Talk:Glossary

Categories

I guess this one belongs in nearly all cats NT 17:29, 24 April 2007 (BST)

Yes I suppose we really need the ability to use a wildcard e.g. [[Category:*]] and have it appear automagically in every category listing. In the absence of such a facility it'd be a PITA to maintain it manually so maybe just 'Misc' or something? --John Stumbles 20:41, 24 April 2007 (BST)

I dont mind putting it in each category by hand some day. As and when.... NT 23:07, 24 April 2007 (BST)

Why is there a slightly-modified copy of the article here on the discussion page? --John Stumbles

Whoops - corrected :) NT 09:10, 28 April 2007 (BST)

Ah, so it wasn't part of the master plan then?!

more master ockup I think - NT

---

BTW what about using formatting it as a definition list like:

Round Tuit

source of energy and motivation for DIY jobs

I'm not suggesting changing it all hand - I reckon running it all through a cunningly-crafted Perl incantation should do it. (I'm happy to give it a shot if you think the result would be worthwhile.)

--John Stumbles 13:33, 28 April 2007 (BST)

That's easily done with the text editor, but is there an advantage I'm not seeing? NT 18:33, 28 April 2007 (BST)

I don't see any huge advantage but I think it'd look a bit nicer, be a a bit easier to maintain and look a bit more professional from the POV of anyone coming from another wiki (e.g. WP) since that's the formatting intended for this sort of list.

BTW how would you do it with the text editor (short of changing each one by hand)?

--John Stumbles 20:27, 28 April 2007 (BST)

OK I'll get it done next time I wiki. Sounds like you need a better text editor. NT 23:06, 28 April 2007 (BST)

I thought you meant the wiki editor. I could do it with vi but easier (for me) with perl. What editor do you use? --John Stumbles 23:34, 28 April 2007 (BST)

I see you've done it - nice one! What did you use BTW? --JDS

Mostly win32pad, fwiw. --NT

Split?

The article is quite big now. When I edit it I get a warning that some browsers may not be able to handle the size of it. I find it quite unwieldy to scroll through when reading, and even more so when editing. What do you think about splitting it? (If not into 27 separate alphabetical sections just yet, maybe just say, 0-L and M-Z?) --John Stumbles 18:31, 29 April 2007 (BST)

In all honesty I think that would ruin much of its usefulness. When I use a glossary I want to look up the words I need - having to go back and forth between different webpages is chaos, making a simple task unreasonably difficult.

Re the 32k warning, even the barely functional windows notepad can manage a pitiful 64k, and every PC owner has a WP even if not a txt-ed that can handle files way bigger. Even windows 3.1 Write can handle 100s of k. What wikimedia people were thinking when they wrote that I really don't know. I dont know how old wikimedia is, maybe they were trying to ensure 100% compatibility with some really old kit. NT 19:00, 29 April 2007 (BST)

I don't think it has anything to do with whatever editor you have on your PC but I'd guess it depends what size 'textarea' (or whatever the html form element is called) your browser can handle. --John Stumbles

Came across an explanation of this old rule:

"In the past, because of some now rarely used browsers, technical considerations prompted a strong recommendation that articles be limited to a maximum of precisely 32 KB in size, since editing any article longer than that would cause severe problems.[1] With the advent of the section editing feature and the availability of upgrades for the affected browsers, this once hard and fast rule has been softened and many articles now exist which are over 32 KB of total text size." NT 14:19, 18 May 2007 (BST)

As a matter of interest where did you find this, and what does the [1] refer to? --John Stumbles 23:13, 18 May 2007 (BST)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size

Theres a bunch more discussion about it, pros & cons. My take on it was that the important reason is now well & truly history, leaving only the q of article readability. And with a glossary, its not intended as an article to sit down and read all of. And even for dialuppers 32k is small. NT 23:54, 18 May 2007 (BST)

How about a glossary split by domain area?

So we could have an Electrical Glossary, a Plumbing / Heating one etc. That way you could still research a whole subject without getting loads of stuff from other unrelated areas of interest.

--John Rumm 02:24, 19 May 2007 (BST)

I'm sure those would be quite informative. I hope we also retain the all-in-one glossary though, as people need a place they can go to look up words they dont know, rather than clicking through 10 different pages trying to find one with their word on. NT 09:37, 19 May 2007 (BST)