Index talk:The cat. Its natural history, varieties, and management.djvu

Quotes

No convention was given at the start. It settled as 90 straight vs 86 curly. (see WS:").

Maybe straighten all? — Alien  3
3 3 10:50, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

What should be done after all? So far I've seen quotes on pages 55 and 57. — TheBoxThinker (talk) 20:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Collaborative works are always done with straight quotes per policy. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

yeah, i've been straightening them during validation, since there was no declaration of style. I assumed default = straight, unless declaration/consensus otherwise. Just Al (talk) 20:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 - Wow, how are you finding these numbers? I've straightened on all the pages I've validated. Is there a good way to search the whole book? Just Al (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

On wikimedia sites, mw:extension:CirrusSearch allows you to use a variant of w:regular expressions to search through the sources and/or titles of pages. For example, if I want to find US patents, with no false positive, I can use the search intitle:/United States patent [0-9]+/.

For quotes specifically, it's Page: intitle:"The cat. Its natural history, varieties, and management.djvu" insource:/\"\'/ versus Page: intitle:"The cat. Its natural history, varieties, and management.djvu" insource:/”“‘’/ (using /regular expressions/ as opposed to "strings" is mandatory when you want to match well non-letter characters. For example, a while ago I wanted to find ¢s to locate OCR errors.) — Alien  3
3 3 18:15, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Straightened all I could find. Sorry, can't use that search method...I have a vanilla computer that can't be modified. Just Al (talk) 18:15, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

You don't have to do anything, it's included in the website search. Try typing Page: intitle:"The cat. Its natural history, varieties, and management.djvu" insource:/test/ into the search bar at the top of all pages, click "search for pages containing ..." and then it works. (I replaced the curly quotes by test for demonstration, as there are no curly quotes anymore.) — Alien  3
3 3 18:18, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm saving this to my page so I can use it more often. Just Al (talk) 20:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

In general, I highly recommend getting to know CirrusSearch and Regexes. They are very powerful tools, that I've found very useful many times. Notably, when editing, if you click on "Advanced" in the editing toolbar (might need to enable it in your settings), you can perform search-and-replace with regexes, allowing to speed up many repetitive tasks. — Alien  3
3 3 20:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Letters on the bottom of certain pages

Should these letters be removed? I imagine so, but it's inconsistent (they do not appear in the transcript of page 1, but do on others). — TheBoxThinker (talk) 21:03, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, these are Binder's marks and are not relevant to our online presentation. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Are we removing the other binder's marks like 'frontispiece' and 'to face p...'? Just Al (talk) 18:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Header p.153+ (feline instinct)

Curious why the headers look off. Was this a style choice?

• set to small-caps (matches original text)
• set to italic (doesn't match original typography)
• typed with all-caps (defeats the style and size ratio of small caps)

Just Al (talk) 19:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

(This is all-small-caps, not regular {{sc}}. This means that it also forces all-caps to small-caps size (normally, it should, if it doesn't please say).)

The italic is because for the rest of the book, it was italic, and so I added that to the index CSS. Now we have a choice:

• either we remove it from the index CSS, and then readd italics manually on every page up to the beginning of feline instinct
• or we wrap the middle of the {{rh}} in {{fsn}} on every page past the beginning of feline instinct.

I think the second option would make for less work, and so I'd prefer that.

But then some could say that having a {{fsn}} inside an italic span containing nothing else would be a bit meh.

What do you think of that? — Alien  3
3 3 20:59, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Using small caps means that the source text can be left in human-readble upper/lower cases. I realize that it automagically changes the size. I was just concerned about accuracy if viewed as a manuscript. Sometimes, small-caps are used for a longer line, and using all-caps makes it harder to read. (I used to be a copy-editor and typesetter/layout artist.) Seems like a minor fix, since the header repeats. I'm not married to it. Just bringing up the idea.

Second option, I agree...fixing the later pages manually is fewer edits. Leave the style as it is, and we can pasted a new header into the latter end of the book. Just Al (talk) 21:19, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Would this work?

original:

{{rh||FELINE INSTINCT.|153}} looks like this:

suggested:

{{rh||{{normal|{{sc|feline instinct.}}}}|153}} looks like this:

Just Al (talk) 21:27, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

left page numbering might look like this: {{rh|176|{{normal|{{sc|feline instinct.}}}}|}}

Is this too pedantic? I won't change the style unless there's consensus. Just Al (talk) 01:09, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I must say, also, that as headers and footers are not transcluded, they are often considered secondary, and sometimes not formatted with as much care than the rest of the text (or even, for some editors, though this is a bit frowned upon, completely left empty).

I think the case and smallcaps is not a real issue (especially as we do not know what case they planned it to be in. "Feline Instinct"? "feline instinct"? "Feline instinct"? I think it's better not to take any assumptions). As far as that is concerned, I'd say just leave the font-variant:all-small-caps in the index CSS, which means there's no need putting {{sc}} or {{asc}} in the headers themselves, and leave that uppercase.

What I was asking you about, more specifically, was the italics. Either we leave the font-style:italic, which means every feline instinct header has to be changed to something like this:

{{rh||{{fsn|FELINE INSTINCT.}}|153}}

Or we remove it, and every other page has to be changed to

{{rh||''FELINE INSTINCT.''|153}}

Note: there is currently an issue with {{fsn}}, as someone modified for it to also normalise smallcaps, although it was not its purpose but that of {{fvn}}. This means that anyone using {{fsn}} in smallcaps (like us here) now has to readd smallcaps inside. This may change, if they agree to revert that. We probably have to wait for the outcome of that. — Alien  3
3 3 06:36, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Small caps are generally used in page headings so that they stand out from the body text visually (no ascenders/descenders), and do not overshadow the page numeration. True all-caps would be larger than numerals, when they are supposed to be parts of the same element.

I don't think most people would even notice that the headers changed away from italic small caps to distinguish the separate essay from a different author. The table of contents has the original case as 'Essay on Feline Instinct' which was truncated to 'Feline Instinct.' in headers.

But, like I said, maybe it's too much detail. I'm not sure how many other editors/readers would see these things. I am only mentioning this for discussion, since not all things are caught in the first pass of proofreading.

Happy to make the edits if we agree on the format. It would be copy/paste + change page number.

If it's not a concern, then we're pretty close to complete. I'm good either way. (Least effort = leave it as-is.) Just Al (talk) 16:42, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Here's what I propose:

• give me a bit of time to look through the uses of {{fsn}} that rely on this new thing, and adapt them
• and restore {{fsn}} to its old functionality (else {{fsn}} will also remove the {{asc}} effect)
• and then we add {{fsn}} to the heades of feline instinct.

Do you agree on that? — Alien  3
3 3 17:23, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree. No hasty change necessary. I'm continuing to validate pages.

Is there a way to start a new style when the separate essay starts? Can they start/stop with different sections of a book? Or does it apply to the entire book? Just Al (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

It applies to an index at a time. (would be good to be able to split, but eh.) — Alien  3
3 3 17:31, 7 January 2025 (UTC)