[Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

thisoldman · 2011-10-23 18:25:33

I'm a frequent user of the Archwiki and I thank everyone who has contributed to it.

I do have one niggling irritation and it's the use of the Keypress template within a line of text. I find it breaks the flow of the page, disrupting my reading of the text. I have to switch mentally from language comprension mode to graphics comprehension mode. Visually, it breaks the even line spacing I expect in a paragraph of text. Examples abound on the Vim page, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vim.

The Keypress template is very good; it unambiguously suggests a keyboard key. It's the use inline with text that I find jarring. When confined to a column in a table or as the very first character or characters of a paragraph the template is often useful and doesn't halt my train of thought.

I'm also aware that many people aren't as language oriented in their thinking as I am; these people seem to learn new things more easily with pictures than with words. Personally, I find words give me better pictures.

I've been experimenting using my wiki user page as a sandbox, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Thisoldman. Nothing I've come up with seems to fill the need to suggest a keyboard key and not interfere with reading flow and comprehension. Does anyone have any thoughts for an alternative we could suggest for the wiki?

Last edited by thisoldman (2011-10-25 20:53:12)

roygbiv · 2011-10-23 19:50:46

Wow, the Vim page really seems bloated with these templates (not suprisingly though) and it's definitely harder read. I would suggest a more compact layout for the keyboard templates, as you have suggested, that is more in line with the text. They are simply too big and creates unnecessary line space.

thisoldman · 2011-10-23 22:40:24

I did a little more tweaking and twiddling and got the size of the keypress box down to something readable. The code block here is split into lines to make it editable.

 <span style="border: 0.01em solid;
 border-color: #FFF #BBB #BBB #FFF;
 background: {{{background|#EEE}}};
 margin: 0 0.05em;
 white-space: nowrap;
 min-width: 1em;
 display: inline-block;
 text-align: center">
 Ctrl
 </span>

vYXkxcw
I do wish people wouldn't ever use the template inline with text. While looking at Wikimedia's 'key press' template, I noted that they cautioned against doing that.

Now I have to see about geting this code into a template format.

Last edited by thisoldman (2011-10-23 22:40:56)

Gen2ly · 2011-10-25 14:30:35

thisoldman, ohhhhh, thank god you brought this up. I'm reverting all these edits:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?ti … on=history

down to mine on October 8th. Readability is especially tough with keypress templates. Appreciate the work but for this instance (the Vim page), I don't think it will work.

Last edited by Gen2ly (2011-10-25 14:44:17)

Gen2ly · 2011-10-25 14:52:04

Hmm, thinking about locking this page for awhile. Any suggestions?

karol · 2011-10-25 14:56:19

Gen2ly wrote:

Hmm, thinking about locking this page for awhile. Any suggestions?

Go ahead, just post e.g. a link to this discussion on vim's talk page.

How about the new ic template for key-presses - would that be enough?

thisoldman · 2011-10-25 15:17:20

I'd prefer the inline code template.

I'd also prefer, in the Vim article, that the tips cover the harder to find aspects of vim, not the basics that are covered in the vim tutorial. [Gosh! Now I'll have to read the tutorial.] Items such as inserting a timestamp with strftime() or date, or using abbreviations, navigating with tags...

Last edited by thisoldman (2011-10-25 15:33:34)

pointone · 2011-10-25 16:14:29

Please don't protect the page. A link to this thread in the talk page should suffice.

Gen2ly · 2011-10-25 17:49:04

thisoldman wrote:

I'd also prefer, in the Vim article, that the tips cover the harder to find aspects of vim, not the basics that are covered in the vim tutorial. [Gosh! Now I'll have to read the tutorial.] Items such as inserting a timestamp with strftime() or date, or using abbreviations, navigating with tags...

thisoldman, I could see this being useful, especially considering a good number of Arch users are somewhat familiar with it. That being said, I wonder about other users that aren't familiar or are becoming familiar (we all have to start somewhere) However, such topics could be useful, an 'Vim: Advanced' page could do such things.

karol · 2011-10-25 17:52:27

Gen2ly wrote:

thisoldman wrote:
I'd also prefer, in the Vim article, that the tips cover the harder to find aspects of vim, not the basics that are covered in the vim tutorial. [Gosh! Now I'll have to read the tutorial.] Items such as inserting a timestamp with strftime() or date, or using abbreviations, navigating with tags...
thisoldman, I could see this being useful, especially considering a good number of Arch users are somewhat familiar with it. That being said, I wonder about other users that aren't familiar or are becoming familiar (we all have to start somewhere) However, such topics could be useful, an 'Vim: Advanced' page could do such things.

I think that adding a bunch of links to various vim-tips sites is a good start, not sure about duplicating their content on Arch wiki.

thisoldman · 2011-10-25 20:52:44

Well, the original cause of my complaint has received attention and seen resolution. Thank you all. I'll mark this thread as [Solved].

I'll agree that my ideas for tips don't belong on a basic 'howto' page. And yes, there are a lot of resources out there for Vim. I'll let my tips ideas simmer for a bit. I do think it's good to let people know vim has these abilities.

I think reducing the number of templates available in the wiki is a great idea. Too many available options can easily lead one astray.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-10-23 18:25:33

[Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#2 2011-10-23 19:50:46

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#3 2011-10-23 22:40:24

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#4 2011-10-25 14:30:35

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#5 2011-10-25 14:52:04

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#6 2011-10-25 14:56:19

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#7 2011-10-25 15:17:20

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#8 2011-10-25 16:14:29

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#9 2011-10-25 17:49:04

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#10 2011-10-25 17:52:27

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

#11 2011-10-25 20:52:44

Re: [Solved] Wiki 'Keypress' template?

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