User talk:Hardvice/Guest stars

Implementation

Duplication

If we standardize the image names, find a way to match the cell size, and sort out this duplicate problem, this could totally work. We should be able to use a string function to get the number of characters in a name, and if it's less than X, automatically add nonlinktext.--Hardvice (talk) 00:03, 30 November 2007 (EST)

• Right, and there's a few sort functions in Winter that we might be able to use. I left a comment on your talk page.--MiamiVolts (talk) 00:09, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • No need. I just didn't read their documentation very well. Sort is working, duplicates are fixed. All we need are standard image names and to set up the auto nonlinktext.--Hardvice (talk) 01:09, 30 November 2007 (EST)
    • Most of the names are pretty standard. I think you tend to use lowercase and I use uppercase--can that be fixed using ucfirst or any of those other fun tricks? It looks like there's only three so far for this season that would need to be fixed: Héctor Luis Bustamante, Oscar Gutierrez, and Kiko Kiko. But that brings up two other issues: guest stars who don't have real-world portraits, and guest stars for whom articles do not yet exist. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 01:20, 30 November 2007 (EST)
      • Yeah, since it's generating the page, there's no good way to override it. We can add a separate copy of the image for those with no out-of-character images (for example, re-upload Image:Monty Petrelli.jpg as Image:Jackson Wurth.jpg), which would actually make things easier once we get an OOC image. Folks who don't exist yet aren't going to appear in the portals, but they will appear as soon as they're added, which is kind of nice. And on the off chance that we need to override somebody's name, we can read individual variables from templates called by an article, so we could add a "portalname" variable to template:infobox cast and use that to fill text=--Hardvice (talk) 01:30, 30 November 2007 (EST)
        • Couldn't we just add image redirects for those?--MiamiVolts (talk) 01:34, 30 November 2007 (EST)
          • In the case where the name is simply different (i.e. Rey Mysterio.jpg for Oscar Gutierrez), yes. In the case of nocastimage pages, it actually works much better if we upload a second copy because then, when we replace it with an out-of-character image, all pages update automatically.--Hardvice (talk) 01:41, 30 November 2007 (EST)
          • Actually, image redirects redirect the image page, not the image itself.--Hardvice (talk) 01:44, 30 November 2007 (EST)
            • Indeed. Just rediscovered that myself. But, except for nocastimage, the redirect will serve the purpose of not having to have the image in a category twice and re-adding the source information.--MiamiVolts (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2007 (EST)
        • I'm just reading through everything now, so bear with me as I might have multiple posts. On the subject of having an image called "Jackson Wurth.jpg" and an image called "Monty Petrelli.jpg", I think it's a great idea--I thought of that a long time ago to ease the process of updating pages once we get an OOC image, but didn't see it as a huge need, so I dismissed it. Especially now that we're getting actors who are in multiple seasons, it would be even more beneficial. The only thing I would suggest is that we make the "Jackson Wurth.jpg" and "Monty Petrelli.jpg" different images in some way, if possible. Maybe a different scene or a different pose or something. Some people (like Kiko Kiko) wouldn't make this very feasible since she's really only in one scene, but if we can swing varying images, we should. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 06:33, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Cell size, text breaks

• I copied the images for the two redirects. Not sure if we can fix the cell size or line breaks since that part is autogenerated. Perhaps if the autogenerator called a template, but I'm not sure that would be worth it.--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:07, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • Cell size can be adjusted (some) by adjusting the number in the expr: on Template:PortalCharacter. Right now it's set to force an extra line if the name is less than 12 characters, which works on my browser, but if some cells are too small on yours, then we can tweak it.--Hardvice (talk) 02:10, 30 November 2007 (EST)
    • Mark Colson is showing up as three lines in my browser (Mark on one line, Colson on the one below it, and an empty line below that). Is that on purpose (it's only 11 characters with the space)? The rest are fine. Not all split the last and first names into seperate lines, but that's okay cause the cell is large enough to fit them on the same line.--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:23, 30 November 2007 (EST)
      • Drat, forgot to count the spaces. Should probably adjust to 11 instead of twelve. Of course, since it's OK on my browser, his name is probably exactly long enough to ruin this trick.--Hardvice (talk) 02:27, 30 November 2007 (EST)
        • Yeah, 11 makes Elya Baskin and co. not have any whitespace. There's another alternative. Hold on.--Hardvice (talk) 02:29, 30 November 2007 (EST)
          • There's option 2. Option 3 is to print the border but force the cell size.--Hardvice (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Navbar

• It's possible to have the navbar be automatically generated too -- again, with the caveat that it will need to be manually updated when it comes time to add a new page. It might be possible to make the cell sizes match, but I doubt it -- in this case, it's probably easier to just valign top all the cells and remove the border, and let the text run as long as it wants. Getting the letters for the small versions might be tough, but can probably be done with string functions--find the last space in the name (may require Winter to loop for this), take the next letter.--Hardvice (talk) 02:27, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • I switched them to use table borders instead of no borders at all. I think it looks better that way. Feel free to revert it if you don't.--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:35, 30 November 2007 (EST)
    • Good idea. I switched to cell borders to make them less ... Stalinesque ... but it totally works.--Hardvice (talk) 02:38, 30 November 2007 (EST)
      • Yeah, the thin grey borders look great.--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:39, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Remaining issues

1. Letters for small version of navbar. If we can print the sortkey and restrict the number of characters, cake.
2. For characters, we'll need to cat minor, main, recurring, and supporting characters, which we should probably do anyway. We can add logic to the navbar, and have it default to "minor"--that way, we only have to update 20 or so pages for characters who aren't minor.
3. Standardize any other odd image names
4. If we want to add characters who aren't written, we can stub 'em, or we can have them magically appear when they are written. I personally prefer the latter--I don't really see the point of redlinks in the portals except to make sure things don't get forgotten or misplaced (and now they can't).
5. Everybody needs to have sort= in their infobox for the auto navbar to work.--Hardvice (talk) 03:32, 30 November 2007 (EST)

--Hardvice (talk) 02:44, 30 November 2007 (EST) Otherwise, this should be well within our reach.

• The first looks like the most trouble, as I'm not sure how to print the sortkey. The others seem only to require copying this code into another portal and customizing it for said portal. For the case where there are multiple portal pages for a single category, there should be a redlink that appears in the navbar when a new page is required. Defaulting to "minor" is a good idea. Standardizing the image names is straightforward, and I agree about having the new character pages appear when written. I assume it's possible to remove characters that are labelled with the spoilers category.--MiamiVolts (talk) 03:00, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • We can actually grab the value of sort= out of the infobox, so #1 shouldn't be too hard. #Sub: (variable) | 0 | 1 ought to do it.--Hardvice (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • OK, works great--so long as all of the pages have sort=.--Hardvice (talk) 03:32, 30 November 2007 (EST)
• re: minor/supporting/recurring/main categories for characters, I'm assuming we use the most current season's status? How does this effect characters from multiple seasons who have more than one designation? For instance, D.L. was a main character last season, but a minor character this season--should he have two categories? re: allowing characters to appear automatically or forcing them to appear, I agree we should let them appear magically. This does make for a lot of extra images (character and actor portraits) in special:unusedimages, but that doesn't bother me too much. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 06:41, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • Regarding current vs. past seasons, we could add new categories "season one minor/supporting/recurring/main characters" and "season two minor/supporting/recurring/main characters". That's basically the only way I see to do it if we want it to be automatic. AdminBot might be a little helpful there, but since this is something new stored only by which portal a character currently is in, it might need to be done manually.--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:01, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • Just like we do with the character navbar: if they're in the latest season, they're categorized for that. D.L. would have the bar for season 2 and be categorized as a season two minor character. He'd still be in the season one main characters portal because we're probably only going to generate minor character portals.--Hardvice (talk) 14:38, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Lines

Partly to enable this, and partly because it bugs the hell out of me, I added a lines variable to Template:PortalCharacter that will set the number of lines of linkspace to add to a cell. This way, we don't need to micromanage nonlinktext to get cell sizes to match; you can just assign "lines=3" to each cell on the page, and they'll all match. Also, the boxes will now scale with the text. Lines defaults to 2 and can currently be set for anything from 1-5; we can add more if we need them.--Hardvice (talk) 05:42, 30 November 2007 (EST)

• I don't see the boxes/borders anymore, did you turn them off?--MiamiVolts (talk) 06:21, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • They should have normal cell borders now.--Hardvice (talk) 14:35, 30 November 2007 (EST)
    • I'm not seeing normal cell borders. Is it a browser issue? (I thought I saw it earlier this morning on Firefox, but I could be wrong.) For what it's worth, I prefer the cell borders to be visible, if that's at all feasible. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 14:41, 30 November 2007 (EST)
      • They are visible now for me. Check again, Ryan?--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:52, 30 November 2007 (EST)
• Also, just looking at the Minor characters portal pages, some of the names are missing and we have several redlink pages...--MiamiVolts (talk) 06:28, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • Everyone needs to have |season=Two on their navabr for this to work.--Hardvice (talk) 14:35, 30 November 2007 (EST)
    • It looks like some of the deceased characters have the name missing, is that a related issue? How will the code know to exclude the Main/Supporting/recurring/etc characters from the Minor portal?--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:52, 30 November 2007 (EST)
      • Because it looks for a match on two categories: minor/guest stars and season.--Hardvice (talk) 14:56, 30 November 2007 (EST)
        • I guess it might help if Category:Season Two Cast actually existed?--MiamiVolts (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2007 (EST)
          • It probably should have a page, but that doesn't affect the inclusion at all.--Hardvice (talk) 16:05, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Guest Stars

The only things left to do before this can be implemented for guest cast are:

• Make sure everyone who appears in Season Two has |season=Two on the navbar call
• Make sure everyone has a picture at (TITLE).jpg
  • Should we standardize it as Firstname Lastname.jpg? There are a few I've uploaded in my earlier days that are JPG (capitals), and there are some that you've uploaded that are lowercase. Would #ucfirst: or #lcfirst: work for these? -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 16:02, 30 November 2007 (EST)
    • Yeah, they should be (ARTICLE TITLE).jpg, which should be Firstname Lastname.jpg. There's a lot of case insensitivity stuff in the extension, but I'm not sure how well they'll work with links ... what happens if we have both "Kiko Kiko.jpg" and "Kiko kiko.jpg"? Does it try to print both?--Hardvice (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2007 (EST)
• Make sure everyone has a |sort= in their infobox
• Add a template for the final row to change the width and render only as many cells as needed
• Make the navbar an actual template

--Hardvice (talk) 14:56, 30 November 2007 (EST)

Sorts

If I understand it correctly, we have great control over what is printed. Mark Christopher Lawrence's superlong name is falling out of the portal cell on my browser. If we switch the sort on his actor page to just "Lawrence, Mark", would that work to fix the problem? -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 20:22, 30 November 2007 (EST)

• Indeed it will. It pulls the sort for the text=--Hardvice (talk) 20:42, 30 November 2007 (EST)
• We can also set |lines=3 in the template and everybody will add an extra line.--Hardvice (talk) 20:50, 30 November 2007 (EST)
  • I think three lines is too much. I'd rather just chop off Mark Christopher Lawrence's middle name than have all that extra space. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 21:58, 30 November 2007 (EST)

portals with less than 15

It's too bad we can't get portal rows with less than 5 images to be centered...but I'll take that minor drawback any day if it means the portal updates itself! -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 22:01, 30 November 2007 (EST)

• We can, actually. I just have to tweak the template a bit.--Hardvice (talk) 22:07, 30 November 2007 (EST)
• OK, done.--Hardvice (talk) 01:22, 1 December 2007 (EST)
  • That's cool that it even centers. Looks okay to move it now, unless you think we should do all the character portals at once? And unless you plan to make stub pages for the current redlinked articles in the portals...--MiamiVolts (talk) 01:43, 1 December 2007 (EST)
    • The characters are going to be a bit more difficult since they're not yet categorized into main/rec/sup/minor. I don't think we should mess with the season one stuff at all, since it's unlikely to change. I guess I'll go ahead and try moving this into the portals now for guest stars. Incidentally, we are waaaay behind on guest stars articles. The portals we have are almost exactly 50% redlinks.--Hardvice (talk) 01:54, 1 December 2007 (EST)
      • Ok, are we storing what those redlinks were somewhere so we can chew at them later?--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:02, 1 December 2007 (EST)
        • They're all still in Special:Wantedpages because they're linked from the checklists and the images.--Hardvice (talk) 02:05, 1 December 2007 (EST)
          • Right, but the information that they were only Guest stars and not recurring actors is lost. Ah well, I guess it's not too much trouble to dig that up.--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:11, 1 December 2007 (EST)
            • Right -- particularly since all the redlinked guys who are recurring/supporting actors are still in portals.--Hardvice (talk) 02:17, 1 December 2007 (EST)

A few improvements

• You no longer have to specify FIRST and LAST in the navbar cells -- just page #.
• When adding a new page, you can add all three rows from the start. Blank rows will be suppressed. This means we only have to (manually) edit the portals when we reach a new page, not whenever we add a new row. It's actually possible to add logic to the navbar to make even that unnecessary, and the portal would be truly maintenance-free, but we'd need unlinked portals for blank pages. If people are cool with having a blank portal floating around unlinked, then I'll set the logic up. Otherwise, we just need to add a page and update the navbar every 15 articles.--Hardvice (talk) 01:22, 2 December 2007 (EST)