without picture) by 50 pixels or so, and perhaps making the text (aside from the title) smaller? Also, 290px as the default image size fills half the page, and definitely takes the focus off the text, be it the main text or the infobox text, rather than being an additional visual aid. Aren't most others somewhere around 200px? I'm not sure what other differences there are, but this infobox seems generally huge, in comparison to others. -Bbik^★ 22:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The image size was chosen to fill the available width. If in most cases that leaves it too long it can be decreased of course, but in the meantime feel free to explicitly set the size to 200px using the imagesize parameter anywhere you feel the image is too big.

The infobox itself is 300px wide, which seems middlin' based on a random survey of other infoboxes. If you like, we can try defining it in terms of em units, which will make it vary by the default font size. TCC (talk) (contribs) 00:39, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I think I'm in slightly over my head, here. Default font size according to what? Wikipedia settings? Infobox settings (if it even has a default)? Individual computer settings? And if this box isn't one of the bigger ones, I guess I've just never come across bigger ones, or never noticed (Perhaps they didn't feel as big, even if they were? Don't know.).

Let me try with an example, though, to make sure I'm actually saying what I think I'm saying. MishaPan added the infobox to Lazar of Serbia earlier, and set the picture size at 250px. Because I'm used to seeing 200px in infoboxes, and because it felt like it overshadowed the text at that size, I shrunk it down to 200px, but after saving, I now see why it was 250px before -- even with the picture smaller, the infobox remains big enough for the larger thumbnail, rather than resizing itself. It's this wasteful extra space that prompted me to ask about shrinking the entire (pictureless) infobox a bit (nothing to do with the length of anything, just the width).

As for the default size of the image, when considered in relation to the infobox size, the 290px does make sense, even though I do still feel that's a bit large. However, seeing as it is possible to set the size to something smaller, that's a minor issue. It's mostly the white space that seems to need fixing. -Bbik^★ 21:32, 20 June 2007 (UTC)