Talk:List of Provosts of Trinity College Dublin/Archive 1

link from Rev Richard MacDonnell (1852 -1867) to page on Richard (Graves) MacDonnell is incorrect

link fron Provost Rev Richard MacDonnell (1852 -1867) to separate page on Richard (Graves)MacDonnell is incorrect because it is not about him, it is his son. It is misleading - Unless you want to keep the link BUT highlight up front that it is not the Provost Richard, but his son Richard, the Governor.

Ian Macdonnell. Melbourne. (imacdonn@bigpond.net.au)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.181.211.45 (talk) 04:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC) 

Table style

There should be no forced widths in the table. See List of Presidents of the United States as an example. Snappy (talk) 23:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

From my archive, courtesy of User:BrownHairedGirl:

"The immediate reason I removed the fixed width was that it was causing some of the cells to wrap on displays where there was plenty of room to display the cells unwrapped. Apart from looking ugly, this makes the table harder to read, because it gets unnecessarily spread out over too many lines, and in some cases it means that the whole table ceases to be visible on screen.

The problem is that while I'm sure the constrained widths looked fine on your screen, readers use many different permutations of screen size and font size.

There are two underlying issues here: whether to align, and if so how.

Taking the "how" question first, it is nearly always a bad idea to align text-based tables in measures of pixels. The relationship of pixels to character size is highly variable, and produces very different effects on difft browsers. For example, one of my computers has a 17-inch CRT monitor at 1280*1024 pixels; it's a rather worn display, so for legibility the font size is set quite high, about 50% higher than on another setup, an old 14-inch monitor at 640*480 pixels, where the font size is set very low so that stuff actually fits on-screen. There are many other permutations out there, so many that few assumptions can be made about the relationship of pixels to characters. Any attempt to constrain text layout that way may work if the font size and face are strapped down, but that assumes that the reader is using a particular font (which may not be available on their system) and that they have not overridden the size (there are many reasons why they may do so)

There are two methods of specifying widths which are more portable: by setting a percentage of the screen, or by using ems, and both of those have limitations.

If a table or column width is set using ems, then if it set generously someone using a big font on a small screen will find that the table is too wide for their screen, requiring horizontal scrolling, which is a real nuisance. If the width is set narrowly then some other users will find the text being wrapped even though the screen is big enough for it all to fit.

The only way that I can see of avoiding either the table being too wide (causing horizontal scrolling) or too narrow (causing unnecessary wrapping of lines) is to set width="100%". That way nobody will be subjected to horizontal scrolling, and nobody will have lines wrapped unnecessarily. However, that will mean that in many cases the table will be full of whitespace, making it harder to read than if it is auto-sized.

Tables which auto-size to different widths may not be the prettiest solution, but they are better than the alternatives." Snappy (talk) 23:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

On which WP guideline/policy page(s) state that "There should be no forced widths in the table"? But in answer to your example about the list of US presidents, List of popes, List of Archbishops of Canterbury and List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom do use width in tables. -- Scrivener-uki (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Did you read any of the above? and you don't own the table. Snappy (talk) 00:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I never said I owned the table, just that I added it in the first place and until a consensus is reached the table remains. Who's now being obstinate. -- Scrivener-uki (talk) 00:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I repeat the question Snappy, On which WP guideline/policy page(s) state that "There should be no forced widths in the table"? -- Scrivener-uki (talk) 00:29, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Scrivener, I'm joining in here after Snappy posted a msg on my talk page.

It probably won't surprise you that I agree with snappy, since he is quoting my comments in a discussion at User talk:Snappy/Archive/Archive 001#Table_alignment ... but what does surprise me is that when Snappy posted a reasoned explanation of why fixed widths are not helpful, you didn't respond to any of the reasons set out. :(

So, if you do want to reach a consensus, please can you respond to the rationale set out for leaving the table fluid? Consensus isn't just a matter of saying "I like it", it's a product of a reasoned discussion, and I look forward to seeing your reasons for believing that fixed-width columns help the reader. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Scrivener-uki is acting like they own the table, please stop that. Table widths are not forbidden but they are not necessary as outlined above. In Scrivener-uki's version of the table the Name column is too twice the width of the longest name, there is no good reason for that kind of forced widths. Let the software decide not you! Also see WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and yes there are tables in wikipedia with column widths, but I will argue that they are ones that have not been updated yet. Snappy (talk) 00:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Snappy, there may well be some tables where fixed column widths would help, so although I don't actually recall encountering any on wikipedia I wouldn't rule them out if there is some special need for them. It may be that Scrivener-uki has some reason for believing that fixed widths help here, but I haven't seen it yet ... and as you rightly point out, it's hard to see how legibility is improved by forcing huge margins into the name column. That just makes it more difficult to for the eye to follow along the line. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is solved. For users with the screen resolution at 800*600 or 1024*768, the Tenure column was being wrapped. I have a small screen and is set at 1024*768 pixels. Obviously other users with a higher screen resolution wasn't a problem. Hopefully all will be happy with the table now. -- Scrivener-uki (talk) 22:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)