A tag for translated posts that could benefit from HTML/CSS markup

I've sometimes ran into situations where I've completely functionally translated a post, but still felt like they could use some HTML/CSS wizardry to help spice them up.

In these situations, it doesn't feel right to leave said posts with the translation_request tag, nor does it quite feel right to mark them as translated either, especially if they're posts that could get a lot of mileage from some fancy markup.

One example might be the two notes in post #3143070. Right now it's plain-jane, but functional enough to be tagged with translated in my eyes. However, users would probably appreciate it if it was stylized to match the text behind it, as it would convey some extra nuance. And the right-most note might not hurt to have a font that looks like messy handwriting, as opposed to just using italics like it does now.

Another example, albeit theoretical, might be the sign in the middle of post #2696093, and my weak-sauce translation of it.

Any thoughts on the possibility of having a tag to signify a markup request for notes (or whether this is even an issue at all)? I'd certainly find it useful to be able to know which posts I should revisit someday and stylize properly.

Thanks.

The problem I see with above is that the most likely result will be that the such a tag would become extremely bloated and improperly used. This is because if you ask a user whether they want less or more, they'll almost always pick more, especially uploaders and their own uploads.

The other problem is that it's subjective, I mean, when has it been "jazzed up enough" to justify removing such a tag. It'd be like asking artists when they think they're finished with a drawing, which would most likely be never given the number of revisions some of them seem to have.

However, if you want something to use as a sort-of-reminder for yourself, then why not use favorite groups? Just name it something like "Going to stylize" or something, and add posts that you want to come back to later.

BrokenEagle98 said:

The other problem is that it's subjective, I mean, when has it been "jazzed up enough" to justify removing such a tag.

In practice, I can see it being used for notes with plain editing (i.e. only bold / font size) which requires alternate font / coloring done to it. So long as there's some css done on it to match the original text, then it should be considered "jazzed up enough". Any other improvements should be considered "extra" and not part of the purpose of the hypothetical tag.

I assume the problem here is a matter of css skill, so setting favorite group probably won't help. I mean, not unless this is somehow considered easy.

What I do wonder though, is whether there would be any HTML/CSS wizards roaming in danbooru.

Vezral said:

In practice, I can see it being used for notes with plain editing (i.e. only bold / font size) which requires alternate font / coloring done to it. So long as there's some css done on it to match the original text, then it should be considered "jazzed up enough".

Please note that “alternate font” rarely works out because it’s not possible to include external fonts in notes. Any font you choose will have to be installed locally and few users actually have fancy extra fonts installed and there are pretty much no fancy fonts available across all systems. You might get lucky with some Windows default fonts (Comic Sans, Papyrus, cough), but users on Android/Linux or Mac/iOS won’t have those. Most translators/note editors don’t even set fallback fonts, so instead of some fancy font you get serif, which is pretty much Times New Roman and makes the note look worse than with no “fancy” styling at all. /petpeeve

I’m into CSS magic, but it usually doesn’t seem worth the trouble because it’s a huge waste of time and the original text styling can be seen through non-embedded notes. Fancy notes, especially with non-default font sizes, also tend to be unreadable for mobile users. While styling embedded notes can produce some nice results, embedding notes make things worse for most images.

kittey said: Stuff.

Aside from laziness on my part, I don't like adding CSS magic for mostly the same reasons you gave. And because, IMO, I find marking-up just makes things a bit of an eye-sore a lot of the time.

But, I still think this hypothetical tag might be useful because I think posts that'd really benefit from it (such as post #2539807) are more of an exceptional than the rule, perhaps making it have less of a problem with bloat than one might think. And maybe we could have a guideline too, stating that only translators should apply the tag (or even non-translators who are good at eyeballing translated posts and telling if it'd be useful, if such people even exist...).

One other possible circumstance I can think of is if doing a plain-jane translation on a newly-uploaded post in a pool/series that's usually marked-up a lot (which I try not to do if a series is helmed by a really active user), so that people wouldn't suffer the fate of not being able to read the post in the event that the person who usually does the job was away for an extended period of time. (But then again, they'd eventually come around to it anyway, so would this tag even help?).

And I also share Vezral's doubts on whether we would even have such wizards lurking around on the site, too. (Though, my pie-in-the-sky scenario would be that we do have such people here, and they'd happily use the DMail / @mention system to show their conjuration to a translator...).

Well, those are my half-baked thoughts, for now.

Vezral said:

I mean, not unless this is somehow considered easy.

Yes... yes I do consider that easy, especially if you remove all of the vestigial junk that hasn't been used in web browsers for several years now [1].

So the following...

<div style ="color:#6D121B; padding:4px; margin:-4px; background: #F5EAB4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(-45deg,  #F5EAB4 28%, #EACD6F 35%); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(-45deg,  #F5EAB4 28%,#EACD6F 35%); background: linear-gradient(135deg,  #F5EAB4 28%,#EACD6F 35%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#F5EAB4', endColorstr='#EACD6F',GradientType=1 )"><i>Under Construction</i></div>

...should really be the following....

<div style ="color:#6D121B; padding:4px; margin:-4px; background: linear-gradient(135deg,  #F5EAB4 28%,#EACD6F 35%)"><i>Under Construction</i></div>

I've often thought about going through and fixing all of those, but they really don't cause any harm besides obfuscating what's actually going on and making them more complex for beginners.

kittey said:

Please note that “alternate font” rarely works out because it’s not possible to include external fonts in notes. Any font you choose will have to be installed locally and few users actually have fancy extra fonts installed and there are pretty much no fancy fonts available across all systems. You might get lucky with some Windows default fonts (Comic Sans, Papyrus, cough), but users on Android/Linux or Mac/iOS won’t have those.

Exactly, and I've often thought that it would be nice to have site support for some fonts, which could be accomplished by using the CSS @font-face rule [2].

My number one font for inclusion would be Comic Sans MS, but some others that have been highly used include Cambria, Arial, Rockwell, Corbel, Papyrus, Georgia, Impact, Optima, Century Gothic, Candara, Verdana, and Calibri. Also I don't know if it can be done with @font-face, but maybe also support the base font families of serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, and monospace.

References

[1] https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/func_linear-gradient.asp
[2] https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_font-face_rule.asp

Other information links

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face
• https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/using-font-face/

BrokenEagle98 said:

My number one font for inclusion would be Comic Sans MS, but some others that have been highly used include Cambria, Arial, Rockwell, Corbel, Papyrus, Georgia, Impact, Optima, Century Gothic, Candara, Verdana, and Calibri.

Eh, I guess we could discuss which fonts to make available if it’s going to be implemented. There are many nicer comic fonts than the much-bashed Comic Sans MS (I really like the free Komika font family). I also doubt we need Arial, Verdana and Calibri. sans-serif will probably do the job nicely.

Also I don't know if it can be done with @font-face, but maybe also support the base font families of serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, and monospace.

You might have expressed that confusingly, because those are fallbacks for font-family that work with every browser and I don’t see what kind of support Danbooru would have to add for those besides adding them at the end of every @font-face’s font-family property.

kittey said:

You might have expressed that confusingly, because those are fallbacks for font-family that work with every browser and I don’t see what kind of support Danbooru would have to add for those besides adding them at the end of every @font-face’s font-family property.

I should have expressed my concern more clearly then. Many/most users use those font-family base values as a shortcut, especially cursive as a shortcut for Comic Sans MS. However on most phones cursive comes out looking like a radically different cursive font like Script. So instead of that, have something that specifies a default value for all of those base families that isn't too wild and won't conflict too much between desktops and phones.