Template talk:The History of al-Tabari

proposed changes to this template

cs1|2 automatically sets each template's anchor ID to the selected name list (first four) and the value assigned to |year= or |date=. Order of name list selection is |contributorn= → |authorn= → |editorn=. This template is a wrapper around {{cite book}}.

When en.wiki editors use short-form citations, {{harv}} or {{sfn}} templates, Module:Footnotes attempts to read the citation templates in the article so that it can do error messaging and categorization. Wrapper templates like {{The History of al-Tabari}} hide the pertinent details so Module:Footnotes emits false positive error messages. There are ways around that. Module:Footnotes has a whitelist of anchor IDs that quash the false error messages. What the short-cite templates (via Module:Footnotes) do is detailed at Category:Harv and Sfn template errors.

Discussion at Module_talk:Footnotes suggests how we can improve whitelisting for this template. The live version of this template causes cs1|2 to create an anchor ID that looks like CITEREFAl-Tabari1985–2007 when |volume= is omitted or left empty and can be linked to with {{sfn|Al-Tabari|1985–2007}}. This is inconsistent with anchor IDs produced when |volume= has a value. Readers will expect that the text 'Al-Tabari' will be found at the left-most end of a rendered citation (where contributors', authors', or editors' names are to be found).

The changes that I have made in the ~/sandbox are:

1. sandbox uses Module:Template wrapper to render the citation. This allows the template to use any and all parameters supported by {{cite book}} without the need to directly include those parameters in this template's code.
2. deleted passthroughs for |url=, |chapter=, |chapter-url=, |quote=, |page=, and |pages=
3. deleted the |ref= preset so that cs1|2 constructs the anchor ID from |contributorn= or |authorn= if provided or, when not, falls back on |editorn= in all cases.

There are some examples that compare the live version with the new ~/sandbox version in ~/testcases. The only difference in rendering (at this writing) is the |volume= test which differs by the id= attribute (anchor ID) in the <cite> tag (differences in templatestyles strip markers are ignored by the test).

Comments? Opinions? Questions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

There having been no comments, I have updated the live template. I have also fixed any articles that I could find that used {{sfn|Al-Tabari|1985–2007}} (and similar templates) so that they now use {{sfn|Yarshater|1985–2007}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:59, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

url

These urls at archive.org might be better than the extremely limited previews available from google.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:02, 3 January 2021 (UTC)