User talk:Pjacobi/Formatting

I was wondering, since you have an interest in languages, whether you could give me aesthetic input. I'm working on a morphology of Old Norse (whether anything comes out of it, I don't know), and the question arises, how to present the data. I've taken the liberty of putting quite a large amount of text on your talk page - I hope you'll excuse me - and in any case, you can always delete it. Anyway, what follows are two paradigms with somewhat different colours and bolding, one adjective and one verb. Could you give me an opinion of the colouring scheme, whether the paradigms should be bolded and so on? I'd be grateful for your input. Cheers Io 17:49, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Svalr (cool)

Number	Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neutral
Singular	N	svalr	svǫl	svalt
	A	svalan	svala	svalt
	D	svǫlum	svalri	svǫlu
	G	svals	svalrar	svals
Plural	N	svalir	svalar	svǫl
	A	svala	svalar	svǫl
	D	svǫlum	svǫlum	svǫlum
	G	svalra	svalra	svalra

Kalla (to call)

Infinitive	kalla
	Present
	Indicative		Subjunctive
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
1. Person	kalla	kǫllum	kalla	kallim
2. Person	kallar	kallið	kallir	kallið
3. Person	kallar	kalla	kalli	kalli
	Imperfect
	Indicative		Subjunctive
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
1. Person	kallaða	kǫlluðum	kallaða	kallaðim
2. Person	kallaðir	kǫlluðuð	kallaðir	kallaðið
3. Person	kallaði	kǫlluðu	kallaði	kallaði
	Imperative
	Singular	Plural
2. Person	kalla	kallið
	Present Participle
	kallandi
	Past Participle
	kallaðr

Discussion

Thanks for your answer. Yes, I intentionally left the borders out. The smallest width is 1, and it is too heavy for my eyes. I don't have access to a printer where I am right now, and I was thinking in terms of reading from the screen anyway. Would it be a good idea to provide a "printer friendly" version in shades of grey?

But about the colours, should they be stronger or perhaps weaker, and do you think the words themselves should be bold (as in kalla) or normal (as in svalr)? The pink I used for the background is perhaps a bit too "pastel", but I think table colours should be moderate. What do you think? Also, when providing paradigms, how far do you think one should go in tabularizing? (Here I mean, if a word has one exceptional case, should one give a table for it, or should one just mention it in the text? An example is Icelandic dagur (day), which has an exceptional dative in the singular, but is otherwise inflected normally. An example in German might be Bau-Bauten.)

Cheers Io 18:50, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

PS: The verb is a bit top-heavy, i. e. too many headers vs. actual information. Do you know an arrangement which presents the forms with fewer headers, while still giving the information about mood, tense and so on? Io 18:56, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Borders: Did you try style="border-collapse: collapse;", as in this example: [1]

Hardcopy: The wikipedia CSS stylesheet mechanism usually does a good job for providing print output, you should try not to break this. Shades of grey or color wouldn't make any difference, for my browser setup, as every background color is discarded on printout.

Colors: I'm red-green blind and cannot give you sensible advice, apart from the fact already mentionend at "Hardcopy", that the information should be still visible with all colors stripped. Also colors may look rather different, whether displayed on CRT or LCD.

Fewer header: You can try a "legend cell" for all or some of the info in the headers. Look at this example [2] (Tamil font required for full viewing experience), where I have gone totally headerless. O.K. the table is ugly for other reasons.

Pjacobi 19:18, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC) http://www.jodelpeter.de/i18n/tamil/xref-uc.htm

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Thanks again for your answer. I think we'll have a fruitful discussion.

I know where I can look up "border-collapse", but what is "legend cell"? (Sorry, I'm not an HTML-professional.) Anyway, if you leave the border off, the cells are divide by a slim, white line. At least that is how it apppears on my screen. Do you think a border is necessary?

Does your second remark (hardcopy) mean that I can format with colours, and the Wikipedia CSS will still do the job, or is there a set of rules I have to follow? (Are the Wikipedia style sheets available for inspection somewhere?) By the way, do you print the articles you want to read? I always thought reading off the screen was more convenient.

The display on CRTs and LCDs looks pretty much the same, doesn't it? (I have a CRT at work and an LCD at home and it looks alike to me.)

Anyway, red-green blindness or not, would you agree, that a soft background, distinct from the page itself, is better than either a screaming colour of its own or the same colour as the page itself?

How much of a detail would you want, when reading about a language? (I mean, in Icelandic there are something like 8 noun declination classes, if you count subclasses the number goes up to, say, 15, and if you want to include exceptions, you have scores - how many should one include for the educated, but non-expert reader?)

Lastly, what do you think of bold text, that is, headers should in my opinion be bold, but should the word being declined be bold or normal?

Many questions, I know. Thanks for your time. :-)

Cheers Io 20:02, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)