Template talk:LanguageExisting

Upper case checking?

WIKImaniac added upper case namespace checking by the reason "matching on namespace using uppercase (e.g. DE, RU, IT, ... instead of de, ru, it, ...)", but do they really need to be checked by upper case? I don't think so! Because de, nl, es, it and fr look automatically converted to upper cases. (I don't know why.)

For example, checking JOSM. • Deutsch • Nederlands • español • français • italiano • русский

For not exist, checking mkgmap exist exist exist exist • italiano exist

ru is not converted, however, I find just one RU: page, RU:Marine Mapping. By just moving it to Ru: , is the checking not needed? --Nazotoko 04:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

DE, NL, ES, IT and FR are automatically converted to uppercase as they have been defined as custom namespaces in this wiki as those names (click on search and you can filter by those namespaces). Other languages that we call namespaces (e.g. ru:) are really just prefixed pages in the main namespace (so the page name gets capitalised to Ru: if you type it in as lower case, but stays as RU: if you type it in as upper case). It's also why we have to use {{Template:De:Languages/Interface}} but only (currently) need {{Fi:Languages/Interface}} as without the Template the first one looks for the page Languages/Interface in the DE namespace. I am assuming the checks were added to cope with those pages where people have created them with two capital letters and as you say they could probably be moved and redirects set up. I did wonder whether all CZ: pages should be moved to Cs: (and redirects created) as they are the only pages I've seen so far where the prefix doesn't seem to match the ISO language code? --EdLoach 21:57, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The discussion were written when I removed the upper-case checking which WIKImaniac had added. I wanted to keep the WIKImaniac's code, but I could not. I had to reduce the count of #ifexist under 100, so I removed it with writing this discussion. When the count becomes lager than 100, the processing time will increase to 3 seconds, because server stops to make cache and categorizes the pages using the template to Category:Pages_with_too_many_expensive_parser_function_calls. Since WIKImaniac is one of the authors of Template:Languages, I don't feel the upper case checking is really nonsense. About those defined namespaces, I have not known the De: template must be added "Template:" at the top, but Deutsche people have never complained it at all. Template:Languages cannot be designed to use in Category, Template and User namespaces from the first version. I don't feel the demands, either. About CZ and Cz namespace, I think they lost some benefits because the namespace is not ISO code. Some pages in this wiki are read by softwares which are not web browsers. (ex. Kosmos, Potlatch, ...) Those softwares recognize the languages by the ISO code. I don't know if cz namespace works well or not. If it doesn't work, we should suggest to move cz to cs, but should not enforce it. --Nazotoko 02:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)