Help talk:Score submission guide/File and page titles

Some of this overlaps Help:Style conventions, and there's still a need for Help:Disambiguation. Richard Mix (talk) 22:59, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that parentheses are not allowed: they certainly are allowed. But brackets (like { } [ ]) are not allowed in file names, and they shouldn't be allowed in page names either. Quotation marks (several different systems) should be discouraged in page names, as least to my thinking.

I wanted to put the list of disallowed characters near the top so people would notice; especially "&" and "/", that have come up several times in the last month or so. Do we need to repeat the list of disallowed programming characters?

You may have noticed I put "intelligible" in the page title section; file names only need to be intelligible to the editor that created them.

You're right, Help:Style conventions needs to be coordinated with this – though it is incomplete and not very often noticed. Perhaps it would be best to keep Help:Style conventions for textual and linguistic guidelines? — Barry Johnston (talk) 02:45, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks so much for all the editing/drafting! I see what you mean about 3 (?) overlapping pages; let me think (general style/filename requirements/workpagetitles ?).

I have to admit I don't understand the grey area between forbidden and discouraged: my case for ? & ! is the illegibility of what has become a redirect page, Morte che voi (Maddalena Casulana). In proposing page names at Sortable list of Beethoven Lieder (Ludwig van Beethoven) I waver when titles tend to the generic, and in my experience Mignon or Zärtliche Liebe are never so called. Goethe's Sehnsucht, Op. 83 No. 2 (Ludwig van Beethoven) and Reissig's Sehnsucht, WoO 146 (Ludwig van Beethoven) are problematic, and if Opus & WoO no.'s weren't available one would wish to disambiguate them Sehnsucht "Was zieht mir das Herz" and Sehnsucht "Die stille Nacht umdunkelt" instead of with parentheses. Or should quotes be reserved for something more important? Elipses should probably be listed too. Richard Mix (talk) 09:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

There are some characters that will cause problems (file won't save, can't be linked, etc.) in file names and page titles, such as \ | & # ~ ¦ { } [ ]; it's not so much that they are forbidden, it's more that we want to avoid having to explain it again and again. Also, we all need to get out of the habit of using them. I would discourage quotation marks, not that they cause programming problems, but because they differ from language to language and not all of them are included in every font – they will display as a black box or blank. Such as « » „ ” „ “. We already have some editors using these, and I think it's pretty confusing, especially for editors not used to English conventions. To some editors, Sehnsucht "Was zieht mir das Herz" and Sehnsucht "Die stille Nacht umdunkelt" should be Sehnsucht „Was zieht mir das Herz“ and Sehnsucht „Die stille Nacht umdunkelt“.

I don't see anything wrong with Sortable list of Beethoven Lieder (Ludwig van Beethoven). There are plenty of examples where a composer titled a work, and the titles are often used by several to many composers, for example Resignation was used as a title by at least six composers just on CPDL. I think we need to keep these, if only because they may have meaning as part of the original composition.

You're right about ellipses, I will include them. I understand why ! and ?. But what about ¿ and ¡ ?

In looking over Help:Style conventions, so much of it is out of date. For example, that the style here is that of Wikipedia – apparently written before it.wikipedia.org, or fr.wikipedia.org, or de.wikipedia.org – each of which has different style conventions. I feel that the content of Help:Style conventions should be incorporated elsewhere. In spite of the statement "all users making contributions to ChoralWiki are strongly encouraged to become acquainted with and make use of the guidelines presented here", I think few editors have read this page.

But I'm not understanding your first statement ("I see what you mean…") – are you proposing something? — Barry Johnston (talk) 02:02, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I use "forbidden" in the sense of characters that will cause foreseeable problems, and I think 2 different lists are needed for filenames and page names. Some technical explanation would be appreciated, but what's really confusing is that this page is framed as "recommendations" and that some deprecated characters might or might not create glitches. So, is it foreseeable what will happen if a work page has quotation marks or not? (« » „ ” „ “ no more worry me than coeli, celi, caeli or cæli, all of which we live with.)

Perhaps this page then would be the place to draw the line between 'allowable' inputs to the Add work form, and (not another? should Help:Disambiguation be merged to Help:Work page names?) style conventions page where we can debate font limitations vs the conventions of different (romanized) languages. Richard Mix (talk) 10:02, 13 July 2020 (UTC)