User talk:Tarmstro99/Archives/2010

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2010, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

poem tag

Hello I am Polish Wikisource administrator. If you want to correct poem tag in this project please append following CSS code to the MediaWiki:Common.css page:

div.poem p{
	margin-bottom: 0em;
	margin-top: 0em;
}

For testing in your own css please add following code to User:Tarmstro99/monobook.css:

div.poem p{margin-top:0em !important; margin-bottom:0em !important;}

Checking is easy:

aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa
aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa

aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa
aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa

Sp5uhe (talk) 20:14, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Why would we want to impose the margin style from Poem? If someone wishes to override the tag, either as a user, or as a coder, if they explicitly code in an override then they probably should be able to do so. billinghurst (talk) 00:06, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Look at proofreading issues. Sp5uhe (talk) 20:11, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Legal sources regarding typing Public Domain texts

Hi, could you refer me to any clear legal documentation (laws, court decisions) that clearly state what has become commonplace, namely that typing digital text for a public domain document does not give the typist/proofreader any copyright, even if he has invested money in getting the typing done.

I am asking the question regarding texts in a different language Wikisource. My assumption is that U.S. law governs Wikimedia projects.

Thanks, Dovi (talk) 11:53, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I’m not aware of anyone ever being sued for retyping a public-domain text (or for copying someone else’s retyping of it), but the argument would go something like this. Copyright protection in the United States requires expressive originality. Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340 (1991); 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (“Copyright protection subsists … in original works of authorship”). Where a later author incorporates an earlier work in their own creation, they receive no rights in the underlying work; rather their copyright extends only to the aspects in which their work differs from the underlying work—that is, to the original aspects of their work. 17 U.S.C. § 103(b) (“The copyright in a … derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material.”) A copy of an underlying work that is in the public domain lacks such originality, at least where the later author has sought merely to duplicate the public-domain original and not to add their own new original expression. Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999); see also Meshwerks, Inc. v. Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc., 528 F.3d 1258 (10th Cir. 2008) (no copyright where later contributor added no original expression but sought only to reproduce prior works as precisely as possible); cf. Alfred Bell & Co. v. Catalda Fine Arts, 191 F. 2d 99, 104–05 (2d Cir. 1951) (copy that exhibited “substantial departures” from underlying public-domain work could be copyrighted). So, if you retype a public-domain text and attempt to reproduce it as closely as possible, your work does not give rise to a new copyright because the element of expressive originality is absent.

You might also be interested in reading the policy statement at w:Wikipedia:Public domain#Derived works and restorations of works in the public domain. There’s a lot of helpful guidance on that page and I suspect (although I have no personal knowledge of this) that it generally reflects WMF’s views, which would have relevance for all WMF wikis. Tarmstro99 (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I'm specifically interested in cases where someone else's retyping of public domain texts (for which they paid cash or invested significant effort) has been copied. The claim would be that since they have invested money (or time) in getting the text accurately typed and proofread, and the accurate digital text would otherwise be unavailable save for their investment, that they have a right to monetary compensation for that investment. "Lifting" of such digital texts can be proven through occasional typos, etc., such that the second user cannot claim he typed it himself.

I recall reading about a case (I hope I remember this accurately) where a database of legal texts was being sold for a high price to firms. Someone decided to take the laws and court decisions themselves from that database and post them on the internet (without posting any of the creative additions found in that database, only the public domain texts). From what I recall the person who did this was sued and prevailed in the U.S. court, while the database owners lost. Do you recall a case like this?

I was recently informed of a case that in principle seems to be identical but took place overseas, in Israel. There, according to what was reported to me, the court decided that the investment of money or time did indeed entitle the owner of the database to compensation, despite the texts which were copied being in the public domain.

I would at least like to get some clear sources in U.S. law for this. If you could refer me to someone who knows overseas law (e.g. Europe) that would also be great.

(You need not notify me at my user page. I'll see your reply here at my watchlist). Thanks, Dovi (talk) 23:11, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

General Revision of the Copyright Law (House Report No. 94-1733)

originally titled - Page:Copyright_Law_Revision_(Senate_Report_No._94-473).djvu/31

This is the one remaining page to be validated .

If you could look over it and confirm? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 00:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like User:Billinghurst beat me to the punch! Very nice work, thanks a million—happy to cross something off my ever-growing to-do list for a change. :-) Tarmstro99 (talk) 01:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Pardon... Can somebody please help set up the Conference Report, (H.Rept. No. 94-1733) now that the leading repts are done??

I think I can do the clean-up of corrupted text & junk just fine, but I can never seem to get the layout to mirror existing/similar works to maintain some sort of uniformity across all versions, etc. Looks Good btw!!! George Orwell III (talk) 02:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I will schedule a bot job tomorrow to extract the text layer from the djvu and begin proofing. Tarmstro99 (talk) 03:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help - UPDATED Conference Rept. No. 1733 is now done, what next? George Orwell III (talk) 05:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

SideNotes Question.

If there's no way to stop the sidenotes from appearing when transclusion to/as an author's subpage, is there any way to move them to outside of my fake margins at least? George Orwell III (talk) 05:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Passing width parameters to {{sidenotes begin}} should do the trick. Tarmstro99 (talk) 18:03, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu

I left my 2 cents about the deletion of the larger version of File:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu. I just thought I would let you know. :) --Mattwj2002 (talk) 10:40, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Your {{LR sidenote}} experiment...

Tarmstro99, what do you think of linking a variant of your {{LR sidenote}} to the side parameter in USStatHeader? My attempts at User:CharlesSpencer/pension_template could do with some kind of dynamic switch to force sidenotes to the correct side... Unless I can somehow pass the USStatHeader side value to my pension template on a page-by-page basis? CharlesSpencer (talk) 17:07, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

That’s not a bad idea. Have you seen my more recent {{USStatChapHead}} template? It automatically uses {{LR sidenote}} or {{right sidenote}} to create sidenotes depending on the value of the side parameter (recognized values are left or right). Maybe I could do something similar with {{USStatHeader}}, and the same technique might work with your pension template. Tarmstro99 (talk) 00:37, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

→Pardon, about {{USStatHeader}},... is it possible to expand the {{{chapter}}} parameter to accept multiple chapters listed on the same page to match the interlinking function as the singular a-chapter-per-page does currently?

My solution in cases like this has been to create a redirect (see, for example, the header of this page), which isn’t elegant, but gets the job done.

Also, in later Volumes with multiple Chapters on a single page, the header portion reflects this plurality by using Chs. instead of Ch. Is there any way to add this differentiation to your template for those instances? George Orwell III (talk) 01:11, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I have noticed that some of the later volumes use “Chs.” instead of “Ch.” to introduce a range of multiple chapters. It should be possible to extend {{USStatHeader}} to accept a yes-or-no flag that will adjust this behavior correctly. Tarmstro99 (talk) 09:22, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Do see my really rough {{force sidenote}} which I started for use in another work to stop the saw-edge look. It probably needs to be beautified, and made to work on left and right, it was in my earlier learning phase. We can (should!) probably munge them together— billinghurst sDrewth 03:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

On 3rd thoughts, I also need a similar namespace-based switch to insert an additional horizontal bar in front of first Chapters of a page once transcluded (as between Chapters 27 & 28 here...) ... The pension template is currently designed to assume a horizontal unless topchap is set to Y, because that's how they display on each printed page! billinghurst, despite this being Tarmstro's talk page, looking at your IrishBio template, I still don't see how I can make the {{{side}}} parameter from USStatHeader (page)global so that my pension template can see it...? CharlesSpencer (talk) 18:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Have a look at, for example, Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/56 and Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/108. On both those pages, there is a horizontal rule above the first paragraph that is printed only outside the Page: namespace. Tarmstro99 (talk) 19:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Fantastic! Thanks... now incorporated into the pension template. CharlesSpencer (talk) 07:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Gents, does this do the trick? Seems to here.CharlesSpencer (talk) 17:07, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) I like it! I would like to see this become the replacement for {{USStatHeader}}. For backwards compatibility with the (several hundred) pages that already use {{USStatHeader}}, however, the default behavior should be to output “Ch.” (rather than “Chs.”) preceding the chapter number even if the user fails to specify a value for the chapstyle parameter. That is to say, if (chapstyle ≡ Ch. or chapstyle is undefined), the corresponding output should be “Ch.” Does that make sense? Tarmstro99 (talk) 17:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry - my lazy coding! I would agree that backwards compatibility is a sine qua non, so I'll modify it to behave correctly. CharlesSpencer (talk) 12:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

How's that? CharlesSpencer (talk) 08:48, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Impressive work, and a nice bit of programming. My hat is off to you, sir. I’ve added your code to {{USStatHeader}}. Tarmstro99 (talk)

I'll second that. Nice work. George Orwell III (talk) 20:55, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

USStat33 pensions template

Gents, (and any other fans of a truly obscure template!), I have now made the sidenotes in the USStat33 pension template side aware, including in the proviso optional parameter. Looking at this vs. Chapter 14. here, it seems to work. Three questions occur to me:

• under what circumstances would it be appropriate to move it to the Template namespace?
• what do we call it - a quick look at USStat32 Part 2 shows almost identical language used there, so anything referencing USStat33 doesn't work, but I have no idea when its use began/was discontinued
• is there no way of putting strings longer than single words into the OCR engine's dictionary? Surely the statistical likelihood of getting "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to place on the pension roll, subject to the provisions and limitations of the pension laws, the name of" egregiously wrong is vanishingly close to zero. Likewise (without, I confess, knowing any of the detail of how OCR engines work!), simply because of its length and letter variety, surely a string like that could be recognised in the presence of more graphical noise on the page than is the case with a shorter string. If the initial OCR could do this, we would have thousands of pages almost self proof-reading, requiring minimal final human interaction?

CharlesSpencer (talk) 14:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead and move your template into the Template: namespace! It seems to be working perfectly fine. Maybe variations used in successive volumes could be called something like {{USStatPension1}}, {{USStatPension2}}, etc., with suitable explanatory info <noinclude>’ed on the template page to identify the particular volume(s) to which the template pertains?

I don’t have much experience with OCR software. Some time back I tried using an actual scanned page of the Statutes at Large to “train” Tesseract, but the results were worse than its baseline performance with no “training,” so I gave up on it. A possible alternative, however: my employer recently deployed Acrobat Pro 9, which has a very good built-in OCR engine for PDFs. I re-OCR’ed most of Index:United States Statutes at Large Volume 1.djvu with Acrobat Pro, and replaced the existing text (except for pages already proofed) with the new OCR. Proofreading has definitely gone faster since that time; the Adobe output is noticeably closer to the original sources. If you like, I can do the same with Volume 33 (being careful not to clobber any pages that have already progressed to Proofread or Validated status). Tarmstro99 (talk) 17:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

If that is agreeable to Charles, I'd like to inject the point that the currently scanned PDF originally cut off large swaths of sidenotes before it was .DJvu'd and are currently missing. I had to take a peek at Constitution.org's PDF copy or the Google Book scanned version (linked on Pt I and II's discussion pages) to supplement the missing text. It might make life easier to use one of those PDF's instead.

Also, I'm not an OCR expert either but I believe the "problem" with the over corruption is due to the main content (consisting of three columns across one "row"; left-sidenotes, center paragraphs and right-sidenotes) bracketed by the PDF's hidden header and/or footer info which spans all three columns. It's this 3 column-spanned row at the top or bottom of a PDF page that leads the djvu conversion to believe there is one single column throughout the page, causing the sidenotes to be inserted into the adjacent sentences within the center paragraphs. Rotating the page 90 degrees would flip the spanned hidden header and/or footer rows into columns and I'm told the conversion, if the scan to PDF was of high enough quality, would only corrupt these trouble making texts and the rest the stuff we want remains fairly intact, save the difference in font size, spacing, etc. Rotating the work back 90 degrees leaves the finished page with the 3 columns we are trying to build anyway. Its all hearsay mind you, because I've only seen a finished product, but the logic does sound about right to me. Unfortunately, all that is far above my paygrade. George Orwell III (talk) 19:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Tarmstro99, redoing the OCR on the rest of 33 would be fantastic. Thank you very much for the offer. George is quite right about the sidenotes - the Resolutions in 33 appear to be rather lacking for some reason! What George says about OCR also sounds logical - I certainly had no fun at all trying to proofread 2-column bilingual treaties, one of which was in English and Greek with both columnar texts all run together! I don't know if Acrobat Pro 9 can be made aware of columns in some way? And {{USStatPension}} is now up, running, and (I hope) reasonably well documented! CharlesSpencer (talk) 21:32, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Well after double checking the PDF for Vol. 33 at Constitution.org, it appears using that scanned copy would leave out much of Part II so that's not an option. Checking the Google Book scanned versions for Part I and Part II looks far more promising. Their layout and online OCR conversion to plain text seems to mirror the existing page numbering tables already in use on the Vol. 33 project here, but my lack of knowledge on Adobe & djvu's prevents me from saying for sure that downloading and substituting Google's PDFs to replace the existing sidenote lacking one(s) would make for a better base of content to work from or not. Nor can I say if it's more work than it is worth. George Orwell III (talk) 22:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Charles, I took the liberty of breaking your template out into the standard Template Documentation subpage generally agreed upon to be the proper way to explain the ins & outs of any template. Doing so streamlines the amount of data and subsequent overhead being transcluded everytime time the template is put to use. The only caveat here is that both the Template and its Documentation subpage probably could be tweaked even further so you might want to bring it to the attention to one of the template guru's for a look-see and review as well. George Orwell III (talk) 22:39, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Very helpful! I don't know any template gurus, I'm afraid - can you recommend anyone, please? Thanks CharlesSpencer (talk) 23:17, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Being mostly a U.S. legislation & similar works wonk for the most part, I'm not all that sure which one of the many experts around here is best to consult with to be honest with you. Carl Lindberg has been extremely helpful in developing {{Potus-eo}} over the months with me - he'd be my first choice. I'm sure Tarmstro99 knows somebody as well. Billingshurst, the admin, is at least always approachable, though his time constraints may draw his attention elsewhere. If I remember right, you started a section somewhere on Scriptorium(?) related to repeating paragraphs or something - it might be worth updating that section by reaching out for comments, tips & suggestions there... as well showcasing the progress made so far. George Orwell III (talk) 23:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Bot flags

I am contacting everyone who operates an active bot on en.WS. When granting bot-flags I am heavily reliant on the consensus of people like you to ensure that prospective bots approriate and should be flagged. I am not at all competant to evaluate bots independantly and this leads to people waiting a rather long time to find out if their bots will be santioned. Could you please help me out and take the time to examine one of the two current requests at the Scriptorium?[1] [2] Thank you.--BirgitteSB 20:25, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

WikifyCite Tool

I made this tool to turn citations into links. It's a work in progress, but if you ever add judicial decisions or texts with many legal citations, it may save you some time. Cheers, stephen (talk) 22:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Neat, thanks! A couple of very brief thoughts as you continue to develop this very useful tool: (1) as you know, the earliest volumes of the U.S. Reports were frequently cited by the name of the individual Reporter who compiled that volume. So your script might also want to look for citations of the form (for instance) “26 U.S. (1 Pet.) xxx” or even simply “1 Pet. xxx”. (2) it took a while for Bluebook cite form to become standardized, and it’s quite common in the older cases to see (for example) the Atlantic Reporter cited as “Atl. Rep.” or “Atl.” instead of simply “A.” The other regional reporters, too, often have three or four different corresponding citations. It would be very helpful if the tool could accommodate some of these alternatives as well. Great stuff! Tarmstro99 (talk) 15:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Federal Reporter Scans

Thought you may be interested in this--TIFF and txt files for 281 volumes of the Federal Reporter. I'm not too familiar with the process of getting these documents to djvu. Once they are in djvu, is that a sort of job that TarmstroBot could handle? stephen (talk) 01:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I’ve seen the stuff from public.resource.org before. I am a fan of Carl Malamud’s work and got to meet him a few weeks ago at one of his law.gov workshops. Luckily for me, it looks like all his scans have been uploaded to the Internet Archive, which has better OCR software than I do, and I have been downloading their djvus to post here. (Here’s 1 F. and 2 F.). Creating the table of contents for those volumes is a time-consuming process, unfortunately. Tarmstro99 (talk) 02:09, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Help w/some troubleshooting

In an attempt to fix the typo in Section 2 on Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 1.djvu/466, I am confronted with the closing "noinclude" tag for the header going missing and thus pretty much having all the content forced into the footer (which, of course deletes just about everything if I were to save the page at that point).

Long story short, I suspect its the continued use of {{blank line}} (deprecated since January, 2010) at the top of page content's first paragraph rather than using {{nop}} after the last paragraph of the page before the one in question. If you have the time, could you apply the {{nop}} method to Chapter 6 (pp 464 thru 467) to see if my problem is indeed caused by {{blank line}}'s presence or not. TIA. George Orwell III (talk) 23:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind - I just realized you were hiding the repeating Section 1 side note at the top of each page that followed and that is what is causing the "noinclude" tag to blank the content for me when I try to edit one of those pages. You should still check out the deprecated status and move to using {{nop}} anyway & don't forget to fix the Further typo in Section 2. See you in the trenches... George Orwell III (talk) 23:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Fixed! Thanks for spotting. Tarmstro99 (talk) 00:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

US Reports

Hi Tarmstro; I see that you uploaded the first three volumes of the US Reports a few months ago. I'd like to see some cases transferred over to page scans, such as Slaughter-house (volume 83), United States v. Miller (307), Roe v. Wade (410) and Kelo v. New London (545). Is there a good source for these scans that you prefer? I've looked around and haven't found anything that looks like a complete set of these volumes in pdf or djvu. Thanks. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 18:41, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

There are several more scanned volumes now online at commons:Category:United States Reports. I suspect that the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) would have most of the remaining volumes that haven't been uploaded to Commons yet; Google Books would be my second pick. I'd love to get a complete collection of scans uploaded to Commons! Creating the corresponding Index: pages here is fairly labor-intensive, unfortunately, but with enough people interested in Supreme Court opinions (and some famous cases, like the ones you mentioned, online to help draw attention), it's eminently doable. Tarmstro99 (talk) 18:29, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to commons; I hadn't noticed those. Volume 208 has a case in it that interests me (Muller v. Oregon), so maybe I'll start there. I looked at archive.org and made a list of all the volumes available there; unfortunately there are quite a few holes (most notably the almost complete lack of volumes between 200 and 450). Volume 83 at least is there, so Slaughter-house is available. Another thing is that I see now that the SCOTUS website has volumes up to 549. I tried my PDF to DJVU converter but I don't think it can handle files this size. If you are able to do your magic to volume 545, I'll start working on the index page and Kelo. No rush though; there's always plenty to work on... —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 01:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, I uploaded 545 U.S. to Commons after converting it to DjVu format, so you are all set to take a crack at Kelo. I will also try to add the other volumes that are currently available from the Supreme Court’s web site, most likely later this week some time. Tarmstro99 (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Two out of four opinions of Kelo are done. FYI, I created a list of US Reports that I could find on commons and archive.org; it's at User:Spangineer/US_Reports. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 01:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Great! Now that the scanned Volume 545 is here, I’ll have to add migrating over MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. to my list of to-dos. Great job tracking down the issues of the U.S. Reports that have previously been scanned; although, as you probably know, many of the earliest volumes weren’t called “U.S. Reports” at the time of their original publication, and you may be able to find a few more by searching for the name of the individual Reporter who prepared each volume. (For instance, 19 U.S. = 6 Wheat.; 23 U.S. = 10 Wheat.; 27 U.S. = 2 Pet.). Tarmstro99 (talk) 01:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Template quirk?

Hi again,

I've been following the recent nonsense with the sidenote changes and noticed a possible "bug" - well at least for me - when it comes to USStat works w/the chapter header. For some reason applying the {{USStatChapHead}} in the default justified position, the date floats above the roman numeral instead of in the sidnote field upon transclusion. When you align it centered, this problem doesn't happen. First off - are you seeing this too or is it just me? (the easiest place to see this is in the 2nd example of the template's documentation) George Orwell III (talk) 21:22, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, actually, I am not seeing that behavior, although I did just wrap the examples in the documentation in some extra <div> tags, which may affect the way they are rendered in your browser. I am still running into trouble with the fact that pages of the Statutes at Large appear to render differently in Chrome than they do in Firefox when transcluded into the main namespace (not a problem that used to happen before all the recent mucking around with the sidenotes templates). I have been running a bot script lately to try to update the main-namespace pages to use the new formatting that seems most nearly to approximate the behavior of the sidenotes templates, but it has been somewhat slow going. (The good Statutes at Large news, I guess, is that I have a complete version of Volume 45, Part 1 nearly ready to upload; over 2,000 pages. I would have more time to deal with proofing and adding new content if the underlying templates and scripting didn’t keep changing from “working” to “broken” without warning.) Tarmstro99 (talk) 15:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually I'm no longer seeing the quirk I first mentioned - most likely because the second example is no longer pointing to the left sidenote even though side=left. Can't really say that this has been solved, sorry.

As far as rendering goes, before all this tinkering with highlighting pages, dynamic layouts and CSS based sidenotes, your Statutes at Large was the standard I looked to whenever I came across a dilema. Right now, much of what I looked at looks like like somebody named Corky who wears a bicycle helmet to the bathroom edited it. Basically, stuff is all over the place in IE 6 & IE 7 (fairly certain IE 8 would be worse). It's not just you - much of work other folks have done now renders like abstract art when it use to look just fine.

Good luck with that bot work but if may offer you some advice - I'd wait little longer before going any further. I'm near certain more changes are coming and you may be doing 2x the work uneccessarily.

FYI -- I went through some of the volumes a week or two ago adding basic page layouts. One of them (I think it was 22 - I'll double check that when I get home) had a lot of duplicate pages. George Orwell III (talk) 19:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this any better, do you think? It's a bit of extra effort to duplicate "by hand" the layout that {{sidenotes begin}}/{{sidenotes end}} used to supply as a matter of course, but perhaps that effort can itself become a new template, or applied across multiple pages by a bot. Tarmstro99 (talk) 16:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

A hair too close IMHO to the main content body as it renders here (the old padding is missed), though the side margins & sidenote font used seem like the way to go for sure. George Orwell III (talk) 16:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I added another ½em of whitespace between the body text and the sidenote. Tarmstro99 (talk) 20:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

No noticeable difference. (refreshed cache 2x, both ways too). 21:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll check into Volume 22; thanks for highlighting the possible trouble spot. Tarmstro99 (talk) 16:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah its volume 22 - I noticed it toward the end (Procs & index) - don't know if it is throughout the rest. George Orwell III (talk) 16:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

need bot run on indexes

Not sure where else to turn... I need that bot to run on some indexes (about 400 pages each) and was hoping you could set that up again when you have the free time and is convenient for you. The indexes are:

• Index:Title 3 CFR 2000 Compilation.djvu (don't kow if it mattters but I created a bunch of pages in this one already}.
• Index:Title 3 CFR 2002 Compilation.djvu
• Index:Title 3 CFR 2005 Compilation.djvu
• Index:Title 3 CFR 2006 Compilation.djvu
• Index:Title 3 CFR 2007 Compilation.djvu

Thanks in advance - no worries if you can't. George Orwell III (talk) 16:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Should not be a problem; give me a few minutes to set it up. I’ll make sure not to clobber the pages you’ve already done. Tarmstro99 (talk) 17:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Done⁠Let me know if you need anything further. There were a few odd instances of characters failing to convert correctly to UTF-8; you’ll notice them when proofreading as three-digit octal codes where some other character ought to be. Tarmstro99 (talk) 00:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Many, many thanks for that. I'm not too worried about the coming proofreading & validation - all those Proclamations and Executive Orders were created in the mainspace around 2006 so all I'm really doing is making what WS already has fully compliant.

As far as anything else goes; I'll touchback if need be - but now that you've reminded me, I've been meaning to approach you on where exactly I can start pitching in and help with at least validating some of your various efforts (I just wasn't sure if you had a system or something you were following to be honest). Let me know what I can do in my frequent free time of late to help out. George Orwell III (talk) 01:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I’ve been a bit scattershot in my contributions lately, but there are plenty of pages in Index:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu and Index:United States Statutes at Large Volume 1.djvu (pace the recent template/layout issues) that I think would make for a fairly easy validation. Tarmstro99 (talk) 10:53, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Question re proclamations in USSaL

I'd like to put transclude pages from Statutes at Large for Jackson's Nullification Proclamation, starting with Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 11.djvu/815. Any recommendations for formatting / templates? I know there are templates like {{USStatHeader}} and {{USStatChapHead}} but I'm not sure they will work for a proclamation. Also, is there a convention for section names for proclamations? —Spangineer (háblame) 20:56, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Ever wonder why a Proclamation issued in 1832 (should be found in USSaL vol. 5 or so) is only "first" published in 1859 (Volume 11)? See footnote 11 Stat. 751 {or pg 795 in the djvu). FWIW... I've started to cross-check these early USSaL published Proclamations with the current numbered system HERE to eventually roll out (actually reorganize) Proclamations much like the Executive Order collection has been progressing so far.

The problem I've been avoiding with Proclamations in general is that while the USSaL content basically mirrors the original written or submitted verions, the layout/formatting/etc. never seem to match -- & sidenotes aren't penned by Presidents in their original issuances either.

It appears there was a consistent format/layout practiced when it came Proclamations even before "official" outlines or guidelines for Presidential documents started making the rounds sometime around 1875 or so (we haven't found the exact EO/Proc that first laid out these parameters basically because nobody has come up with Executive Order 3577 yet to work backwards from like Executive Order 5220 did for us). The current parameters are in the CFR and haven't changed much since EO 5220. George Orwell III (talk) 06:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

All excellent observations. There are a couple of related issues here that I think it’s wise to distinguish, namely: (1) should our collection of Presidential documents be linked to page scans of some authoritative source, and (2) is the Statutes of Large the best such source for us to use. Personally, my answers to those questions are (1) absolutely yes, and (2) perhaps. I will have to leave it to those more knowledgeable about Executive Branch reference sources to determine what the best source for proclamations is. For these 19th-century works, the Statutes at Large may be the best source available, since neither the Federal Register nor the Public Papers existed yet. Tarmstro99 (talk) 14:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I came off too critical or something before. By all means, "we" should use the scanned USSaL volumes' content to the fullest extent possible. If we can source all the early Proclamations to Stat. pages - all the better. The issue is how to list, create, present and catagorize them on WS so that in the end WS supersedes the few other resources out there that dabbles in this subject matter. Unfortunately, the volumes do not have any real rhyme or reason when it comes to Proclamations other than a numbered listing of an Appendix that does not always jibe with what later indicies show.

The bigger problem is the fact that thousands of "Procs" & "Orders" where issued over our first 100 years and only the significant or effecting ones made it to the USSaL, others only got published if at all by the agency or department mentioned and the rest never made it pass the agency head's desks before disappearing into first the Secretary of State/State Dept. archives then the National Archives forever. The relevant ones over time recieved a number designation but the rest simply use the date issued for a title; sometimes the subject matter followed.

At the end of it all & IMHO, in order to properly attribute any Proclamation to a President it should first try reflect the content that actually recieved the Great Seal of the US by his hand, followed by the "message" sent to and hopefully recorded by Congress whenever possible (i.e. the era's Congressional Series/Set/Record/Journal) and only then call upon the USSaL with its added sidenotes and formatting quirks for final hosting. Since the first 2 are rare, I'd had envisioned the transcribed content to display like Proclamation 758 but with USSaL sidenotes displaying outside the artificial "page" borders somehow. If we could stick using the numbered designations first and then create as many redirected titles as needed afterwards, it would make managing the collection a whole lot easier (not to mention more aligned with the official archives of today). George Orwell III (talk) 16:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I created {{USStatCols start}} and {{USStatCols end}} to try to preserve a tolerably accurate display style for the sidenotes. You can see them in action at, for instance, United States Statutes at Large/Volume 12/37th Congress/3rd Session/Chapter 81. They rely on {{USStatSidenote}} to mark the sidenotes in the underlying pages to be transcluded, but pages that have been marked the “old” way (with {{left sidenote}} and {{right sidenote}}) can easily be converted to use {{USStatSidenote}} with a bot script. Let me know if you need me to set up something like that on the page ranges you are going to be using! Tarmstro99 (talk) 01:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the tardy response, I'm trying to parse all this. First, it seems to me that we should be consistent with naming within the USSaL and put this version of the Nullification Proclamation at United States Statutes at Large/Appendix/Proclamation 26. Second, I'll try to use the new templates, but I think the main issue is that there's no proclamation header, so the sidenote that corresponds with the title Proclamation 26 isn't underlined the way the others are. Third, I believe that some early proclamations may be in Niles' Register; that may be a better source. I'll need to confirm that. —Spangineer (háblame) 19:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Please forgive any snarky-ness that may follow - I'm only trying to walk this through as completely as possible for the benefit of everyone...

Making Public Laws, Resolutions and the like as subpages to the USSaL volume is fine - mainly because even if Chapters are still being used, the corresponding citations most commonly used for those type of publications (i.e. 11 Stat. 789, Ch. 123), will always vary in some way from one volume to the next so that each published whatever is unique from the same designation from prior & latter volumes. Simply put...

• 11 Stat. 789, Ch. 123,
• 14 Stat. 348, Ch. 123,
• 33 Stat. 789, Ch. 17
• ... are all similar citations to the unfamilar reader but nevertheless are unique because the numbers represent changes from one publication to the next and fortunately the mainspace subpage path(s) match enough so that navigating to them are made easier for both the reader as well as search engine (Chapter 123 in volume 11 is not easily confused with Chapter 123 of volume 14 and page 789 in volume 33 is not easily confused with page 789 in volume 11 in the above).

When we move away from those types of docs to Proclamations the problem becomes the lack of of any uniform citation or reference list for volumes 1 to ~30 that at the same time easily mimics a unique USSaL mainspace-volume-subpage path (Proclamation 26 in Volume 11 IS easily confused with Proclamation 26 in Volume 14 and with Proclamation 26 in Volume 33). Also consider;

Lincoln didn't title his proclamation the Emancipation Proclamation - historians did.

Jackson didn't title his proclamation Respecting the Nullification of.... or 26 - the publication did.

The same truth applies to anything titled along the lines of Proclamation of MM DD, YYYY - the State Department followed by the Office of Federal Register added those titles in their record-keeping.

The only truely unique designation method and/or practice started around 1907, developed some in the 1920's, then was finally made a regulatory requirement in the mid-thirties is the contiguous numbered series. This is the designation system still in official use today. This why I think it is best to have any of the above forms of designation be redirects pointing to the actual content using the numbered series first and formost in the naming. Please remember, I'm focusing a framework for the 8500+ published Proclamations out there as a whole collection; not just history's 2 dozen or so Presidential "greatest hits". George Orwell III (talk) 21:38, 17 December 2010 (UTC)