Template talk:Spaceship

Regarding possible use for alien patterns

Regarding recent edits to the template: I think it would be better to avoid using this template on pages about alien patterns (and add a separate infrastructure if any is needed, or avoid infoboxes in the OCA namespace at all). Confocal (talk) 16:54, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I made the edits for the exact purpose of allowing infoboxes in alien patterns without putting them into categories. --Galoomba (talk) 17:03, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The usefulness of infoboxes on pages about alien patterns is an open issue. I'd prefer {{EmbedViewer}} transclusions with captions describing patterns, instead of attempting to reuse infrastructure that was not designed to support other rules. Confocal (talk) 17:05, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Open issue? Where is it talked about? --Galoomba (talk) 17:06, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Currently here. For previous discussions, see for example LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2020#LifeViewer and RLE on OCA subpages. Confocal (talk) 17:13, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't talk about usefulness of infoboxes on pages about alien patterns. The only time it mentions the infobox is a suggestion to make it clear that it's not a B3/S23 pattern.
The other relevant thing is the inclusion of alien patterns in the RLE rulespace, which could be solved by making Template:InfoboxStart accept a RLE field, but I don't know if that's even necessary, isn't the RLE rulespace just technical? --Galoomba (talk) 17:32, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The RLE namespace nontrivially interacts with downloadable LifeWiki pattern collection. In the same linked 2020 discussion, there were suggestions to separate alien RLEs into another namespace ("OCARLE"); that idea was neither rejected nor implemented, as far as I can tell. Confocal (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't know that. That should be discussed, in the meantime adding a RLE field to the infobox should work as a solution. --Galoomba (talk) 17:45, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Dvgrn pointed out that OCA RLEs are not included in the main pattern collection, so it seems like this isn't a problem. --Galoomba (talk) 22:35, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Re: "That doesn't talk about usefulness of infoboxes on pages about alien patterns" -- actually that discussion does talk about templates. Here is an incomplete quote from the linked discussion -- it is reasonably clear that it refers to infobox templates, since it mentions links to Catagolue syntheses:
"It seems like some different templates might be needed, to point to the alternate RLE namespace (if that gets created), and to get rid of irrelevant stuff like the links to Catagolue syntheses which won't exist for OCA patterns. // Thoughts on this? Would it be better to skip the templates, and just recommend that OCA patterns should keep their RLEs directly in the articles, as part of embedded LifeViewer text?" End of quote.
Confocal (talk) 17:47, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

LifeWiki:Tiki bar#Alien pattern pages. Confocal (talk) 17:26, 4 September 2023 (UTC)