Talk:China: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 2

Transcluding the appendix on chapter subpages

@Pokechu22: I noticed you reverted my edits on Chapter 1 and Chapter 3. However, I think we should still NOT transclude the appendix on chapter subpages. Instead, I think we should just link to the appendix directly (as it's already transcluded). If we want, we can even use {{anchor+}}, so that we can link to a specific note. This has the benefit of transcluding each page on separate pages in mainspace (as opposed to transcluding appendix pages multiple times in mainspace), and also simplifying the wikitext quite a bit since <ref follow> is now unnecessary. Duckmather (talk) 05:33, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I feel like the anchor approach would have worked initially, but I've already set up the transclusions for everything and switching to use anchors would require editing every footnote (in all of the volumes of both Japan and China, apart from volume 1 of China since that doesn't have an appendix and only has two footnotes (in chapters 12 and 14), or alternatively having some volumes be set up differently from other volumes.

I think as a reader, it's much more useful to be able to click the superscript footnote text, read the footnote, and then click the up arrow to go back to where the footnote was, compared to needing to click the superscript footnote text, follow a link to the appendix, read the footnote there, press the browser back button, and then click the up arrow. If there was a practical way to link back from the appendix to the original footnote, that'd resolve most of this concern, though.

I agree that the <ref follow> stuff is complicated on the transclusion side (especially with the need to not have a newline between resulting in HTML comments); it was a bit of a pain to create at first, though I've gotten fairly good at it (and again, already done it for all of the volumes, even the ones that haven't been proofread yet). Now that it's done I don't feel like removing it helps much, though; it's fairly easy to tell that the footnotes are transcluding the correct content just by looking at them.

That information is duplicated in the mainspace in the chapters and the appendix is a slight issue, but I feel like it's more useful to the reader to present it this way than to force navigation to a separate page (we're already putting all of the footnotes at the end of the chapter due to how MediaWiki works, so print limitations don't apply). Pokechu22 (talk) 05:58, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

@Pokechu22: I feel like it would be more confusing than helpful though. If I were a naive reader, seeing the footnotes at the bottom would make me think that the notes were part of the chapter itself rather than the appendix, which is wrong. If you really want to transclude the appendix, I think we would have to at least put that into a separate annotation box. Duckmather (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I feel like the automatically displayed page numbers make it fairly clear where they came from in the book. I'm not sure how much a naive reader would care as to whether the notes were notes at the end of the chapter or in an appendix (and it's obvious once you see the appendix).

I did try Template:AuxBox for this, and it looks like it would work. What do you think of it? --Pokechu22 (talk) 03:07, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

AuxBox sample

Text.^[1][2] Text.^[3] Text.^[4][5]

---

1. See Appendix, Note 1.
   (from Appendix)

   Note 1.—A very different account has been given by some travellers, but it would appear that the prominence and frequency of burying-places in China have misled these observers into an exaggerated estimate of the space actually devoted to purposes of sepulture.

2. See Appendix, Note 2.
   (from Appendix)

   Note 2.—In Japan the extent of cultivated land does not exceed thirteen millions of acres, whereas the population is forty-two millions. Thus, even assuming that a moiety of the land produces two crops yearly—a liberal assumption—it would follow that the ratio is not more than one-half of an acre per head. Yet in Japan there are no evidences of the grinding poverty that force themselves upon the attention of every traveller in China.

3. See Appendix, Note 3.
   (from Appendix)

   Note 3.—Dr. Wells Williams thinks that the tendency to multiply is augmented by the custom of families remaining together through several generations for the sake of the social and local importance they acquire. Cases are on record of nine generations inhabiting one house, and of a family table at which seven hundred mouths were fed daily.

4. See Appendix, Note 4.
   (from Appendix)

   Note 4.—Not really "willow," but Pterecarpa stenoptera.

5. See Appendix, Note 5.
   (from Appendix)

   Note 5.—As an example of the roads within the province of Szchuan, the highway between Chunking and Chingtu (the capital of the province) may be instanced. This, the best, in fact the only dry, road in the province has a width of five feet and is paved with heavy stone slabs laid crosswise.

@Pokechu22: Your formatting doesn't work, it generates misnested HTML, Please recode your example. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Looks like ref tags always produce spans. I'm not sure what if anything can be done about that. I feel like I've spent enough time on all of these and don't really want to do more work on this if there's no easy fix. --Pokechu22 (talk) 20:06, 30 December 2024 (UTC)