Template talk:Oil on canvas

Malfunction

The show/hide feature is not working, also the "other languages" feature (no hyperlink). Could someone fix it? The tl is pretty much useless without the features. --Mattes (talk) 20:06, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Cannot reproduce this malfunction. Works for me (Konqueror, Firefox). A little more details about your setup please (Javascript disabled?). --Dschwen (talk) 20:10, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Hallo Dschwen,
Yes, Javascript is enabled. I work with the newest Firefox version. The creator show/hide feature is working fine (guess that's Java, too). I can live with it, but I was just wondering why there's no more button. I changed my display size too... Grüße, --Mattes (talk) 01:45, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I am also running into similar problems. How can you see the other languages when using the template. For example I tried to use it here File:Emilian Lazarescu - Sarja de cavalerie.jpg--Codrin.B (talk) 01:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Like many other templates, {{Oil on canvas}} uses {{LangSwitch}} rather than {{Multilingual description}}. Among other things, it avoids cluttering with boldened language names, and avoids adding fifty languages in the language selector while the only thing that can be translated in those languages is "oil on canvas". The idea was to provide descriptions people can understand, not to have a multilingual dictionary, but if you need those translations you can look inside the template. --Zolo (talk) 08:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes but {{LangSwitch}} doesn't seem to create a pull down box for different languages unless there are 4-5 of them? With two languages, no one can see the Romanian description for "oil on canvas". Unless I am missing something. 99% of the users will simply read the descriptions. They won't know to edit the image, discover the template, and then edit that template to find other language descriptions. --Codrin.B (talk) 14:22, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, here is what happens:

1. I added two more languages to File:Emilian Lazarescu - Sarja de cavalerie.jpg. Only the fourth language in the list triggered the creation of Meta:Language select pull down box. Until then, you can't switch languages and {{Oil on canvas}} description remains in English. If I switch to French in the pull down box which showed up after the fourth languages was added, the {{Oil on canvas}} description still remains in English. Both situations are problematic. Especially the one where I specifically changed the language.
2. I switched my preferences to use Romanian as a language. That was the only time where {{Oil on canvas}} description in Romanian showed up.

I don't know how {{LangSwitch}}, Meta:Language select and {{Oil on canvas}} interact, but something doesn't work.--Codrin.B (talk) 14:35, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

That is normal: the language given by a langSwitch changes only when you change your preferences. It does not work with Meta:Language select I agree that it is a bit confusing but fixing that would be tricky. It is normal that the language selector works only when you ass a fourth language. When there are only three languages, they are all displayed by default. --Zolo (talk) 16:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I see. Makes sense. But I would be very interested to see if we can fix the Meta:Language select to work. It would be much nicer and consistent. I dropped a note on the meta page. What is the right forum or person who can help?--Codrin.B (talk) 17:29, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I definitely agree that something should be done to make internationalization more consistent, but I do not know where it should be discussed. To me, the clearest solution would be to make the language selector change the language of the whole page, including interface (just like adding "uselang=XX" to the URL. As far as I know, Commons is currently the only Wikimedia wiki that has put a really substantial effort into content internationalization. Beside, MediaWiki developers seem to be weary of the potential downsides of user-language dependent contents. So I imagine that in the short term, it is more likely to be solved at Commons level than directly in MediaWiki software. --Zolo (talk) 09:49, 23 February 2012 (UTC)