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Latest comment: 14 years ago by Clindberg in topic Speaking of Hoover
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Title parameter for Potus-eo template

Latest comment: 14 years ago52 comments3 people in discussion

Don't you (correctly) default the title if the EO number is supplied in the {{potus-eo}} template? I don't see the need to specify it... the title appears correctly in the header without it. Clindberg (talk) 15:24, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Well you're right, I wanted to make it user-friendly & easy to apply strictly for EOs but I didn't want to (a) make a complete mockery out of the {{header}} and {{header2}} templates in the process and (b) handicap myself and leave the option of being able to send that parameter, {{{title}}}, down to the other default Category [[Category:Executive orders of President So and So | (((title}}} ]].
I guess {{{pagename}}} would work at that point or maybe just make it dependent on the {{{eo}}} parameter just like it automatically populates the {{{title}}} field now -- but hey -- but I'm no super-expert on this and it literaly took me weeks to get it work as well as is does now with no help from anybody & nothing more than trial and error. So in hopes of keeping the options open to automatically have the EOs match up wth the regulations (CFR & some USC) somehow one day in the future, adding the other automatic CAT at the end, I ask you to please include that one seemingly redundant line for now. I don't care about the other fields one bit though that means little in a collective forum such as this. Still, I thank you for your consideration. George Orwell III (talk) 16:02, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Hmm. Yeah, it can take a while to get the hang of template editing -- I'm not too great at it myself. However... using the "title" as a parameter to a category isn't the best idea, since that is only a sort key, and (as I forgot with EO 9902) it needs to be padded to work right. So you could use [Category:Foo|Executive Order {{padleft:{{{eo}}}|5|0}}] for that. I can see wanting to have that very-standard parameter... though it can make mass-changing titles later a bit harder (say if we wanted to add "United States" in front of it). Since you are defaulting the value now, it is easy enough to default it the same way for any other purpose. I could see it being a bit disconcerting not having a title in a header, but... specifying it can actually limit your options later, not keep them open. *shrug* Doesn't matter to me much though either way. Clindberg (talk) 16:34, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
In all honesty, I just don't want any grief from any admins about turning off the default bangs for leaving out a default parameter (just try to leave out | section = in the standard {{header}} or {{header2}} for example). As far as I'm concerned the title exists under | section = instead and the {{{pagename}}} or {{{title}}} is just one number in an ongoing sequence of numbers (with Executive Order being the default prefix) for an entire collection or work (a Standard). If it doesn't bother them, then it really doesn't bother me either -- I'm just glad see people adding missing stuff in this and related areas anyway. ;-}
Oh, thanks for the padding tip too. All I need now is another long list of #if thens to kick out the president's name for Foo I guess George Orwell III (talk) 17:05, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
If you are going to go that route, maybe make a helper template {{potus-eo-info|eo|type}} or something -- where you pass in the eo number, and a type of either "eo_cat" or "eo_page", then have every president's section be a #switch on the type, with values for each of those two parameters. You can then invoke that template twice from within potus-eo. That would get that nasty if-section out of the main template, and also mean you only need to code the #ifs once. Or, have the sub-template just return a president's name, and standardize the form of the category and page names by just plugging the name into a standard pattern. Clindberg (talk) 19:16, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like it would make life easy but I don't know how to "pass-on" the parameters from one template to another never mind how to set up the various outputs, like the year, source URL at NARA and which POTUS signed it values are now. If that was the case, I could make just about everything automaticly populated just from the {{{eo}}}.

Never really understood why a thing like that hasn't already been dreamed up by somebody sooner - it's all known values well recorded in history as far as EOs go. I wish it was just a matter of putting the content with it's validated citation for Proclamations. I can't find anybody who has compiled a list of Statue at Large Vol. and Page citations for Proclamations or I'd make a template to link to those too. George Orwell III (talk) 00:05, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Passing them down is just like using them as normal. ;-) Just {{potus-eo-info|{{{eo}}}|eo_page}} or something like that. Out of curiosity, why do you need to calculate the year based on eo number? Isn't that passed as an argument?
Because I didn't know how else to get the correct citation URL for those years where 2 presidents issued EOs (JFK death, Nixon impeachment and the other normal changes of administrations). George Orwell III (talk) 13:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
As an example of how to pass on parameters, have a look at {{DNBset}}. I have been through a bit of a learning curve this week as I have constructed that template on top of {{DNB00}}. I am still learning however willing to lend my nascent knowledge. -- billinghurst (talk) 14:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, but this is all a little beyond my level of understanding. I guess making the citation URL portion (or the {{{signed}}} and the {{{eo-potus}}} fields) separate from the main {{Potus-eo}} header template, it could allow for the many if ~ then strings to be reused to auto-populate other relevant bits of info typically found or needed to validate accuracy I guess. The goal I had originally was to have the header applied to all the EOs in it's basic form (no signing citation or Federal Register volume and page) via some script or BOT and this 'substitution' sounds like it could aid in accomplishing that. George Orwell III (talk) 15:57, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Hey that is usually MY excuse as a templater-noob. Later this week, when I have some spare time, I will try again to have a look. Some of your coding looked complex to my eyes. :-) billinghurst (talk) 21:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Mark I

At any rate - I tried to explain what's going on and my reasoning over on THIS PAGE. Tell me if any of that helps anybody provide feedback on how to streamline the {{Potus-eo}} template any. Please forgive the spelling/grammar mistakes. George Orwell III (talk) 03:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I think I have a complete replacement at User:Clindberg/potus-eo sandbox, with the interior template at User:Clindberg/eo info sandbox. You invoke the interior template like {{potus-eo-info|info=eo_page|eo={{{eo}}} }} when asking for the "eo_page", which will return the link to the associated president's executive orders page. Inside the sub-template, there is a #switch for each president to return various bits of info. I implemented two, which are all that are needed right now, an "eo_page" and a "nara_url_override" bit. The latter one will return the URL segment only if it is a special one, i.e. not a simple year. The parent template then uses #if on that, and if it is empty, defaults to the bare year in the URL. That eliminated the huge #ifexpr sections which just check for the year. I showed a couple examples of supporting an info=eo_cat parameter to return the category, though that is not tested. If you need to know another bit of president-specific info, then just add another name=value to every #switch statement in there. Clindberg (talk) 07:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't build the URL to the NARA citation for those years where 2 presidents issued EO's - at least not for 13228 for example. I think you only have a quarter of each or the half of just one of the needed string(s). I think for those years you need something like
|nara_url_override=
{{#ifexpr:13186<=({{{eo}}}) and ({{{eo}}})<13198|2001-clinton|}}
{{#ifexpr:13198<=({{{eo}}}) and ({{{eo}}})<13252|2001-wbush|}}

... for 2001 (with no line breaks as I've added to make it readable), for every one of those instances with 2 presidents issuing within one year. George Orwell III (talk) 07:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


EDIT -

After a closer look - I see that it does work and it was just bad luck the cutoff is set to less than EO #13000 and I used 13228 to try it out at first.

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I like the idea of the helper template but I'd rather keep the #if expressions as they are, move them to a helper template instead and find a way to eliminate having to populate | year = manually for every executive order and just find a way to have that populate automatically rather than what you've been driving at where the NARA URL becomes dependent on a manual input of {{{year}}} instead of an automatic output being dependent on the {{{eo}}} value.

Yeah, the 13000 was a mistake -- meant 14000 I think. That messes up some modern ones. For other stuff... you don't need any more checks for nara_override because they are inside the presidential #ifs which are the same. Since the month and day are always going to be needed to be passed, it is more natural to provide year along with that rather than calculate them. But, you could always put in the full year checks from your template in the nara_override field (rename it nara_url maybe) for each president if you wanted, and remove the #if from the main template. I also added a check to not print out the Federal Register stuff if fr-year is not provided, since that started in March 1936 and lots of EOs predate it. Similarly, I added a check to not print the NARA link for EOs before 1937, since those pages don't exist (yet). Clindberg (talk) 09:23, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Actually no, that had nothing to do with it. I had a typo which made the "nara_url_override" bit not work for George W. Bush. Fixed now. Clindberg (talk) 05:20, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The optimal solution here is to always have the {{{eo}}} not only create it's citation at NARA but always automatically cover the accuracy of the {{{year}}} parameter too. Your way allows for a possible innacurate {{{year}}} input causing the creation of an invalid URL for every year EXCEPT those years with 2 Presidents issuing EOs in it.

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Bad NARA citation URL Trumman never signed anything in 1987 The ability to validate should be the priority (builds Wikisource credibility) and not the ease of use for you or I. George Orwell III (talk) 09:26, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

But, you could always put in the full year checks from your template in the nara_override field (rename it nara_url maybe)
so {{{eo-url}}} shouldn't be re-used???
I also added a check to not print out the Federal Register stuff if fr-year is not provided, since that started in March 1936 and lots of EOs predate it.
Turning "off" the right side of the citation bar was already possible by including | cite = just like turning "off" the left side is possible by including | signed =

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George Orwell III (talk) 09:44, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

You shouldn't have to turn the right side "off" if no information is supplied -- it should be blank by default. Before the Federal Register started in March 1936, executive orders were released individually, and there was no central place where they were published -- therefore there is often nothing to cite. {{{eo-url}}} should only be used in the top-level template; if provided then the sub-template is never invoked. That way the sub-template doesn't have to repeat that every time. That should still work in my template (which also means you can generate incorrect URLs by specifying that incorrectly). I don't see much use in trying to defend against incorrect years, but it may be a good idea to defend against *missing* years. Clindberg (talk) 15:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Ooh, there is another issue. EO numbers aren't always... numbers. Executive Order 3885A was Calvin Coolidge's first EO (and 3885 was Harding's last one). EO 28, 28A, and 28-1 were all issued by Benjamin Harrison... apparently the State Department numbered the ones they could find, so when others turned up they got designations like that. I'm not quite sure what to do with them. They break both your and my templates pretty badly. Clindberg (talk) 14:27, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for the long delay - life throws a curve ball every now and then. All excellent points btw and good catch on the EOs with a letter suffix too.
It's obvious that something needs to be done about the Pre - 1930's EOs but I'd like to see what happens if I move all those expressions to a helper template first. Is it possible for you to do just JFK and Johnson (fairly short) and then I could follow your lead and do the rest? George Orwell III (talk) 00:03, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I put in the bits for JFK and Johnson. It is basically a copy/paste of your existing sections, with the eo-url part taken out, since that is handled by the parent. The logic for the bookends is cut in half because that is already handled by the presidential section we are already inside. If you go that route, then I would change the name of the param to "nara_url" since it is not an override anymore; and if you do then you don't need the #if in the parent template; you can just invoke the sub-template once to get the URL part. The letter EOs are going to be nasty; they may require specific overrides on everything (as well as the prev/next links on adjoining EOs). I also put in number ranges for Taft, Wilson, and Coolidge. I tried to make 3885A work but it would take a ton of effort to get those to work. It may be possible if we pass a made-up decimal number like "3885.1" but that could cause other issues. Clindberg (talk) 06:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Mark II

Your changes look good. I made a few tweaks, and removed bits which weren't necessary. I'm not sure I see the reason for pre-1937 (i.e. Hoover) nara_url sections, since their pages only go back to the start of 1937 (i.e., the first full year of the Federal Register). But I guess it doesn't hurt as long as we have the year info; maybe it will help at some point. Since these year sections are inside the "if" sections of each president, the "bookend" conditions don't need to be repeated -- which is why I removed those. I also tweaked the top-level template to avoid showing a double line at the bottom if no notes are supplied. I think it all looks pretty good now. I had a typo which also caused URLs to Obama's orders to not work, same as my GWB mistake before, but that is now fixed. Clindberg (talk) 19:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Well the bookends was another option left open to us that was going to go towards rectifying, or maybe overriding is a better term, the problems with EOs that have a letter suffix. I was thinking that {{{previous}}} and {{{next}}} needed to be able to accept manual inputs for these instances where a lettered EO occured, as well as leaving the {{{eo}}} blank and using the {{{title}}} field instead (as I think I mentioned somewhere earlier as my preference it remain a part of the main template regardless of the auto {{{eo}}} feature).
Pretty sure without the "" | "" at the end of each expression, any blanking of {{{eo}}} kicks out something like this....

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.... which I assume only reduces the number of ways to possibly solve that while still disabling the NARA link whenever applicable but still keeping the auto interlink back to the author's EO page with the signing date. Again, I'm no expert but if my slap-dash research was right, always including that extra "bookend" is always preferable over having no "default" (which = a blank parameter I believe).
→ Well after poking at having the bookend versus not having it - the bottom line is either way the expression bangs come up with a blank {{{eo}}} parameter. :( Bummer.
I'd have to defer to your expierence with template speak when it comes to removing what seems to be one redundant #if expression for each POTUS too but it's not like the internet is running out of storage space is it?
The notes thing along with the citation bar where eventually going to get the same beveled "borders" look as the greenish standard header has but that's window dressing considering the remaining problems with getting this applied across the existing EOs by BOT or whatever. I just moved what was typically blank padding in the standard header when {{{notes}}} was blank to the default blue instead if it matters any. George Orwell III (talk) 20:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, you can work on formatting more later :-) Just one thing that was irritating me so I was seeing if I could fix it. The "bookend" checks are identical to the ones in the presidential checks; that has already evaluated to "true" so there is no need to check it again -- that is why I removed them. If the expression was going to fail, it already would have. I'm pretty sure the default "else" in an #ifexpr is an empty value, so there is no need for the "|" bits I'm pretty sure. The failure is because #ifexpr is seeing an expression like "() < 9876" which is an error. Basically, an empty "eo", or a non-numeric "eo" value, is instant death right now (for both your old template and the new one -- try a blank "eo" value with your template in the sandbox). They really can't be passed down, so, like you say, they need to be overridden in the header. One solution might be to add an "eo_num" parameter, which would override "eo" as the passed-down value, so we could set it to a decimal value like 9902.1 -- that way the president gets picked correctly at least. We would have to override next/previous I think no matter what. If we do that, we just change the parameter to the subtemplate to be {{{eo_num|{{{eo}}}}}} in the 2-3 places we invoke it. That would work. Or maybe {{{eo_num|{{{eo|-1}}}}}} to make sure nothing blank gets sent down. Clindberg (talk) 02:51, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


Getting back to the bookend ~ overlap thing - I'm still of the mind that retaining the redundancy and/or keeping the "syntax" as uniform as possible throughout both the specific substituions as well as every posssible substituion of the same type for each president is better for at least testing purposes if not the final version itself. I went through something similar to this where I changed the first and last parameter and then down the road found myself wondering why some values worked and others didn't after dng several tweaks in between. Say if for some reason a better trigger to make the listed switches under the current EO range is discovered, no other edits to unrealated portions (the first and last <= and < in the nara_url= strings in this case) need to be remembered / restored for example. Trimming the 'fat' should come right before the goofball beveled borders get fixed at the end when everything important has been tested to death and working IMO.
Well I've discovered that deleting the | eo = when applying the template to workaround for those EOs with letters in them stops the expression bangs. Same results when you have the eo value equal that 13000 you had in there (now 5 zeros - I was testing).
As for overidding next & previous, basically I copied those strings from another template and swapped the text with Executive Order. There may be a more efficient way to keep the auto numbering up & down and have the ability to overide them as well but I wouldn't know where to start.
See one possible workaround - Test List George Orwell III (talk) 05:39, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, having them in two places means if you have to fix one, then it needs to be changed in both. Doesn't matter much though, they really don't hurt anything to have them there. The workaround is to basically override everything, which is fine. However it would be nice to have the presidential part still work. Using a decimal number would let that happen (and technically also the NARA URLs, although they only have pages from 1937 and on, and since I don't think there have been any lettered EOs since the Federal Register started, none of them actually *need* NARA URLs). We would still need to override the next/previous links though, obviously. Clindberg (talk) 05:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
{{User:Clindberg/potus-eo sandbox
 | eo       = 7262
 | title    = Executive Order 7262-A
 | previous = Executive Order 7261
 | next     = Executive Order 7263
 | section  = Filler
 | year     = 1935
 | month    = 11
 | day      = 1
 | cite     = 
 | notes    = 
}}

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Well, having them in two places means if you have to fix one, then it needs to be changed in both.
You may have lost me - you mean two different places within the info template - one controlling the switch and the other in the nara_url= strings right?
Doesn't matter much though, they really don't hurt anything to have them there.
We can probably trim this at the very end - to fess up; keeping it uniform makes following you and comparing the work in progress to other templates much smoother for me.
The workaround is to basically override everything, which is fine. However it would be nice to have the presidential part still work. Using a decimal number would let that happen (and technically also the NARA URLs, although they only have pages from 1937 and on, and since I don't think there have been any lettered EOs since the Federal Register started, none of them actually *need* NARA URLs). We would still need to override the next/previous links though, obviously. Clindberg (talk) 05:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh I don't like the workaround much either - BUT I realized the farther back in time you go, the more UnNumbered EOs you come across too. The re-use of {{{title}}} along with adding {{{next}}} and {{{previous}}} can handle both the Alpha EOs and the un-numbered ones as well.
I believe you're right about the Alpha-EOs getting slim once the FR comes into existance after FDR. In that case, for pre 1936 EOs and similar - you can keep {{{eo}}} for the auto interlink feature plus the signing date date (with no NARA url) and also use {{{title}}} for the Alphas (see above). We are still going to get extra fields and editing for any non-numbered EOs either way.


I went and added a "eo_dec" parameter, and an example on your Test List page. Only next/previous need to be overridden; the NARA page, the presidential link, and the title all work fine if not supplied. Clindberg (talk) 06:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
If you figure that's another available way to make life easy -- I'm all for it!!! George Orwell III (talk) 06:24, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I went searched for Alpha-EOs and found maybe about 2 dozen between Truman and Ike (nothing afterwards) and added them to the listings on their sub-pages. Didn't bother with FDR since it's already clear that he will have the bulk of the whacky sequences besides Alphas.

In looking forward, I think that manually doing those Alpha-EOs from the last one issued by Ike down to the last one covered by a working NARA citation would probably be a bit of a chore but pays off at the end by eliminating the issue from occuring. Applying the header across all the available EOs would most likely benefit by being able to skip over those Alphas too.

At the same time, I was thinking about that decimal thing you added to keep the auto interlink working and realized explaining the parameter would be hard to document for anybody who may wade into creating EO's at somepoint down the road. It's clear that one example will be pre-Federal Reister & without a link to any available NARA citation and one will be post-Register with a working a link but beyond those two, I'm not sure it's best to have a letter suffix EO tied to a decimal type of value. Eliminating Alphas as an issue post-Fed. Reg seems to cut the problem in half so I'll focus on creating whatever is available and for the rest just create pages with the header in place using {{incomplete}}s for the content I guess. That way, 1936-37 and earlier can be standardized with whatever paramaters work best in the end and document just thatation.

Finally, it's near about that time to hitch {{Potus-eo}} to it's helper. Gotta start with what to name it

  • {{eo-info}}
  • {{eo-data}}
  • {{eo-helper}}
  • {{eo-annex}}

... or whatever you've got. Captial 'E'? Underscore, dash or space? George Orwell III (talk) 14:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


{{potus-eo-data}} seems fine. I would prefix with potus-eo. It could also be {{potus-eo/data}} actually; make it a subpage of the main template. As for the decimal parameter... don't think it would be hard to describe. Just make it a decimal number anywhere between the two whole numbers. Maybe eo_order would be a better name. But, it would work fine to get the correct NARA page for all of them. One annoyance is the HTML anchor for the Truman ones uses a lowercase "a", while one of the Eisenhower ones uses uppercase, and the other Eisenhower one botches it completely (there is no valid anchor for his second -A order). Not sure the Eisenhower ones matter since they were (are?) unpublished so I doubt we can get the content anyways. Maybe we should automatically lowercase the anchor. My template automatically detects EOs (provided we have this "order" value) which are not available at NARA and disables the link altogether. The main point of the template is to auto-detect the president, so I'd rather find a way to make that work with alpha EOs, since otherwise there is little point in using it. Clindberg (talk) 15:40, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
{{potus-eo-data}} works for me too and I prefer it standalone than be a be a subpage.
The decimal parameter between whole numbers is just fine --- but I have the benifit of this process to rationalize it while future template users do not. That's really the only concern as far as documentation goes.
I don't quite understand the preference for using the decimal variant over keeping {{{eo}}}, adding {{{title}}} to have the alpha suffix display properly, using the (((next, previous}}} overides. If the reader cannot make the mental leap to look down one (OK 3 alpha's down max) for the NARA citation starting from the base EO # to validate that "yes indeed dash 'B' came after no-dash 'A' that came after the just the number", then I don't think any of this really matters if folks are that clueless. Keeping {{{eo}}} will still get all the auto stuff to come up; it's the instances for proper display that is the hang up IMO. It also winds up adding a third variant when the unumbered depression-era or war-time EOs come up.
I do understand that the last revisions autmatically disable the link to EOs not cited properly at NARA (lower than #7532) too... I thought I said that I changed your 13000 overide value to 5 zeros at first and then again to -1 then listed tested it all to make sure it the different scenarios reamained valid. The auto-president and interlink to his sub-page just has to fall between the first and last EO issued by a president - has nothing to do with NARA and the year issued so I don't understand what the problem is here exactly. I said I would create all the Alphas, with or without available content, from Ike's down to the NARA cutoff if need be.
if you want to split {{{eo}}} into 2 parts, one numeric the other aphabetic, and then create the different combinations to work smoothly with or without the presence of the 2nd alphabetic part thats ok by me but it won't overcome that third EO variant that way too. George Orwell III (talk) 16:31, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
That is a fair point on the decimal -- it could just be the same base number; it doesn't need to be a decimal. (EO 3885-A would have to be 3886 though, or you could use a decimal number there just as easily). I guess I just figured there should be at least one parameter with the real EO name being passed :-) But, you're right, it can work without it. Clindberg (talk) 17:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Mark III

{{Potus-eo
 | eo       = 2619
 | title    = Executive Order 2619-A
 | previous = Executive Order 2619
 | next     = Executive Order 2620
 | section  = German Boats
 | year     = 1917
 | month    = 05
 | day      = 14
 | cite     = {{smaller|[[Talk:Executive Order 2619-A|Information about this EO]]}}  
 | notes    = 
}}

Well I made the switch but cannot seem to re-use the right side of the citation bar to point to the {{edition}} info.

I had a bug, fixed. Clindberg (talk) 18:05, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for that (and for all the good work on this area in case I haven't mentioned it enough).
Before I forget, again, I've come across and added a collection of EOs to the External Links section of the EO Wikiproject page called the Donnelly Collection. It may be useful as a source since there are clusters of EOs not normally part of the Presidencey Project, if not just to cross-reference the other sources for their accuracy. I'll ask if you've got anything exotic for a source and are willing to share, to please list it there as well.
Moving on, I think the next thing to straighten out would be the addition of both, or maybe all three?, categories to be automatically added upon creation/replacement with EOs using the {{Potus-eo}} header. You had something in the year the EOs went from 4 digits to 5 to insure for proper sorting that mirrored issue dates within categories but I removed that at somepoint because the other Presidents didn't have CATS in the helper data yet. Are you up for revisiting that and activating auto-categorization by the template? George Orwell III (talk) 21:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Sure, that could work. The ordering should be done for the year category too, otherwise the articles for 1948 won't be ordered right. Though the lettered EOs may pose a problem to my previous solution :-) Which may be a good reason to have the actual EO number be its own argument, rather than relying on just overriding the title for lettered EOs. We may end up needing a special ordering argument anyways... which could also be considered a reason to not auto-categorize at all. Clindberg (talk) 16:01, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
<sigh> Once again, and by no means intentionally on any account, I point back to one of the earlier exchanges we had over relevance of always including {{{title}}} as a default parameter for ALL EOs, both pre- and post-Federal Register creation when applying the new header template. We both agreed it was fine to buiid the {{{title}}} value automatically using the value we input in {{{eo}}} that causes the actual Title to display properly for the reader, but were split on the need for keeping the redundancy of title = at as well. Well I believe my rationale for keeping {{{title}}} is reinforced when it comes this - without adding more "layers" in the template(s) by having to split the {{{eo}}} parameter into sub-classifications or similar.
Is it not just as possible to then take the {{{eo}}} built Title to then automatically create the accurate suffix value(s) for any Category entry in order for them sort & display as they also happen to have been issued as well → regardless of the EO being an 'Alpha' or not?????
On another note, it seems Congress is getting busy sending bills for the President to sign again. Unfortunately, I'm going to be hitting that area for the next day or 2 (or 3) to stay current so the EO stuff will be on hold for me basically. Oddly enough, there are a handful of EOs cited within the upcoming Appropriations bills that will need creating/editing for a change so its not a total wash I guess. Please do not feel I'm giving up or ignoring you (or any of this even) is all I'm really trying to convey here. Feel free to intrude - it's not a problem. Thanks again. George Orwell III (talk) 00:04, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
It is not always possible to use the {{{title}}} for category sorting, no. "Executive Order 9646" needs to sort as "Executive Order 09646". Any place where the title can be used directly, there is no need to specify a special sort in the first place -- it will use the title as-is. My initial idea of using the padleft function fails on the lettered EOs, because there are more characters than anticipated. On the other hand, using the lettered EO titles as-is will almost always work, so usually nothing special is needed. We really only need it for 1948 and President Truman, plus somewhere in 1907/8, as those are the only categories where we have EOs which cross into a new digit (9999 -> 10000 etc.). On the other hand, maybe more cross-categories will be created someday (executive orders related to particular topics), so who knows. We could just let the individual EO pages specify a DEFAULTSORT, and not apply anything inside the template -- we would have to put that in all lettered EOs plus all EOs < 10000. Or, we could use padleft to put in a DEFAULTSORT directive, which could be overridden by either another parameter (ick) or an explicit DEFAULTSORT directive on the EO page (the last one on a page "wins") -- in those cases that would only be needed for lettered EOs. No problem on the activity of course; my own involvement is even more haphazard ;-) Clindberg (talk) 15:57, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
Well I was orginally thinking of adding to the string that takes {{{eo}}} which creates the {{{title}}} value and then adding the needed zeros with (or whichever it is) to make the use of {{{title}}} possible for auto CATs to compensate for 4 digit and lower default sorting while still not displaying the extra zeros in the header for the readers. I don't know if this is posssible or not - it's just an assumption on my part using my limit knowledge. As far as the the part about only needing it for 4 digit and lower EOs in certain years only, that's already wishful thinking. I've come across a handful of cross cats already but the only one that comes to mind at the moment is Category:United States military for example. Any solution we come up with would need to apply any 4 digit or lower EOs (if this is really that big of deal - it might be a case of going above and beyond the call of duty now that I think about it). Anyway, I've re-read the other parts you wrote and have come to the conclusion I don't understand it much. Sorry :(
I'm curious about one other thing. I know you have been hitting EOs that include the cool graphics missing elsewhere - are you extracting & uploading these yourself? If you are, we could really use a full William. J. Clinton signature instead of the goofy 'Bill' Clinton one currently available. George Orwell III (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
Interesting {{{eo}}} approach, but ... no I don't think it will work. It has to be a numeric value or else the subtemplate is bad, so to get ordering right, it would have to be pretty messy values -- deviating even further from the argument is "supposed" to be -- it is a weird argument to define. 9616-A would have to be a value like "09616.1" which is very weird. You would also have to do that for every <10000 EO. Feels very unnatural. The more I think about it, DEFAULTSORT is the obvious way to go. That is a magic word which defines the "default" sorting key for all categories on the page (a category declaration can override it). That way you just have to put {{DEFAULTSORT:Executive Order 09616-A}} on a page, and that becomes the sort key for all categories (including the ones added just for some EOs, like the "United States military" one). Our header template can just define the DEFAULTSORT to be {{DEFAULTSORT:Executive Order {{padleft|5|0}}}}, and then just add categories if needed without worrying about specifying an order for each one. That will work for all normal numbered EOs though not for lettered EOs, but for those it can be overridden on those EO pages by adding another DEFAULTSORT declaration (which will override the template ones). It is not always a great idea to have templates define DEFAULTSORT but this may be a good exception.
Yeah, I started with getting presidential seal/flag EOs to support the en-wiki article I was working on, and have taken detours into finding other EOs with graphics. I found a library which has the physical book versions of many of the CFR Title 3 compilations, so have scanned a bunch of them (and end up adding nearby EOs when I happened to have scanned their text). Not all that many seem to have graphics actually. Those printed CFRs don't have signatures -- just the printed names -- but the National Archives has vector signatures in their EO PDF files, so I extracted one. You can use File:William J Clinton signature.svg. It is from EO 12862 if it matters -- seems like the National Archives use the same signature graphic in all their PDF files. Clindberg (talk) 01:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

It just dawned on me the >noinclude< (or whichever one does the trick) didn't come up before because I forgot to 'nowiki' it. Maybe that's why it didn't make any sense. All I figured for the right Potus CAT to always sort was something to add a zero before {{{eo}}} if less than 10000 & add 2 zeros if less than 1000 basically. If you look at what the typical CAT entry we're trying to create

  • [[:Category:Executive orders of {{{1}}}|{{{2}}}]] where:
    • {{{1))) = the right Potus' name, matching his existing CAT with the matching capitalization and spelling etc.
    • {{{2}}} =
      • if {{{eo}}} equal to or greater than 10000, then Executive Order {{{eo}}}
      • if {{{eo}}} less than 10000, then Executive Order 0{{{eo}}}
      • if {{{eo}}} less than 1000, then Executive Order 00{{{eo}}}

Again, if the reader is unable to come to a conclusion that dash B came after dash A that came after the EO root number, then I don't know what to do. Also, there is a point of diminishing returns by trying to accomodate Alphas in the default template because of the non-numbered EO's (which will have to go by date I guess) as well as this fractional nonsense that I came across

Executive Order 7783 (December 31, 1937)
- Modifying Executive Order No. 1919 ½ of April 21, 1914, and Setting Apart Certain Lands for the Use of the Alaska Road Commission for Aviation Field Purposes, Alaska

So in short, I don't want to get into making changes for what is appearing to be less than 2 dozen post Federal Register Alpha EOs as I'm started to see the situation as I fill out each President's table of EOs. Pre Fed-Reg may be a different matter and I'd rather make a template split for pre & post FDR if anything. Plus, I just don't understand your way because of my limited knowledge. If you can apply it easily then I'm all for it I suppose.

Thanks for the sig - I'll thumbnail it to Bill's EO page. George Orwell III (talk) 03:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

That would make the template very difficult to use for the lettered ones -- impossible to override, meaning it would probably guarantee out-of-order stuff with no way to fix it. I agree with not spending too much effort on lettered ones -- I just want some way they can override it. {{padleft:{{{eo}}}|5|0}} will make sure the string is 5 characters long by adding "0" characters to left side if needed -- so if the argument is numeric, that will always work fine, and does it in one step. Lettered/weird EOs can then override it with their own DEFAULTSORT declaration. So yes, I think I'll go ahead and do that. The noinclude syntax is only for content which should appear when you are viewing the template page, but do not want included on the eventual EO pages -- not sure what you were trying to do with that. It is typically used for template documentation, categories for the template itself, example parameters so the template page itself looks OK, things like that. Clindberg (talk) 04:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
I added the DEFAULTSORT stuff -- but now Wikimedia inserts an error message if there is an overriding DEFAULTSORT declaration, so instead of using those, I needed to add a "defaultsort" override parameter to the template itself (same as the {{author}} template does). That should only be needed on the lettered or otherwise non-numeric EOs; all other ones will now sort correctly in all their categories. It should now be a relatively simple matter to add the per-president categories to the subtemplate. Clindberg (talk) 14:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, by the way -- does using {{PL-indent}} on the EO listing pages actually look good to you? I use Safari and Firefox, and it looks *horrible* -- the text overlays the bullet points making it unreadable. If you want them indented, I would put ":" on the start of each line or maybe use the HTML blockquote tag -- though I think it is better to leave them alone, not indent and just have the simple listings (as most Wikipedia pages do). That type of page may get interesting for the presidents between and including the Roosevelts; they wrote an insane number of EOs (I think FDR had over 3000). Clindberg (talk) 14:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

of course it does. No modified .css or .js. applied. No tweaks. Standard settings. Usual/popular IE browser. Last SUN Java release. etc etc. It is what the typical visitor would be using. Your preferences and my preferences I assume become more jaded the longer one 'wikis-out'. Folks that I blog with have told me most of the k-rap on here is impossible to read or even navigate because the articles or projects have been so coddled to death by over-zealous wikizens that they've completely lost touch with regular Joe Public. They've forgotten not everybody participates on any wikis whatsoever -- so not all appears as we'd wish it could for you or I.
IMO - almost all of the lists stink (except the Federal Reporter volumes or so they tell me). What does a proper list using a real table instead of just bullets look like to you? George Orwell III (talk) 15:24, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
That looks quite good actually. Firefox has a fairly substantial market share these days, so I think we should make it look OK there (and Safari looking the same way probably means that all standards-compliant browsers will do the same). Wikipedia articles look OK I think, but I am kinda agreeing that much of the wikisource content (even the stuff I've added, trying to format the same ways the CFR compilations or other sources do) is pretty unreadable. Clindberg (talk) 15:40, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree about other browsers gaining ground and I never liked the slap-dash bullet lists myself -- but its what I found when I got here so I just went with the flow. If you know a way to make it appear like THIS using a bullet without making tables for everything (was going to get around to converting full lists to tables eventually), by all means show me and I'll convert everything to that instead. Chit - I'd rather have the numerical count instead of bullets now that I think about it if the list in question is fully populated anyway. What do you think? George Orwell III (talk) 15:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
how does PL-indent look when used for what it was intended to btw? (just started subchapter I) Still have a left margin overlap? George Orwell III (talk) 15:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, was away for a day or so. PL-indent looks just fine in its intended context. As for the EO pages... I don't like the numerical count within the year -- the bullets don't annoy me that much. It's just that PL-indent makes a mess of them. I think it would be better to use shorter titles on those pages I think though to minimize wrapping (though tables would solve that too). I was noticing Executive Order 12553 itself used abbreviated titles sometimes when referring to other EOs, and was thinking that was a good idea for the summary page at least. Clindberg (talk) 14:20, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
No worries. I was mostly side-tracked with the enactment of Public Law stuff anyway
I was just going by whatever little feedback I got when it came to applyiing PL-Indent. Folks said the list(s) were unreadable and, therefore, useless to them as a resource. I agreed it was sloppy but hardly undreadable. She said to try & hit the "Printable Version" link and then view the page - never mind actually printing it. She was right.
The quick fix was to apply PL-Indent (only because I was using it elsewhere already). If you want to amend the titles - that's fine. If you want to remove the template - that's fine too. Have a better solution?... by all means run with it! Either way - you are far more advanced & Wiki knowledgeable than the uber sphincter inspector's that I usually deal with else where so I'm really not all worried about this -- I'll just undo/re-do whatever it is that makes the reader get the info he/she needs while keeping them away from the temptation to "edit" lists/articles/templates themselves and just make more work for me down the road when I have to call upon the page for something else.
Interesting developmet by the Office of the Fed Reg. this week. -- they've released all the volumes back to 1994 in XML and made their XSL/XSD "manual of styles", for lack of a better term available so folks can do whatever it is that allows them to import the raw data and present their documents anyway they like instead. I've gotten a few inquires about doing something with it (though I don't know why because I don't know how to any of that chit in case you haven't noticed). I would love to just extract all the fonts and formatting specs to see if it's possible to just mimic the orginal Compilation of Presidental Documents layout for the EOs/Procs that were added from Press Releases and similar to make the collections more uniform across all the Administrations (& more credible in the process). George Orwell III (talk) 07:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
Basic HTML lists (which is what those are) shouldn't be unreadable... odd. There were complaints on the EO listing pages in particular? That is an interesting development on the Federal Register though... hm. XSL would just have the font names -- no guarantee that there are free fonts available on the wikimedia servers similar enough to replicate the look, but who knows. We would need to stick with wiki markup, but there is bound to be ways to make them pretty similar. In looking at the 3 CFR compilations from over the years... the formatting is consistent within the same volume, but varies widely between different volumes. Some use smallcaps, some don't. Some use two columns per page, some just one. May be good to come up with a particular format and keep to it. Clindberg (talk) 03:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Both the lists at that time and certain EOs in particular (the latter I figured out later was more due to using Definitions and Defined Lists and Terms <DL>, <DT> & <DD> instead of wikified indents and list formats). I thought it was BS too until I printed it out - which was worse than the Print View simple display for some reason. For kicks - I just tried printing that Seal of the Dept of Navy EO from a day or 2 ago and the graphic isn't centered anymore but it's centered just fine in either way of viewing it (Weird).
That XML stuff doesn't look like it has calls for unusual fonts and stuff but the part that's similar to the old .CSS way of doing stuff has lots of changes in sizes, layouts and stuff. It's HERE on FDsys if you're interested in taking a look. The email I got said 1994 to 2009 was in raw XML form but looking one level up, Bulk Data, I only see from 2000 to 2009. George Orwell III (talk) 04:04, 1 November 2009 (UTC)





Archives

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Good Faith Reverts

"How do I handle it". Generally I will undo with a comment along the lines of
  1. quick summation in Summary field of why undone, then
    1. (for named user) a {{welcome}}, quick note on User page of what I have done, and sometimes further explain why
    2. (for IP address) put {{subst:welcomeip}} and as above
  1. if less than good faith, then I also add {{test}}
  2. if vandalism/vulgarity where they know it, then I just rollback.
Commentary can be along the lines of
  • Works at Wikisource are replicas of earlier published works and are reproduced as they were at the time of publishing
  • Reverted. Changes were unsourced, uncommented.
  • Your note has been moved to the Talk page.
etc. Keeping tone neutral. If they have a question, they will get back to you.


Couple of EO things

Latest comment: 14 years ago10 comments2 people in discussion

I don't think I have time to check in much today, but a couple of quick notes :-)

On the Great Seal... the images we have are all in Commons:Category:Great Seal of the United States. For 1904 and after, it would have looked like File:1904 US Great Seal die impression.jpg. From 1885 until then, it would have looked like File:1885 US Great Seal die impression.jpg. File:USGreatSeal1904DieDrawing.png is a line drawing of the 1904 die. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

On PL-indent, I did finally figure out why it looks horrible with ordered or unordered lists as content. The indenting is applied to the *text*, but not the list bullet/number, so the text is being outdented left on top of the bullet and/or number. Maybe IE doesn't follow the spec and renders it OK, but it looks horrible in Firefox/Safari.

Right. Since I can't find a way to make a particular sub-division within an intro paragraph(s) or worse - further sub-divisions within a sub-division - such as
(f) text here or
(vii) text here or
(7) text here
to wrap just the text portion in perfect alignment throughout the work without making Every single paragraph or sub-division therein it's own little HTML-like table upon tables, with the designation columns aligned hard right to compensate for all the possible widths
(3). vs (33). for example is something akin to 1.2 ems wide vs. 2.1 ems wide without busting out the ol' micrometer to prove it...
I "cheated" by copying some other lame template to just let me pad-left and negative indent (using the 'newer' {{indent}} template's layout) to quick-fix sub-divsions by fooling the eye.
I had argued from the outset to just drop the parenthesis that nearly always encloses the letter or number designation and simply abuse the living daylights out of  ol li text /li /ol  to overcome the need for making every little thing into a table within a table within a table and so on to display properly.
Well I was told that droping the parenthesis "betrays" the original work and to simply "mimic" the published layouts for a particular era -- which amounts to indenting everything alike regardless of the sub-divsion or its placement within the order of the work as well as ignoring the difference between directing or instructive text from amending or inserted text.
I laughed and basically said that doing so is pointless -- screw the ability to wikilink into other related works or sister wikis; this does not typically add real "value", "incentives" or "ease" for the reader to warrant regurgitating something EXCATLY as it was printed in 1911 anyway and there's no point in copying or creating something any nit-wit who can use a search engine properly can find on their own either. The manner of publication and the resulting formatting is a symptom not the intent of the author; especially when it comes to government works.
I don't subscribe to the idea that this...

Sec. 2. Prohibition of Retroactive Title II and Title XVI Payments to Prisoners, Fugitive Felons, and Probation or Parole Violators. (a) Amendments to Title II.—Section 204(a)(1)(B) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 404(a)(1)(B)) is amended—

(1) by striking ‘‘(B) With’’ and inserting ‘‘(B)(i) Subject to clause (ii), with’’; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
``(ii) No payment shall be made under this subparagraph to any person during any period for which monthly insurance benefits of such person—
``(I) are subject to nonpayment by reason of section 202(x)(1), or
``(II) in the case of a person whose monthly insurance benefits have terminated for a reason other than death, would be subject to nonpayment by reason of section 202(x)(1) but for the termination of such benefits,
until section 202(x)(1) no longer applies, or would no longer apply in the case of benefits that have terminated.
``(iii) Nothing in clause (ii) shall be construed to limit the Commissioner’s authority to withhold amounts, make adjustments, or recover amounts due under this title, title VIII or title XVI that would be deducted from a payment that would otherwise be payable to such person but for such clause.´´.

... is useful to the average reader who is seeking information related to the subject matter at all. Plus you can get the same jumble from a decent amount of different hosts just as easily as coming here. It makes for a great source and for accurate, credibile, citation but that's not going to make actually digesting the material any easier; its just the needed foundation to build from and tie everything together so that it makes sense (i.e. from enemy act to proclamations to further amendemnts by Congress to executive orders in reponse all framed in the day's events)

Anyway - I'll table everything before I go the "mimic route" for the sake of the format-nazis.

They can't stay this way... either we do something to fix PL-indent or we need to take usage of that template out of the EO listing pages, as they look hideous right now.

Knock yourself out - the "eye-trick" works just fine for folks over in my group of idiots. Even the old-timers can make out the (3)'s from the (8)'s and 'know; where they go to paraphrase one of 'em.
PL-indent is the correct CSS way to "outdent" I think. It looks fine for regular text; it's just that ol and ul elements get completely messed up. I tend to agree that we shouldn't stick too closely to formatting, particularly indentation and margins, of original documents -- we should be trying to make them readable. Even the Federal Register would format things differently than the Title 3 CFR compilations I think. But it does get somewhat dodgy when we change text or invent paragraph breaks -- not sure what the best answer is. It does also feel better to have the actual original text typed in rather than regenerating it using HTML list labels, especially as list elements will never be added, but it formats so much better that I can see it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:12, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

For one section of Woodrow Wilson, I added a list-style-position: inside CSS directive, and that worked -- since the bullet was then supposed to be treated as part of the text, it was outdented along with it, and looked fine. I see you changed it back. While that approach works perfectly with unordered lists, since the bullet widths are all the same, it does not always work well with ordered lists since everything becomes left-aligned.

Wilson-1918. The bullet was "on top" of the "E" in Executive Order for lack of a better description. The "problem" isn't really the unordered listings as far as the bullet goes -- its the text that follows wrapping so that the bullet becomes pointless and everything looks as if its a run on sentence (again - for a lack of a better description). I just switched it to plain-Jane indent & half a negative em just so the "E"'s in Executive display more pronounced. We could just double space each bullet from the one that follows I suppose???
Ugh, OK. So IE doesn't follow the CSS spec correctly there either. With the existing PL-indent stuff, the bullet is typically "on top" of the "x", and slightly on the "e" to its right. So, one way it is unreadable in IE, the other unreadable in Safari/Firefox. Your change to use the indent template works I guess; the "E" is uncomfortably close to the bullet but it does help a bit otherwise and does work in Safari. The same effect is seen with PL-indent with arguments of -.5 and .5. I guess I'll keep playing... I was hoping to avoid using tables but that may end up being the best. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:12, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
BTW, adding the same directives to the li tag directly works perfectly in Safari/Firefox. Unfortunately that is a pain to actually use. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:09, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

It is possible it may work if the same CSS styles are added to the li tag directly instead of the surrounding div, but I have not tried that yet and I can't figure a way to do that easily anyways other than CSS selectors, which I don't think we can use. Using list-style-position: inside is better than leaving it the way it is... otherwise, I would simply avoid use of all lists inside of PL-indent. Any better ideas though?

I would just love to force parenthesis around the number or letter value instead of the trailing "dot" currently added by default when applying traditional ol & li, html-type of listings but something as straight forward as that has alluded me (and everybody I could tap for help) for WEEKS now.
Yeah the list-style-type possibilities are pretty limited and do not allow this. I think the (really awkward) CSS counters stuff is the intended solution, but browser support is pretty limited (I don't think they work in IE until IE8). The intent is to use a :before pseudo-element on a li tag, then you can use counter, counter-increment, and counter-reset to do all kinds of things to define the "content" of the :before element. Really messy but it is flexible -- but I don't think they are usable from wiki editing anyways since they require CSS selectors. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:12, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


Lastly, I have been trying to figure an approach to unnumbered executive orders. This part of a book states that when the original numbering was done, it only got about 1500 out of an estimated 15,000 to 50,000 existing executive orders -- meaning there are probably more unnumbered orders than numbered ones (and the seeming explosion of orders since Teddy Roosevelt is probably a false impression based only on better archiving). So, there are lots of possible ones out there which we may have to deal with. The numbering system started in 1907, so orders since then should have a number, but I have come across the full text of several orders without being able to figure out a number -- what should we do in such cases? The monthly catalogs of federal government documents started listing the numbers with its 1909 editions, but before that they can be hard to figure out. One option may be to name them like "Executive Order of September 4, 1890" or something like that, and rename them with numbers if we ever find them. The EO "number" could be of the form 18900904 in the above case, and we could add comparison checks for numbers in that range too so we pick up the correct presidents. The default sorting could then be "Executive Order 18900904 00027-A" so that we can mix numbered and unnumbered EOs. Does this seem like a reasonable approach? There will also be issues, as the above book also mentions that Executive Order 396 doesn't have a date, but it seems like it would work for most situations. Any thoughts? Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

time constraints here too - so I'll think some more about un-numbereds and come back to this later. You are 100% correct about the timeline but the number of EOs that have been MIA all this time is skewed a bit because a good chuck go by "Land Orders" or similar up to the start of the 20th Century instead of "Executive Orders" (pretty boring stuff for the most part).
Still, nobody out there has properly corellated the various legislation passed that granted the Executive more and more ability & discretion to issue EOs that actually affected meaningful (and interesting) changes where previously Congress needed to chime in and give their OK for every instance & every situation (delegated legislation) from what I can tell. This is why we see EO dumps concerning mostly Indians at one point in time, then normal issuances followed by another set of related EO dumps in another area, such as reserving forest land from public domain and then back again for example. It's easier to search for these interim EO series and get them out of the way when Congress designates a "short title" for a particular act and the president cites that as his authority (like the Trading w/Enemy stream) to issue the EO. Too bad Congress didn't do this with any diligence until after WWII or you could just search for the 'clause' giving the President his authority and every EO citing it would pop up nice and easy. George Orwell III (talk) 20:56, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah... lots of orders were for exempting specific individuals from civil service rules and the like. I think eventually presidents have figured out ways to avoid a lot of the repetitive ones to cut down the volume. It seems like before 1907, orders were often just sent to the departments which were affected, so there was no central list. And before the Federal Register, there was no central place they were printed, so the most common seems to have been departments printing the EOs which applied to them in their annual reports, meeting minutes, etc. But there will be executive orders without numbers, rather only dates, and we should be able to work them in. And there is the issue of finding the text of an order, knowing the date but not the number even though one probably exists. We should have a way of adding the pages/text then updating the title and name later if a number becomes known. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:12, 26 December 2009 (UTC)--

As long as you bought up things EO, I noticed you bring the Supra. (earlier in this writing) title of some EOs along to the articles. EOs are rarely titled by the President and usually arbitrarily assigned one by the department being sent the EO until the Fed. Reg. took over and was tasked with titling EOs.

If we wanted to get technical about it, every pre-fed Reg. EO is mereley recognized as Executive Order of Month Day, Year, then possiblly sub-titled with something descriptive. I haven't followed this "rule of thumb" very much either but as a first step to resolving unnumbered EOs i think it might be best to resolve some of these quirks before moving forward.

The thing here is that we are drawing upon more and more secondary publications for EO content and frequently the Report of So &So Department for Year whatever are giving these EO's content as referenced with Infra. (later in this writing) in passing within the summation of their report for the year or project. So at the end of that report section or at the very end, for the most part, the EO content is given as referenced in Supra. exactly it was issued by the President but the titles aren't neccessarily the government-wide recognized headings or given in other 'more consistently reliable' (and I use those terms lightly here too). If you insist on bringing these titles, questionable or not, down into the content field I think we should always Preface them with Executive Order of Month Day, Year as the Fed Reg eventually standardize the titling and put whatever title the department or agency assigned in their report to the EO as a sub-title to that. I'd prefer leaving both variances of titles out of the content portions until you get to the Fed Reg controlled EOs personally and let the one in the header template be the only one we use. What do you think?

oh and I discovered a nifty litle template that they have beeen using to indent paragraphs over on Statutes at Large -- {{gap}}. I've adopted using it and figure its use could be beneficial overall. You should check it out since double spacing without using &+nbsp; doesn't work in wiki much if at all. George Orwell III (talk) 22:14, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about titles in the content area, as opposed to just in the headers using the "section" parameter? If so, yes, I would agree with you. I put them in a lot of the earlier EOs I did since they were printed (in these secondary documents) that way, but I don't think I've done that for a while. And yes, I don't think a recognized-government-wide title was mandated before Hoover in 1929, so a lot of these were probably invented by the departments. Some are printed without titles, so I've half made some up (usually based on the text in the monthly catalogs of the US government, which have a fuller description of each EO in its entry). The presidency.ucsb.edu appears to do the same thing for some early EOs. So, for any pre-1929 entries, we should probably make sure there are no such titles in the main content. As for the gap template, OK, nice if needed. HTML viewers are supposed to suppress double spaces, so without nbsp they will always show as one space, so normally I don't try to fight it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:09, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry - yes, I meant in the content area & not the Sectio parameter. OK if you realized this already and stopped doing it already. I've found a small portion of these EOs are referenced and titled in the Statues at Large so if any doubt exists at some point I can try finding it in one of the volumes if it happens to have a Proclamation cross-referencing the EO in question. Other than that, I concur.

Speaking of Hoover

Latest comment: 14 years ago22 comments2 people in discussion

Speaking of Hoover, I went and copied the Hoover Libtrary's list of EOs to the list from 1930 to Roosevelt (they botched 1929 or something so it is MIA unfortunately). I don't know how well the titles will match other sources but at least the dates are accurate as far as I can tell. Just a heads up on that. George Orwell III (talk) 00:31, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, interesting. His own Executive Order 5220 required titles be supplied with the original, so hopefully those are the official ones. There were books printed by the GPO with all of Hoover's executive orders and proclamations; the text is not available on Google Books though. Some libraries have them. I assume the lists were from the public papers volumes which have been made available? Maybe they will make the proclamations and EO volumes available someday. It would also be really nice if that CIS Index to executive orders and proclamations would be made available... I haven't even found that in a library yet. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:17, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
I found the listings after pouring over the mess they called Presidential Papers available online at what appeared to be the Official Hoover library (though not sure now if it was the real 'Presidential Library' or not). I've purged my cache since so the URL is gone but the file name(s) is B2V4_Full.pdf where the other files with lists in them just switched 1, 2 & 3 for 4 in the previous file name if it matters any.
Even though we've just glanced Proclamations for the periods mirroring the bulk of the new EOs we've found - all them (up to about 1927 or so) can be found complete within the scanned Statues at Large Volumes.
{{United States Statutes at Large Scans}}
I wouldn't waste ANY time copying any Proclamation from any source other than the Statutes at Large whenever possible, it being the [almost] absolute highest reference possible for use as evidence of law by the courts whenever the question arises regarding any conflicting Proclamation content found within 'other normally reliable government publications' of the same (including the Fed Reg apparently). The indirect reasoning not made clear by the current statute is that the Proclamations affecting US Code are included in the notes of the code - thus being another form of "delegated legislation" even though it wasn't an Act of Cngress passed to enact it in particular.
FWIW... I've beem building a list for 1920's currently but haven't split it up yet by year issued and President signing. It will be done within a day or two hopefully and then I'll move down a decade and keep going. George Orwell III (talk) 04:50, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Cool... won't bother with proclamations much then. Yes, those listings appear to be from the now-online "public papers" volumes. They just listed the EOs; the text was printed in separate volumes (which I mentioned) which do not appear to be online. Unfortunately, it looks like the titles there are somewhat altered to put the main subject first (for easier indexing, I guess). See Executive Order 5396, where the title in the listing page doesn't quite match up with what was on the GPO printing. I did pull the text for Executive Order 5595 from those online books; they reprinted that one (but I'm not sure what the official title is). The Hoover library is real -- opened in 1962 though. Maybe they'll put the executive orders online someday. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
The Indian laws book I have just been pulling EOs from also has a number of proclamations, some with a number of images. The Statutes at large also seems to have the images, but the scans in these other books seem to be better. Do you have any interest in adding the text, if I do the images? Otherwise I may just come back to it later, and do some more EOs. There are also some unnumbered EOs in that book... any more thoughts on handling them? Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:14, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
As for formatting in the listing areas... ugh. I was hoping to avoid it, but I'm now thinking the cleanest solution may be a series of templates, potus-eo-list-begin, potus-eo-list-item, potus-eo-list-end. So the wiki text would go something like: 


{{potus-eolist-begin}}
{{potus-eolist-item|12345|1982-02-02|Physical Fitness and Sports}}
{{potus-eolist-item|12346|1982-02-06|Synthetic Fuels}}
{{potus-eolist-item|12347|1982-02-23|Agreement on Government Procurement}}
{{potus-eolist-item|12348|1982-02-25|Federal Real Property}}
{{potus-eolist-item|12345|1982-02-26|Amending the Generalized System of Preferences}}
{{potus-eolist-end}}




We could probably come up with better names, but we could then alter the appearance of all the listings easily.  We could try using normal unordered lists, but then applying your outdent stuff to the <li> tag items directly, which does work in browsers, or we could generate a full table.  The messy parts would not appear in the listing pages themselves.  I originally thought it was overkill, but ... I think it's better than stuff we are trying now.  Other than better names for the above templates, I am now thinking that is the way to go.  Opinions? Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:14, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


I'm of the mindset that mirroring the current Title 3 CFR layout as much as possible is the way to go for all years/Potus' regardless

Wikisource_talk:WikiProject_United_States_Executive_Orders#Article_Formatting


George Orwell III (talk) 05:34, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Sure, that looks pretty reasonable.  Having the templates would let us change it easily too, if we don't like it.  Just add a fourth argument of FR page to the item template, and perhaps some arguments to the begin template.  The FR stuff may be a bit odd for year-end EOs, and I don't think they are extremely necessary on the list pages, but ... doesn't hurt to have the info there. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:43, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


Not quite following the template premise - are you saying each EO will be listed as a variant of some new template?


I'm not going to play with any more lists of any sort once the full EO list is populated for that year. Going to a tabled listing is unavoidable. The far right FR column will just go blank and act as a spacer if at all for the pre-Fed Reg EOs I guess. George Orwell III (talk) 05:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

We would have three templates.  One to put in whatever should come at the start of the list, one for the end.  And then one template for each EO, which takes the EO number, date, and subject as arguments.  We can then format as we like.  For example we could make the start template simply "<ul>", the end template "</ul>", and the line template "<li style="text-indent:-2em; margin:2em">[[Executive Order {{{1}}}]] - {{{3}}}</li>" to get something like we have now.  And then it is a simple matter to change the templates to change to a table table, etc.  In the latter case, the begin template would start the table, each item template would define a table row, etc.  We could change the formatting for all EO listing screens at once.  I was originally thinking it was too simple for tables/templates but I'm changing my mind...  Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


"li style="text-indent:-2em; margin:2em">[[Executive Order {{{1}}}]] - {{{3}}}


No lists - either they don't display as they should for you or they don't dispaly right for me. Why on earth would you want to retain this behavior? George Orwell III (talk) 07:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


Heh.  The point being, if we use templates, we don't have to decide what form is used when editing on the pages.  One change to the template source and they all change.  And actually, the lists works fine if the outdent stuff is applied to the "li" items directly; it doesn't work if applied to the outer div however which is all we have been trying to do.  But the templates make tables just as easy, and probably better.  Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:16, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


I am highly skeptical. Make a mock up or something using acouple of EOs, otherwise I'm just not seeing any reason to go back to using any type of list whatsoever. George Orwell III (talk) 07:32, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The point of the templates is we don't have to decide/know how to format it when editing the list pages themselves.  I made a test with Teddy Roosevelt in 1904; see if it works in IE (looks fine in Safari).   But, using templates hides that detail, and would let us change styles in one shot across all presidents, which is the main point.  I would probably use a table if we go that far anyways.  Carl Lindberg (talk) 08:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


Where's the template? ... and am not suppose to see any bullet at all on purpose? George Orwell III (talk) 09:10, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I haven't made the templates -- easy enough to do, and change them later to the table layout you have.  Just for now, wondering if it shows up correctly in IE.  The bullet shows up in Safari like normal, so seems like that is the glitch with that approach in IE.  Perhaps the outdent is making the bullet go outside the bounds; maybe there is a way to fix that but it is getting annoying.  Carl Lindberg (talk) 09:24, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I just slapped together some templates.  They work fine.  I started with using ul as a test, then switched them to use a basic table (of which formatting should then be very easy to change).  I didn't bother adding any federal register page arguments, as I think that is overkill and makes the templates harder for pre-1936 EOs, but it could be done.  See User:Clindberg/eolist-begin (which would have the table definition and headers), User:Clindberg/eolist-end, and User:Clindberg/eolist-item (one for each EO)).  Example of usage at User:Clindberg/eolist-test, with some of Taft's 1909 orders.  Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


Heads up - somebody is messing with the {{PD-USGov}} banner <groan> George Orwell III (talk) 06:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)



Since en-wikisource follows U.S. law only, not sure all that other stuff is needed. Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:16, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


I'm done adding the banner to EOs - I amended Potus-eo to add it as a straight CAT instead. Another expert where none was needed <sigh> George Orwell III (talk) 07:32, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It still should be added to the pages.  The PD-USGov template can be changed at any time, and it doesn't hurt anything. Carl Lindberg (talk) 08:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not adding that billboard to anything. Hopefully somebody with some sense will straighten it out George Orwell III (talk) 09:10, 13 January 2010 (UTC)







Precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives


http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=GPO

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/precedents/index.html



The House Precedents collection is actually a combination of three different documents: Hinds’ Precedents, Cannon’s Precedents and Deschlers’s Precedents.



Hinds' Precedents


Asher C. Hinds, Clerk at the Speaker’s Table of the U.S. House of Representatives, compiled the early precedents of the House of Representatives, dating from the First Congress. These materials were prepared and published by authority of the Act of Congress, approved March 4, 1907.

Hinds' Precedents is a 5-volume series containing selected rulings made by the chair. The publication provides valuable coverage of the historical origins and evolution of House procedures dating back to 1789. 

The precedents are numbered sequentially throughout the volumes. Each precedent appears with a headnote in bold type indicating the principle established by the precedent. The procedural exchange(s) establishing the precedent is then summarized, with the full text and citations to the Congressional Record often provided. Hinds' Precedents also furnishes citations to the House Journal and predecessors of the Record.

Hinds’ Precedents consists of eight volumes and 148 chapters. The first chapter is preceded by an introduction to Hinds' Precedents, as well as, a table of contents.



Cannon's Precedents


Clarence Cannon, Clerk at the Speaker's Table of the U.S. House of Representatives, compiled the precedents of the House of Representatives, dating from 1908-1936 (60th-74th Congresses). These documents are the second half of an eleven-volume series containing selected rulings made by the Chair between 1789 and 1936, with the first have being Hinds' Precedents. Cannon's Precedents was published in 1936.

The precedents are numbered sequentially throughout the volumes. Each precedent appears with a headnote in bold type indicating the principle established by the precedent. The procedural exchange(s) establishing the precedent is then summarized, with the full text and citations to the Congressional Record often provided. Information about specific procedural topics can be located using the indexes (volumes 9-11), which present the headnotes of relevant precedents according to procedural topics or the detailed table of contents in each volume.

Cannon's Precedents currently consists of 130 chapters and six volumes (6-11). Three of those volumes are indexes (9-11).



Deschler's Precedents


Lewis Deschler, parliamentarian of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1928 to 1974, was authorized by Public Law 89-90 "to compile and prepare for printing the parliamentary precedents of the House of Representatives, together with such other materials as may be useful in connection therewith, and an index digest of such precedents and other materials." These materials were prepared and published as House Document 94-661 in accordance with Public Law 94-551.

As stated in the preface to Deschler’s Precedents, "[t]hese volumes set forth and analyze the modern precedents of the House of Representatives.... It is the function of these volumes to review the precedents from 1936 through the first session of the 93d Congress, except as otherwise noted." The compilation has since been expanded to include precedents developed beyond the 94th Congress. By law, the precedents must be updated every two years.

Since 1976, Deschler’s Precedents has been prepared under the supervision of Wm. Holmes Brown, Parliamentarian from 1974 to 1994, as is reflected in the name of volumes 10 through 16 (Deschler-Brown Precedents).

Deschler’s Precedents currently consists of 33 chapters, which, the preface explains, "have been arranged in the approximate sequential order in which the subjects covered occur or arise in the House." Each chapter is subdivided into sections, which will constitute the document level on FDsys. A section may be as short as a single page, or it may exceed 200 pages. In addition, the first chapter is preceded by introductory materials, such as the authorizing legislation for the compilation, the preface, acknowledgements, tributes, and a table of abbreviations and terms; these materials are also divided into sections and presented as individual documents.



Statutes at large
Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion


Where did you get the citations from? I was looking at creating the articles for the post-office naming bills. Guy0307 (talk) 13:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. I created all articles, however the formatting isn't 100% right and I haven't added the legislative history. I'll do that tomorrow if I have time, I'm too tired right now. Guy0307 (talk) 17:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)












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