Template talk:Track listing/Archive 17

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Too many examples

Why on earth would anyone need 120 examples of each entry – ridiculous. Jodosma (talk) 20:21, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

If the difference between, say, the vinyl and CD version of an album is just an extra track or two, I agree that you only need to have one track listing and add the bonus tracks with a note as to which version they appear on. But for something like Greatest Hits, I'm not sure what the answer is. Richard3120 (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Holy hyperbole Batman, I count four examples combined. Where do you get 120? The current examples are varied and a good cross-section. I don't think they need reduction, but possibly replacement. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:24, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: Greatest Hits was my example, because I didn't know which article(s) Jodosma was referring to. Richard3120 (talk) 21:07, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm referring to the template, which allows for a possible 120 tracks on a single album. Greatest Hits calls the template 7 times, and the highest number for any one title is title20 in the 2004 U.S. edition. I cannot imagine that any one album, whether on disc or vinyl would consist of 120 tracks. Jodosma (talk) 09:05, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

No; the Red Book specifies 99 max for a compact disc. I know of only one that utilises that: Second Coming (The Stone Roses album) has 13 proper tracks and 86 silent tracks (each 4 seconds long) for a total of 99, and our article uses the parameters |title90=secret track |length90=6:26 |note90=Brown, Mounfield, Squire, Wren to accommodate the 13th non-silent track. It's conceivable that a vinyl record might have 100 tracks on one side, if each track is no more than 18 seconds long - and the pressing plant has a decent cutting head. Many songs by Napalm Death are less than 18 seconds - ND compilation anyone? --Redrose64 (talk) 09:27, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

'nough said I suppose. Jodosma (talk) 14:21, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

This can be used for vinyl, etc., so the CD limit is irrelevant. I've had several vinyl and tape albums with 100+ tracks, but they were all speciality recordings, e.g. of sound effects, percussion samples, short linguistic recordings, etc. I'm not sure any album with more than 100 tracks is notable, but it is possible one could be, and the template supporting that many appears to be harmless.

Since few albums contain 30 or more tracks, we could probably wrap everything from 30 onward in a single {{#if:{{{title30|}}}|[the rest of the cases here]|}} to bypass the majority of the wasted parser activity (or do one of those at every 10, or whatever). That assumes that wrapping this code in an if wouldn't necessitate an insane amount of escaping of the | character due to the way it is operator-overloaded as both an if-then parsing marker and a table cell start point; if I recall the code correctly, that might actually be the case. Makes me wonder if breaking this up into subtemplates or something might be the solution.

I also note that the sandbox (before I re-used it to test suppression of the length column) was calling a Lua module, so someone may already have a mostly-working Lua version of this template, which would eliminate the aforementioned | problem (among other issues). The entire process of generating a row in response to the presence of a |titleN= value would be a very short function, without all this repeated code, and without an arbitrary limit like 120 or 99 or 30 or whatever.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:05, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Testing for {{{title30|}}} would break Second Coming (The Stone Roses album) which has |title90=secret track but does not use |title30=. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Edit request

Two requests:

1) It would be good to have a parameter that hides the length column, for use on track listings where the length is unknown (usually because it's an old collectors item that none of the editors have access to). McLerristarr | Mclay1 23:54, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

2) In this line:

    | All lyrics written by {{{all_lyrics}}}{{#if: {{{all_music|}}}|,|.}} 

Replace the comma with a semi-colon, so that the resulting line appears as:

All lyrics written by X; all music composed by Y.

This is both grammatically more correct and aides visually if the user replaces "X" with a phrase that contains a comma. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:17, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Removing a column would be not-trivial, so I'll leave the TER up and see if anyone else wants to take that on. I've otherwise implemented the semi-colon. --Izno (talk) 13:41, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I amended it, to avoid effects like "All lyrics written by John Lyric

 all music composed by Jane Music."

which should of course be "All lyrics written by John Lyric; all music composed by Jane Music." --Redrose64 (talk) 09:30, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@Mclay1, Izno, and Redrose64: See if {{Track listing/sandbox|lengthno=y|data parameters here}} will do what you want. I makes the length column empty, with no visible heading. I tried suppressing the column entirely, by wrapping each cell in it in an if and escaping the cell's leading | as {{!}} (and not generating the <th>...</th> for it), but that didn't work for some reason, and I've had too long a day to debug it any further. The potentially good thing about this approach is that any WP:REUSE of these track listings that depends upon the number of columns being consistent (e.g. because a script is doing something with them, like converting their values into CSV or whatever) should not get bollixed; the length column still exists, it's just void. We could actually even retain the "Length" heading label and make it display:none if that would be useful as metadata. A table purist, however, may object to including a null column in this way.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

That sounds perfect. By keeping the empty column, the columns of multiple consecutive track listings on a page will still be aligned and the same width. McLerristarr | Mclay1 10:11, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

That's also how it should be done for the other columns if it isn't already. It would look more consistent if all the columns always stayed the same relative width. (The current widths, however, are not good, as noted in previous conversations.) McLerristarr | Mclay1 23:37, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I've tested the sandbox version, and it works, but it makes the colour of the column heading line appear slightly shorter than the rest of the table. No idea why. McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:58, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 11 September 2016

Could someone please change (The White Album) to ("the White Album"), or just (the White Album), under Examples? This is not only correct, as most sources have it, but also consistent with how we style the alt/informal name at The Beatles, The Beatles (album) and many song and other related articles. Not only that, but the correct/non-italicised treatment is even an example cited in the Manual of Style (at WP:THECAPS). Many thanks.

JG66 (talk) 08:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

@JG66: Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. (Note that only the template is protected, not the documentation page) - Evad37 [talk] 08:54, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

@Evad37: Ah, that was incredibly silly of me … I've gone ahead and made the change. Cheers, JG66 (talk) 09:15, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Edit request, 12 September 2016

Can we change "All songs written and composed by" to "All tracks written by"? That latter is the usual way it's written on Wikipedia when not using this template. The "and composed" part is redundant, and removing it plus changing "songs" to "tracks" makes the sentence make sense for tracks that aren't songs, e.g. spoken poems or comedy bits. McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:08, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I support the change of "songs" to "tracks", and agree that composed is somewhat redundant, but in today's, written implies lyrics while composition implies music. If you were to suggest "All lyrics and music written by", that would be the best option. I would also suggest that we make a separate parameter for a reference so that it can be appended to the period. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:34, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

@Mclay1 and Walter Görlitz: Sorry it became a bit unclear exactly what the change should be after Walter Görlitz's followup. May you ping Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums about this and get the wording right before re-opening this? Thanks. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 14:59, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

The change is still to change "All songs written and composed by" to "All tracks written by". I will put forward a discussion for the other changes. Sorry for the confusion. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:09, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Ahh all right. Performed immediate request. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 15:37, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:52, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: To me, saying a song was "written by" someone would imply that they composed the music and wrote any lyrics. That makes them a "songwriter". Composing music is also called writing music. If the writer just wrote the lyrics (as a lyricist) or the music (as a composer), that would be specified. There are parameters for being more specific. When using the general "All tracks written by" parameter, I don't think anyone would be confused and wonder who composed the music. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:20, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm on the same page as you in that matter, but MTV and Apple are not, and they seem to have more influence than I do. Walter Görlitz (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

generator?

Is there a generator or a tool to make editing tracklists faster? thanks --Jennica^Talk 10:33, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion

For tracks that are split into separate movements, suck as those in F♯ A♯ ∞#Track_listing, it would be helpful to place an indicator of where each individual movement starts. This would be the sum of the lengths of all previous movements in the track. Walrus068 (talk) 17:10, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

all_lyrics field output in wrong place?

If someone fills out both the all_lyrics field and the headline field the displayed info appears above the headline. This can be confusing if two track lists are used one immediately above the other, forcing the creator of these track lists to use a sub-heading instead of a headline, e.g. as can be seen in Unnale Unnale#Soundtrack Can a change be made to make the headline info appear above the all_lyrics info in the reader's view? Having looked at the source it seems that it would be quite a small change. Jodosma (talk) 11:08, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I placed this on the talk page over a week ago with no response yet so I'm suggesting it again using the edit request facility. I don't know how the change should be done so I leave that to someone who is familiar with the coding. My suggestion is as follows:

If someone fills out both the all_lyrics field and the headline field the displayed info appears above the headline. This can be confusing if two track lists are used one immediately above the other, forcing the creator of these track lists to use a sub-heading instead of a headline, e.g. as can be seen in Unnale Unnale#Soundtrack Can a change be made to make the headline info appear above the all_lyrics info in the reader's view? Having looked at the source it seems that it would be quite a small change. Jodosma (talk) 12:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC) Jodosma (talk) 12:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Note: Sandboxed (diff). Places headline, followed by any all-written-by lines, inside a caption. As an extra bonus, putting the headline in a caption rather than in an extra row at the top may allow this table to be sortable. My edit changes the show/hide toggle's placement, though. See testcases. Will wait a few days to sync, in case someone else has a better way of doing this. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 05:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

That's an abuse of the caption element, which exists only for providing captions that summarize table contents. Doing it that way would be a serious WP:ACCESSIBILITY problem. Instead, I've done it by simply moving the |all_whatever= output to underneath the table proper, instead of above it. I also fixed its horizontal alignment to match the indentation of the rest of the table.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:21, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

You're right, the all-written-by information probably doesn't belong in a caption, but the headline probably does. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 06:24, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

It could be used as a caption or header (<th>...</th>). It presently seems to be a header, but I have no objection to trying it the caption way, since the content of that parameter is an encapsulation of the nature of the entire table in question. I'm done 'boxing with that code, since I was just here to fix the stacked display problem of injecting the |all_whatever= output at the top of the template. I also adjusted the vertical spacing so that it's consistent when two or more are stacked, whether or not one of those parameters are used.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:29, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
PS: I updated the article mentioned above to use the new code.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:32, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish and Matt Fitzpatrick: Thanks guys; I think there's still a slight hitch though. If the all_lyrics field is filled and collapsed=yes is selected the all_lyrics info is displayed even when the show button has not been pressed. Is it possible to hide the all_lyrics info so that it only appears when the show button is pressed? Jodosma (talk) 19:40, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Good catch. It will have to be re-coded as a table cell to do that. My tinkering time for the week is over, so Matt or someone else will need to handle it. And the current output is certainly no worse than the original (it was still outside the table, just above it rather than below), so this would seem to be non-urgent.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to voice my opinion and say the "written by" looked better above the Track listing. --Jennica✿ / ^talk 23:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

This has broken the appearance of many track listings. Look at the first example in the documentation. The song-writer credits are now appearing between the side one and side two tables. Far more track listings worked better how it was before. OP's example is confusing and possibly unusual. If there is an issue with that one track listing, it would be much better to change that than the template. There was no problem with the overwhelming majority of articles, but now there is. I disagree that it didn't make sense to put the credits above the headline. The credits should apply to all the track listings used in the section, whereas the headings only apply to each individual track listing; for example, the countless track listings that include a separate track listing template for bonus tracks. If the credits do not apply to subsequent templates, each template can have its own credits. The system was perfect before. This was very poorly thought out and needs to be reverted. Otherwise, we'll have to fix thousands of articles. McLerristarr | Mclay1 01:52, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Also, I should point out that making the table sortable has also messed up the appearance. The No. and Length columns aren't wide enough, so the column heading and the sorting button overlap. McLerristarr | Mclay1 02:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Undone: This request has been undone. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Table sorting

As I previously mentioned, the sorting buttons overlapped with the column headings, which looked bad. Also, when the track listing is collapsed, the headings and sorting buttons don't hide. Sorting is a nice idea, but I'm not sure if it's possible to get it to work and look right. McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:18, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Lua version

I've just finished writing a Lua version of this template. The Lua version allows you to specify any number of tracks, not just 120, and avoids the performance problems mentioned in Template talk:Track listing/Archive 17#Too many examples. It also makes the |writing_credits=yes, |lyrics_credits=yes and |music_credits=yes parameters redundant, as the module just loops through all of the tracks to check if the appropriate headers need to be added. (At the moment, if any of those parameters are detected, the module adds the page to Category:Track listings with deprecated parameters, suppressible with |category=no.) Otherwise, the module is intended to be a one-to-one conversion of the template, although there are minor differences in whitespace and HTML tag formatting. You can test it out using {{track listing/sandbox}}, and there are test cases at Template:Track listing/testcases. Let me know if you have any questions about it, if you spot any issues, or if you have any general objections to me switching the template over to use the module. If everything is ok, I hope to switch the template over some time in the next few days. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The point though of |writing_credits=yes, |lyrics_credits=yes and |music_credits=yes is that a track listing can only have either |writing_credits=yes or |lyrics_credits=yes and/or |music_credits=yes. How would the new version deal with that? Looking at the test cases, the only difference I can notice in the output is that the new version does not have the tooltip for No. McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:11, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mclay1: If the module finds both a |writern= argument and one of |lyricsn= or |musicn=, then |writern= takes precedence. That is, it will ignore |lyricsn= and |musicn= arguments for all values of n, even if only one |writern= argument is specified. Good catch about the tooltip - that was added to the template after I originally wrote the module, and I forgot about it in my recent updates to the module code. I'll go and add it now. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:42, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The tooltip is now added. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:49, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I've switched the template to use Module:Track listing and updated the documentation. Let me know if you spot any strange behaviour. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:40, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: As it is now, many articles which use headline=Track listing display "Track listing" twice. Jodosma (talk) 22:35, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jodosma: Could you give me an example of where this is happening? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:17, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: You can see it in Music of Chrono Trigger but you have to look at the version just before my last edit there which you can see here in the section headed Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time. Jodosma (talk) 23:28, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jodosma: This should be fixed now. I had made a mistake in the logic for track listings that are collapsed and also have a |headline= parameter. Before the fix, the module showed both both the |headline= parameter and "Track listing" as header rows. Now the module will only show the |headline= parameter, as the template did originally. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:08, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Side one/two in one template?

See Easy Come, Easy Go (EP) for what I'm referencing. The track listing is dis-proportioned due to the infobox. This could be remedied by expanding the beginning of the article, of course but my question is why can't there be an option to have 2 sides of an album contained in one template? it could be done with making "headline2" as the divider. Just an idea.--Jennica✿ / ^talk 12:10, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I like the suggestion, but until we can get that, try using a {{clear}} before the track listing section. The only problem with that is, some albums had multiple sides. I have one recording that had six sides. I know of an eight-sided recording, and oddly enough, Monty Python had a three-sided recording (two grooves on the inverse side of the recording). Knowing where to insert the sides would also be difficult. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:37, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Spaces after track name

In the track listing output, there are two spaces that follow the track name. This is a minor inconvenience when copying the text. The other columns don't do it. I don't understand how modules work. I found a space at the end of a line in the code and deleted it, but that didn't work. I wonder if it has something to do with this line: :wikitext(' ') M.Clay1 (talk) 04:32, 28 January 2017 (UTC) Originally posted at Module talk:Track listing in these edits. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@Mclay1: I've fixed this in this edit. Thankfully, the output of modules doesn't depend on incidental whitespace as as it does in templates, which makes it much easier to add comments to the code and keep it nicely indented. The difference in whitespace was indeed caused by the :wikitext(' ') line (and the titleCell:wikitext(' ') line further down). This was a result of me copying the behaviour of Template:Track listing/Track too literally when I made the module. The spaces were a convenience in template code to avoid having to use an extra parser function, but with Lua such extra spaces are easily avoided. I have altered the logic in the module so that the first space is only added if there is a note after the track title. Let me know if you spot any problems with my change. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

"All tracks produced by"

Would it be possible to add a new parameter for "all tracks produced by"? Or would it be considered redundant since it's listed in the infobox and possibly the Personnel section? --Jennica✿ / ^talk 12:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Jennica You typically include a note above the track listing saying "All tracks written by" or co-written or produced. See Butterfly (Mariah Carey album).  — Calvin999 12:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)