Template talk:Todo

Argument

Great so far.

I'd like it even more if we'd support a list of arguments and a default assignment to Category:Todo if there is no argument given. Maybe a further (optional) description argument that does not result in a category. What do you think in general? --Xenwolf (talk) 20:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I also thought about Category:Todo default and how it’s not available from the current template so that’s a must. A list of arguments to add multiple categories is really great, as otherwise this may end in plaque spam and I would feel responsible for it. :D The description is a good idea too.

Please have a look into User:Xenwolf/SandBox#Testing template arguments. I think here's all you need. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes! I watched the final unfolding of it and that was mesmerising. Now I get what the pipe in the argument substitution means. I’ll merge this here, and alternative argument names are nice too. --Arseniiv (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Your turn! How do you find it now? Also how do we call it at the end, something like Template:Todo? --Arseniiv (talk) 21:57, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Template:Todo was exactly my guess. Should we go "to production" right now? --Xenwolf (talk) 22:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

It would be nice but maybe there’s still something to add or remove from the design. Maybe tomorrow if there will be no new ideas? --Arseniiv (talk) 22:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

How exactly will we do that, first edit the template docs to use its new name and then move, or just add a brand new page and then copy all to it, with corrected docs? I see the latter more appropriate but then all this discussion will be left here. --Arseniiv (talk) 14:53, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I'd say moving at first should work (including the talk page). BTW: I think that the idea to develop, test, and document (by using itself) a template within the same page is a bit over-sophisticated. You know that there are issues with self transclusion (for load-reduction reasons). The English Wikipedia uses subpages for documentation which works better. Considering your efforts to avoid any redundancy if possible, I conclude that you are a programmer. But MediaWiki (even with parser extensions and such) is not a great language. Hopefully we get Lua some day, see my request to the maintainer (Scribunto means Lua) ;) --Xenwolf (talk) 18:04, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Hehe. :D I’m not too opposed to redundancy, and with this template I was just lazy to add more subpages and edit many at a time, and also I don’t know how is best to organize such documentation subpage, so I dumped it all on the template page to this moment, but I’m all in to make something wiser. Hmm, will this doc subpage move automatically if I make it now? --Arseniiv (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

A bit later I’ll refresh my memory of those template functions and try to make this but if you can, feel free to mess with this template too! Also, how do you think, does it need a light pastel background too? Right now it may be too bland. (And rounded corners to not look so sharp.) --Arseniiv (talk) 20:20, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I personally prefer slightly shaded backgrounds to thick borders. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

With 1px border or with no border at all? I think no border would be not enough to delimit it from the surroundings, but 1px is fine. --Arseniiv (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I think 1px border would be better than no border (in this case 😉). --Xenwolf (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Text

The current text reads quite good but seems not to be applicable equally good in all possible situations. I'd suggest to start with a formal intro and a simple list of the things to do. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Doesn’t play nice with list syntax

Currently the template doesn’t play nice with list syntax * Template:Template... because it contains line breaks in code. But if we remove them, the code will be unreadable (I already removed several spaces for full stop to display right after the last category argument). Hopefully this use case won’t be needed! --Arseniiv (talk) 21:49, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Visual appearance

The box itself looks quite good. Sometimes it's too much if there is a tiny detail to do. I could imagine that we control this by user CSS (or group CSS). In cases where an article ha a lot to do, it could definitively help to make it visible to all visitors. But what about little things that you notice in passing and want to reserve for later, since you are currently busy with something bigger? Do they justify severe losses in the appearance of the article? In these cases I would prefer a marker invisible in the article text itself. I'm sorry that I'm only telling you this now, I just didn't realize it before, but now that I've tried your template in my sandbox it's clear to me. --Xenwolf (talk) 13:06, 8 November 2020 (UTC)