Template talk:Pattern
I've started making various changes to the various pattern templates to make them more readable, more editable, and more maintainable (less duplication of boilerplate code means fewer places where things can go awry, and fewer chances for divergent changes).
Most of these changes are internal to the templates and shouldn't be visible on the articles using them. There's two exceptions:
- I've moved "generic" parameters to (near) the top of the template. What are "generic" parameters? Those that describe traits that (almost) any kind of pattern possesses; I've deemed population and bounding box ubiquitous enough to qualify. These two now appear (if they are specified) right under the fields describing the type of a pattern.
- I've introduced divider lines into the infoboxes; I'd previously manually used those on Template:Conduit, and decided I liked how they look. These live in their own template now, and they're used to seperate generic parameters from pattern-type-specific parameters (e.g. period for oscillators, speed for spaceships etc.), and pattern-type-specific parameters from "discovery" information.
I am, however, divided (...oh, goodness) on how these divider lines look, especially if the sections between them are fairly small. So if anyone else thinks they're ugly, please just remove them; it should be easy (well, easier) to do now without breaking the templates.
What else is new? Some new infobox-internal templates (all inspired by Template:PatternDownload) namely Template:PatternDiscovery, Template:PatternPopulationAndBoundingBox (feel free to move this if you can think of a better name), and Template:InfoboxDivider. The former two also handle the relevant categories, so the "categories" sections of the actual infobox templates are quite a lot less cluttered.
What remains to be done? A "start-pattern-infobox" template could be introduced, displaying such things as a pattern's name, image, and embedded LifeViewer, if any. (This could also slap Category:Patterns on the transcluding article.) Template:PatternDownload and Template:PatternIdentifiers haven't been touched at all yet, and could use clean-up (Template:InfoboxDivider might come in handy there as well, BTW). More generally, some templates could use new parameters, such as mcps= for Template:Methuselah. Some of the category infrastructure could likely be removed, e.g. the population-specific unit cell categories. (What was I thinking?)
This is about all I can think of for the moment. Apple Bottom (talk) 21:06, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
I think you may have caused a bug with your edits. 77topaz (talk) 01:09, 20 February 2018 (UTC)