Template talk:Michael Palin's Trips

"Name of trip" column redundant[edit]

Suggestion: removing the "Name of trip" column, which is completely redundant with the TV program name, and makes the footer unnecessarily large. $0.02 — Komusou ^talk @ 17:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I approve of the changes Komusou made to the template earlier today.

As for dropping the "Name of trip" column, I would miss it. (Obviously, as I was the one who made the template originally.) But it would be no big deal for me. My justification is that it contains the "short-hand name" for the trip, while the other columns contain the official names, which sometimes differ between the TV program and the Michael Palin book.

A propos, the "Year" column is slightly problematic. Is it the year of the trip or the year of the TV program? (Which should be spelled "programme", now that I think of it.) Currently it is the year of the TV programme. --RenniePet 17:34, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Width-friendly alternative[edit]

The current table is way too wide. If you have a 1268 screen and small fonts, it'll work. For everybody else, each cell will be broken in 2 or 3 lines. This variant use 2 lines for each cell anyway and is much more width-friendly. There's even room to put the full date of the first broadcast, if needed.
The dates say "2003–2004" because "2003–04" also looks like "2003 April".
There is no   at the top because all navboxes are supposed to be able to stack nicely, in whichever order. The trick is to add a {{-}} before the first navbox, i.e.:

==External links==

* http://example.org/

{{-}}
{{First navbox}}
{{Second navbox}}
{{Etc navbox}}

— Komusou ^talk @ 22:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine to me. Good work. If nobody objects, please put it into "production".--RenniePet 09:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Although I can't really explain why, I'd prefer that Michael Palin's book and Basil Pao's book were still in separate columns. Would that make it too wide again, in your opinion? --RenniePet 10:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, here's my newest suggestion:

My display is set to 1024 x 768, and no lines are getting folded for me. By the way, I removed the (date) text from the header, on the assumption that it is self-evident.

Other opinions? --RenniePet 13:51, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About "Would that make it too wide again": well, yes. For testing purposes, the most common setup is Internet Explorer with the default Display:Fontsize=Medium at 800 or 1024 (I mean, to emulate what most folks are going to see). With Font=medium, my variant above was only 20px shy of the maximum width, at 1024. So it would already wrap for people stuck at 800 (but I'm assuming they have already switched their font-size to "small" or "smallest" in order to accomodate sites assuming everybody is at 1280, so they should be okay.)
So, I guess you must have set a "smaller" or "smallest" font on your 1024 screen (and possibly you have a large monitor, such as 21") if your variant doesn't fold. For me at 1024, in IE with font=medium, it wraps in three rows that become 3-line high – not horrible, but not very pretty either.
If you want to retain both the Pao column and the width-friendliness, I would go back to my earliest suggestion of removing the "Trip name" column entirely: it is redundant, and doesn't link to articles.
About "it contains the 'short-hand name' for the trip", two thoughts: first, the "programme" column has it too, I think any reasonnable person reading "Full Circle with Michael Palin" can parse it's "Full Circle". Second, the trip name could be slightly highlighted using {{Smallcaps}} (that's the variant altering display but not the underlying lowercase text).

See below a draft based on these points, that has the same width than the previous one, thus being ok at 1024 with font=medium.

— Komusou ^talk @ 15:28, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Before getting into a discussion of the templates themselves, I'd like to try to clear up something that doesn't make sense. I'm using MS IE 7.0, and when I select View - Text Size it says Medium. I'm using an old CRT screen, diagonal screen image is approx. 39 cm. I think it's a 17" screen. And like I said, when viewed on my screen the template I called "my latest suggestion" displays without any of the text lines in the cells getting folded.

So it sounds like you and I are seeing very different renderings of this template. Do you have some browser tools or something displayed alongside of the main viewing window? --RenniePet 16:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Late answer, I was away) I have no browser tools, full screen width. I can see three possible sources of differences:

I use IE6 (and Opera, which gives the same width results) but I don't think it's an issue.
IE gives you sizes that are relative to a given font basis (I think it's the font size you have set Windows-wide in Control Panel/Display/Appearance for text pages), so if you have reduced the base font size of your system, the medium-size font on your IE will be smaller than the medium-size displayed by computers with the default Windows config. I think the default was fontsize 10.
Since I am at at 1280 on a large screen, I have enabled "Large fonts" support (125% of config size) which is intended to globally restore normal/readable apparence of both fonts and GUIs when one upgrade to a high resolution – but then, my system config size is on the smallish fontsize 8, so this amounts to having fontsize 10 on a non-large-font config.

I guess it's prolly #2 or #3 or a combination thereof. That being said, two key issues are:

What is the average setup for most people, i.e. what will reader get (as opposed to just you or me).
How legible is the table on your screen? I mean, if your suggestion doesn't wrap on your screen, how small/legible is the text for the common reader? When I set size=medium in IE, my own version gives me a table that's the equivalent of fonsize=10 and it's only averagely readable (texts are usually printed in fontsize 12 or at least 11 for legibility), so I'm assuming your larger table requires smaller type and that you have good eyes ;-) 20:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for getting back.

When I look in "Control Panel/Display/Appearance/Font size" it says "Normal". (The alternatives are "Large fonts" and "Extra large fonts" - I don't see any option for reducing font size here. Where are you setting "system config size" to "fontsize 8"?)

I agree that the important thing is how the average user sees what our editing produces here on Wikipedia. I consider myself fairly average, in that I've never messed around with either IE's View - Text Size, nor with the Control Panel/Display/Appearance/Font size settings. As for my eyes, I don't use glasses, so I guess they are better than average for my age, but I've never thought of my vision as being especially good...

If we're going to research this more, you could send your e-mail address to <rp at merlinia dot com> and I could send you a screen shot. But maybe that's making too much of it all.

Could you maybe try removing your special settings and see what things look like?

As for the various template suggestions, I like my last suggestion best (surprise, surprise :-), the one I posted on 29 Oct. I can sort of agree that the one currently in production is too wide, but I find your suggestions too narrow and boxy, if that makes sense. --RenniePet 20:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great Railway Journeys[edit]

Palin's first travelogue was for BBC2's Great Railway Journeys, which isn't mentioned anywhere in this template - shouldn't there be a link to that as well? Grutness...wha? 13:36, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]