User talk:Yecril

Impressive edit. Good work--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 20:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Impressive edit

Thanks for your comment. I imagine you had my typesetting effort on Group action in mind; please make it clear what you refer to when you decide to leave a comment. Fixing one section takes me an hour and a half; it is a considerable amount of time but I have not come up with a smarter method to do it yet. Ideally, the math coprocessor should be fixed to produce better results in HTML mode.

Do you moderate the articles on mathematical subjects on Wikipedia? If so, please take into account that the typesetting changes were made with fingers crossed — e.g. Konqueror has problems with displaying the content. Konqueror is free software and it is likely to be fixed; AFAIK the fix is already there but I am not sure whether the fix has made it into the installer yet. I am not following that issue any more because I switched back to Windows (accidentally). Probably not.

Yecril 09:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes that's what I meant(I left the comment 2 minutes after your edit so figured you would guess). In answer to your second question, I monitor about 2000 math articles. There are going to be some general typesetting changes to the mediawiki software...but don't expect anything substantial for another year or so. BTW I am a member of WP:WPM, you should consider joining up. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 16:30, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I did, and I did some clean up. Yecril 22:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Please use English for communicating with other editors

Hi, I notice that you commonly use (I think?) Polish in your edit comments. Please use English — this is the English Wikipedia, and you should assume that comments in other languages will be unintelligible to most other editors.

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 14:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

My policy on filling INPUT controls to use the language of the label; if that is not right, please revert the label to English. Thanks. --Yecril (talk) 14:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, the label language is set by your user preferences (click the "my preferences" at the top to change it). Every editor can get the UI labels in their preferred language, but that doesn't mean that every editor should edit in their own language! When communicating with other editors (which is what the edit comments are for!!) on the English Wikipedia, you need to use English. Isn't this self-evident? —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 15:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It is self-evident that, in general, you should reply in the language of the question if you only can. Therefore labels of input controls that solicit information from the editor should be presented in English, regardless of user preferences. --Yecril (talk) 15:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Complain to the MediaWiki user-interface team then, and in the meantime change your user preferences to give English labels if you feel that way. (Note that, out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors I've interacted with, you are the first person who claims not to understand that the language of communication on this wiki is English and who uses non-English edit comments. Your argument is, frankly, not credible.) As you are obviously capable of writing in English, the fact that you persist in writing Polish comments to English-speaking editors on the English Wikipedia seems deliberately obtuse and uncooperative. I ask you again: please stop. —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I do understand that the language of communication is English. The problem is the MediaWiki UI team apparently did not foresee the inconsistency they introduced. How do I contact them? Or could you point them to this discussion? --Yecril (talk) 15:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and the Wikimedia BugZilla. And please stop using non-English edit comments, which I notice you are still doing even though you acknowledge that "the language of communication is English". —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I have created an entry on the Village pump. I seek your permission to use Polish for demonstration purposes on my talk page and for entries relevant to this topic. --Yecril (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not a question of "permission," it's a question of courtesy and common sense. Of course you can use Polish quotations for illustration purpose in discussing the UI on your talk page etc. You just shouldn't use Polish for anything other editors should expect to understand (edit comments, section headers, etc.). Again, this should be self-evident. —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 01:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

In that case your complaint about my still doing it lacks evidence. --Yecril (talk) 10:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Now you're being dishonest — a quick look at your edit history reveals that every single one of your recent edits (including the one for your response just now!) has an edit summary in Polish. What's the matter with you? —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 14:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

You have conceded two exceptions and all my recent edits, including this one, incidentally qualify as such. --Yecril (talk) 15:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Modular group

Your recent changes at Modular group replacing LaTex markup with HTML look awful in my browser. Also, I think the previous LaTex markup was shorter and easier for an editor to write and modify. I don't see anything at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) about new standards for formulae mark-up - has this new style been discussed anywhere ? Gandalf61 (talk) 14:03, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I am still working on it; could you show me a screen shot ASAP? And try @importing my monobook.css. My ultimate target is to fix texvc but I need to know first what the resulting wikicode should be. Thanks. --Yecril (talk) 14:42, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

My screen shot

@import url("/w/index.php?title=User:Yecril/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css");

Sorry, but I'm not going to run around uploading screen shots and importing new style sheets. Just compare your screen shot above with a previous version of the page. The matrix should have curved brackets around it, not straight lines. SL^-(2,Z) should be S^*L(2,Z) etc.

If you haven't discussed your ideas with anyone yet then I strongly suggest you take them over to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics - there is an active community of mathematics article editors there. If you explain to them what you think the problem with the current markup is and how you propose to fix it, then they will be able to give you plenty of feedback. It would be a really good idea to determine consensus before you invest any more of your time in these changes. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I reverted the incriminated matrices and Template:Maspeling⁻. I thought something went terribly wrong in your browser, that is why I asked for a screenshot. (Besides, I still have mathematical books with arrays in double bars — these were easier to typeset.) Anything else? --Yecril (talk) 15:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes - you have a Unicode character ↦ that I can't see, displaying fractions as tables creates too much vertical space, I don't like the bullets that now appear in front of formulae, and your in-line fractions like p⁄q lose part of their denominator. I suggest you revert all your changes and please take this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics before you go any further. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:56, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. I have to investigate the clipping of denominator before proceeding. The problem with ↦ is most probably a CSS/OS problem; I would hesitate replacing it with → like texvc does because they have a slightly different meaning.

Anything else? I am very grateful for your input. Please do not be too picky; in particular, your problem with display-mode fractions is an aesthetic problem caused by a bug in Trident. You will get the same picture if you request aggressive inlining from the math coprocessor (this is what I get from <math>, and it looks much worse than my hand-crafted version). The bullets are gone as a side-effect. --Yecril (talk) 16:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Take it to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. I can't stress this strongly enough. You really really need to get input from other editors. Gandalf61 (talk) 19:18, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I cannot advertise something I do not fully understand. I have to diagnose the denominator clipping problem first. --Yecril (talk) 19:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

You should have made sure you understood what you were doing before you started experimenting with a live page. That's what sandboxes are for. And even if your formatting ideas are good ideas, you can't hope to get them implemented without community consensus and involvement. Wikipedia is all about collaboration. Take your ideas to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics to see if there is a consensus in favour of your changes. You can explain that you are still fixing some bugs. Gandalf61 (talk) 19:34, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

This is an impossible advice; you can spend your whole life on making sure you understand something you are doing and fail to do anything as a result. You can never be sure until you try. And I did use the sandbox for constructs I was not sure of. --Yecril (talk) 19:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Suit templates

Hi, I see you are changing ♥ to ♥ etc in various articles. Could you explain why please? Abtract (talk) 11:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I need {{Hs}} to take one role of {{H}} ("hidden search parameter"). --Yecril (talk) 11:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not use something else rather than hijacking a well used icon? Abtract (talk) 11:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by icon here?

BTW, I have created a bot request in this regard. --Yecril (talk) 11:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I meant template and was making an oblique reference to your edit summary "Can we avoid using nonstandard icons: expanded suit template names)". I would much rather you did not hijack this well-used template and found another for your own use, thanks. Abtract (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That icon over there belongs to section title, not to my explanation. I disagree these templates are well used. Their limited usage scope does not provide a sufficient excuse for their short names. Note that even HTML made the corresponding entity names longer. --Yecril (talk) 12:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

What excuse is needed? I object to you taking this template without even an attempt at discussion with the users. Abtract (talk) 12:06, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The excuse must respond to the question Why must this template name be so short?. Please provide an aswer. And, of course, feel free to revert changes you consider disruptive; I hope to get the bot running anyway. --Yecril (talk) 12:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Who are you to ask such a question? Abtract (talk) 12:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I am an editor, at your services :-) You can look at my user page to get some more information abot me; please let me know if there is something particular you would like to know. --Yecril (talk) 12:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Then I suggest you leave ♥ alone please; it is very useful where it is. Abtract (talk) 12:29, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I never claimed it is not useful, or that is not very useful. However, it is very useful to a very limited number of editors, so multiplying the two figures you get a not very impressive number. And changing its invocation from {{Hs}} to {{Hearts}}, or to {{cards|h}} does not make it any less useful. --Yecril (talk) 12:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

You made no attempt to discuss this with anyone before your sweeping changes (and threatened bot), you give no rationale for wanting it or why you can't construct a template not already in use, you give no numbers of your own and you tell me the numbers for its current use are not very impressive. Personally, I don't want to use another template - find your own. Please leave ♥ alone until you have the agreement of those who use it already. Abtract (talk) 12:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest Wikipedia:WikiProject Contract bridge is a good place to start. Abtract (talk) 12:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

• AFAIK, you do not need the author’s permission before changing the content.
• I can invent an unintuitive name for the template but the editors expect the template name to be intuitive and easy to remember. You see, the template is not only for me.
• This particular functionality really deserves a short name.
• Personally I do not want seems a bit subjective for an argument.
• The intended scope of {{Hs}} is global, therefore discussing it on a bridge-related forum will not get the correct results. The discussion is not about bridge, it is about identifiers, and the project does not own the global identifiers it uses.

--Yecril (talk) 13:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

And 'global' might just be a slight exageration for a wp template. Since I still have no idea what your proposed template is for or who will use it, I have no means of even considering whether it is a good idea or not ... would it be beyond all reason for you to explain it to me? Abtract (talk) 13:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

By global I mean global in Wikipedia, as opposed to templates local to a project, such as {{cards/h}}. The functionality to be moved is currently described at {{h}} where it is implemented; please let me know if the description is not clear enough. --Yecril (talk) 14:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It is completely incomprehnsible to me ... what will it do? who has asked for it? How many are likely to use it? etc Abtract (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

You are welcome. I have created a wikilink at {{h}}, follow it and see whether it provides an answer. I do not know who asked for it, I just found it there. It is likely to be used by every author that needs a wikitable sortable at the viewer’s request. --Yecril (talk) 14:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry doesn't help ... there is no request there. I repeat, choose some other template, please. Abtract (talk) 14:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Why did you expect a request? Editors do not usually request templates, they rather create them. I did not create {{h}}. I can create a request if you need it but rather not put at the template’s talk page because it will be fake. --Yecril (talk) 14:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Then don't mess about with ♥ please. Abtract (talk) 15:06, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

So you are just going to ignore the fact that ♥ is in use already and hijack it for another use, with no attempt to explain why or gain consensus? Abtract (talk) 18:07, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I have plainly stated that {{Hs}} is in abuse and I plan to repurpose it for a more appropriate task. I have provided an explanation why I thought it had to be moved. --Yecril (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but you haven't mentioned it being an abuse ... and who are you to decide that? Abtract (talk) 17:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I talk about abuse when I talk about unwarranted shortness of the identifier. I have also explained who I am, for that matter. --Yecril (talk) 17:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Doc request

Please provide documentation for the undocumented template {{Math}} which you created or are a major contributor to. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. --Yecril (talk) 16:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

{{ns:0|
}}

I see that you frequently use this trick to cause newlines to be ignored. It is confusing for people not familiar with parser functions. You can use <!--
--> to obtain the same effect. BTW, in most circumstances, a single line break is treated the same as a space, so this isn't terribly useful. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! ! ! 19:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I wondered about exactly this; couldn't figure it out from e.g. WP:Namespace, so I came here to ask. Han-Kwang (t) 22:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Except that most circumstances do not encompass lists and indented paragraphs. I do not use HTML comments because HTML does not have this problem; it is specific to wikitext and should be handled by wikitext IMHO. --Yecril (talk) 08:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikitext includes a subset of HTML (it includes <span> but it doesn't include <img>, for example), including HTML comments. -- Army1987!!! 11:59, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

BTW, while you can format your text whichever way you like, you should avoid adding or removing newlines in pre-existing text unless there is a good reason to do so, as it confuses the diff engine. I took a while to understand which changes were actually made in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics)&diff=prev&oldid=240280115. -- Army1987!!! 12:56, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

When I insert something into an existing paragraph that is soft wrapped, the line wrapping changes dynamically all the way down to the end of the paragraph. The text travels at random and you cannot visually remember where it is what you want to refer to. That is why I wrapped the text I edited.

How do you address this particular problem without breaking lines? Do you undo your wrapping after you have edited the text?

--Yecril (talk) 07:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean, or maybe you don't understand how the diff engine works. It compares a line at a time, where "line" refers to a sequence of characters other than newline. So, modifying text at the beginning on a line doesn't affect the rest of the text, whereas adding newlines does. See [1] and [2]... In which case you can figure out what was changed more easily? -- Army1987!!! 12:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The sliding text problem I have described occurs in the edit window, not in the diff engine. I understand that having the differences right is more important; I asked for a suggestion how to avoid the problem with editing. --Yecril (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know... Try asking in WP:VPT. As for me, I'd fix the diff engine so that it treat single newlines as spaces (except in indented paragraphs etc.). There is an option in Preferences to use an external editor by default, if that could help, but I don't know how it works. -- Army1987!!! 13:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Inserting newlines breaks indented text etc. You have to insert something that contains a line break and is ignored by the rendering engine. --Yecril (talk) 13:06, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Use of curly quotes in Fitts's law

Hi,

Please see Wikipedia: Manual of Style#Quotation marks for our guidelines on punctuation. Wikipedia does not use left and right apostrophes, so I have undone your stylistic edits to this article (and the page move). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The passage you quote does not apply to inflectional apostrophes at all. Your revert is inappropriate. --Yecril (talk) 15:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

The MoS says: The exclusive use of straight quotes and apostrophes is recommended. They are easier to type in reliably, and to edit. Mixed use interferes with searching (a search for Korsakoff's syndrome could fail to find Korsakoff’s syndrome and vice versa). You moved Fitt's law to Fitt’s law,[3] which seems to be exactly what was described in the MoS. Han-Kwang (t) 16:01, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

That text is gone now. --Yecril (talk) 17:24, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"Bigmath"?

I agree with getting rid of inline TeX in this edit. But what is the point of the "bigmath" template? What I notice right away is:

• It replaces something that looks good with something that looks bad;
• It is horribly cumbersome and makes editing difficult at best;
• It replaces the TeX system that everyone uses every day, not ONLY on Wikipedia, with something used ONLY on Wikipedia.

Michael Hardy (talk) 13:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I kind of agree, with the following reservations:

• It replaces something browser-unfriendly with something browser-friendly (hyperlinks, titles etc.),
• It replaces something wiki-special with something wiki-ordinary (e.g. templates inside a math island are not processed),
• You can actually copy the equation and paste it into an HTML e-mail message without attachments.

However, it seems rather futuristic right now. I would be glad to see how exactly it looks bad at your place. The output generated by texvc is terrible when it is instructed to be aggressive; I am trying to figure out whether we would be better off without it.

--Yecril (talk) 08:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

curly quotes

Hiya Yecril. I had a request to archive that long section at WT:MOS that was taking up half the page on various issues involving quotation marks. After I did the manual archive, I saw that you had made a comment a few days ago on curly quotes. The section that's currently at the top of WT:MOS involves curly quotes; instead of pulling back in the really long section, I'm hoping you're okay with talking in that shorter section.

There's a lot of "fatigue" currently on the subject of curly quotes. User_talk:Greg L and User_talk:Sswonk were the guys arguing for curly quotes, but they both think it's not worth arguing about now. Obviously, nobody at WT:MOS can tell anybody else what ought to be important, or what your position ought to be; I'm just saying that my sense is, after a lot of argument on the subject, that most people (in a lot of different forums, not just at WT:MOS) are in favor of the straight quotes, for various reasons, and most people are a little tired at the moment of talking about it.

Very impressive userpage, btw. I wish I knew half the stuff you do. I used to use that "this editor uses SQL queries to find car keys" userbox, myself. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, so would I. I am not really into quotes, I only do not want genitive apostrophes considered quotes. --Yecril (talk) 16:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe everyone agrees with that, at least as represented in the style guidelines ... if we slip up, let us know. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Skewes' number

I disagree with your move of Skewes' number to Skewes’s number. I get 2430 Google hits versus 94. Skewes' number is the established name and Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things trumps considerations about what would be grammatically best. Skewes' number also dominates 45 to 3 in Google Scholar hits. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

curly apostrophe

I don't believe there is any consensus to rename pages with possessive names to use a fancy apostrophe instead of a simple ASCII apostrophe. I wish you would stop doing such moves until you can establish such a consensus. Note that WP:NAME says "Separate accent-like and/or quote-like characters (including, but not limited to ʻ, ʾ, ʿ, ᾿, ῾, ‘, “, ’, ”, c, combining diacritical marks combined with a "space" character,...) should be avoided in page names." The goal of page names is not typographic beauty; they are just meant to be easy for naive users to type. Also, note that your edit to the manual of style was reverted. [4] — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:18, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the remark. Please, if it is not too much trouble, use bookmark links like WP:NAME#Special characters. I did not do it for the typographic beauty but for the correct spelling of the name. There are redirects for naïve users. --Yecril (talk) 09:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, doing so after having been repeatedly asked not to is rather unproductive, and arguing that the style guideline does not address the issue based on a technicality of nomenclature when the provided example makes the spirit of the rule abundantly clear is disingenuous. Please don't introduce non-ASCII punctuation marks of this sort into articles (or their titles) until such point as there is consensus that it is appropriate. Right now there is not. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

We cannot reach any consensus without discussing the problem and we cannot discuss it while the supposedly relevant guideline is misplaced and therefore irrelevant. --Yecril (talk) 12:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Which guideline is misplaced? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Skewes' number

Please stop making these changes [5]. Various people have pointed out that the Manual of Style says to use straight apostrophes only. Also, as I pointed out on the Math MoS page, if you need to explain what the prime counting function is [6] you should do so using plain English, not via a template. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Various people have pointed out that the Manual of Style says to use straight quotes only, and it has nothing to do with apostrophes, or to use straight apostrophes in page names, which I have not violated since, although I am not convinced it is right. --Yecril (talk) 14:53, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The symbol you are using for apostrophes is &rsquo; (’), which by its very name is a single quote. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The HTML name for ë is ë; however, it does not mean that the character ë has an umlaut. The names chosen for HTML entities are unfortunate; the people who made these decisions lacked linguistic knowledge.

The symbol ’ can be used as a closing quotation mark; however, it is not a quotation mark when it appears in Saxon Genitive. --Yecril (talk) 16:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Style conversions

Because of disagreements that have arisen in the past, Wikipedia has a general principle for stylistic changes in articles: if an article has an established style, this should not be changed unilaterally to a different style without very strong agreement to do so (WP:MOS#Consistency). Areas where this has come up include American/British spelling , the use of binary SI units, and different styles of reference formatting . Your changes in math formatting, spelling of possessives, and curly apostrophes fit into this general principle. If wide agreement can be obtained for the changes, then by all means make them, but don't change articles without getting that agreement first. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Does that mean that when an article is ugly or unreadable (e.g. the browser renders Re
(s)), or ⟨x, y⟩ (character substitution squares), it must remain so until all other articles are converted, i.e. forever? --Yecril (talk) 16:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Adding non-breaking spaces will rarely be controversial. Unicode issues are more difficult (that is, more likely to draw complaints) and probably worth discussion before you make any large-scale changes. There's no good agreement, at the moment, on how to represent $\langle x\rangle$ using HTML/wiki markup. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Sadly, non-breaking spaces will not help in this case, whereas my {{math}} does the trick (also for ⟨⟩, which is the only acceptable way of representing these characters in HTML). --Yecril (talk) 17:00, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

There are three Unicode left angle brackets: U+2329 (〈), U+27E8 (⟨), and U+3008 (〈). If your concern is browsers breaking lines in expressions like "Re(x)", that's a problem that will get solved when we someday switch to MathML. I thought your concern was for spaced expressions.

The underlying motivation for the rule not to change styles is that different people often disagree about them, and so rather than having the styles switch from one format to another we just leave things as they are unless there's strong agreement that a change is worthwhile. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I double checked my browser, and it does not wrap between "Re" and a left parenthesis. [7] Maybe some other browsers do; I'm not an expert on browser quirks. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I was alluding to the fact that ⟨ is in the HTML character set; the others are not. Also, using ’ is not a Unicode issue because ’ is in the HTML character set.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (7) sees an opening parenthesis as an invitation to break the line. Note also that CSS word-spacing will not affect non-breaking spaces, which is bad, especially in formulas where it is straightforward to use condensed layout because the "words" are very short.

You can observe that I am always ready to revert when I receive a substantial complaint about something that stopped working because of a recent change. Such messages are important to me because I am unable to see what other people see (of course). Opposing any change solely because of what mythical "other people" might think is equivalent to using weasel words. --Yecril (talk) 17:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

My fundamental point is that, even if you think your style changes are for the better, you still should not make style changes without widespread agreement. This is almost the opposite of the practice regarding content changes, where editors are encouraged to edit boldly. The way that style disputes typically go, everyone thinks their changes are for the better, and in many cases there is no way to objectively resolve the disagreement.

Debate on the apostrophes/quotes issue has been going on for years, I believe. I try not to follow it very closely. Apparently nobody before now found a need to clarify that the language on curly right single quotes also applies to apostrophes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Or to clarify that the languague on curly right single quotes does not apply to apostrophes as required by spelling manuals, including Wikipedia itself. As far as I can understand, the present status quo is a legacy from the times when MediaWiki was unable to handle correct spelling properly.

You can objectively determine the quality of presentation by comparing screen shots. --Yecril (talk) 18:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Screen shots are only one goal; ease of searching and ease of editing are frequently mentioned as additional goals. My impression is that the opinion that a particular editor takes regarding curly quotes depends greatly on how much weight the editor gives each of those factors, and how the editor interprets each of them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I do not have an opinion on curly quotation marks; I do not consider using straight quotes any less correct than using hyphen-minus for hyphen and I would not vociferate on them.

Since Wikipedia is write-one-read-many, ease of editing should have weight 1 and ease of reading should have weight 1000. Ease of searching depends mainly on the server side, I do not have much to say about that now except that serious issues should be fixed. --Yecril (talk) 19:15, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Although you might argue that fancier quotes are more aesthetically pleasing, I don't think they affect the actual ease of reading. Most internet users will be very familiar with reading straight quotes. I would be surprised if there was a study showing that straight quotes lower either reading speed or reading comprehension in any significant way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I am not going to argue about quotation marks at all. --Yecril (talk) 20:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Everything I say about quotes I am also saying about apostrophes, because typographically I don't maintain any distinction between them. Even TeX, which was designed explicitly to enable what Knuth thought was beautiful typesetting, has no distinction between single right quotes and apostrophes. And Unicode, which was designed to have different code points whenever symbols could be expected to differ, uses the same code point for single right quotes and curly apostrophes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

It is not important that curly apostrophes are more aesthetically pleasing. It is a matter of taste, and computers have their limitations. What bothers me is that using straight apostrophes for Saxon Genitive is semantically incorrect, as a way of spelling.

However, as a side note, it is worth remarking that I have been criticised for advocating dx or a⁄b because the books typeset it otherwise — and yet the same people systematically and proudly ignore the typographic tradition with respect to quotation marks. --Yecril (talk) 21:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I've never encountered the viewpoint that (1) the choice between straight and curved apostrophes is a matter of spelling, per se, or (2) that there is any semantic difference between the two. Can you point me at anything I can read about that argument?

As for d/dx, the problem is that different books typeset it different ways; it's another unresolvable style disagreement. (The more fundamental problem there is that if you gather 20 mathematicians and ask them what the d in

$\int _{[0,1]}f(x)\,dx\,$

actually represents, they will disagree with each other.)— Carl (CBM · talk) 21:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, here the story goes. About 2003 I came to Wikipedia to get some information about the proper character to use for Saxon genitive. I was convinced that the straight apostrophe is for SG and the curly quotation marks are for quotes. I was very upset because they were often converted to question marks in e-mail messages, reaching my place as it?ses and doesn?ts, making me ask why they were there in the first place, as I had considered them incorrect from the very beginning. To my greatest astonishment, I learned that ’ is recommended for SG as well!

However, your question made me revisit the article and there is no such suggestion any more, except a rather weak one at apostrophe#Unicode. Indeed, the article on Saxon genitive is inconsistent now. I think WP:MOS should be consistent with external standards — but it is a smaller issue than Wikipedia Project contradicting Wikipedia content.

If you ask me, d is a meta-operator that takes a symbol and returns an infinitesimal differential of the variable, or a full differential of an expression containing several variables. Accordingly, I recommend ∫¹
₀f(x) dx.

And I am very much interested in an answer to the question why have Riemann hypothesis but Skewes’s number in English. --Yecril (talk) 22:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Who understands English? If you look for consistency inEnglish usage you'll always be disappointed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Although probably neither I nor anyone else can answer Yecril's question, we should note that in those cases where the possessive form is not use, one uses the definite article. Thus: "the Riemann hypothesis", with "the", and, e.g. "Pascal's theorem", without "the". Michael Hardy (talk) 19:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that you made another math style conversion last night. I really wish you would stop making such unilateral changes until you can find some consensus for the new formatting method. It would help if you made a brief but thorough list of the advantages that you see in your new format, so that other people can assess them and come to their own decision. I'm going to ask about the new format at WT:WPM. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)