Help:Help page footer templates

Template:H:h This page is under development as are the help page footer templates described. Please help us improve these templates and this help page, discussing them in the discussion page.

At the moment this page is shown in categories used for other languages, because it includes various H:f examples for these languages. Please tolerate this oddity while this page is not yet translated into the affected language(s).

Introduction

{{h:f|enname=pagename in English }} is at the bottom of many help pages and refers to Template:h:f. On Meta, due to the variable {{SUBJECTSPACE}}, it is language dependent and calls the language specific template named like Template:h:f Help, Template:h:f NL Help, or Template:H:f Aiuto. For some languages this construction is not used yet, and a template with a name that differs from this pattern is called. Anyway, the template produces a box at the bottom.

On English pages the variable PAGENAME could have been used instead of parameter enname, but this is for convenient copying to pages on the same subject in other languages. (See below for the explanation of the parameter.)

Help pages on Meta may (and should) have this template in the form shown above and discussed below at the bottom as footer template. For discussion on other older possibilities and instruction on how to make a transition see below.

What Template:h:f does is just to call (include) another template depending on the language. This language specific template has a name like Template:h:f Help or Template:h:f Aiuto. These names are created by adding after the Template:h:f a space and the name of the namespace of the help page in the specific language (this is done using the variable {{SUBJECTSPACE}}.

The Template:h:f passes to the language-specific template the parameter enname it received, and h:f puts langs below the result (see below, also note that the 'langs parameter is deprecated and will be abandoned)

How these language specific template are implemented is language specific. In the English and Italian version there is a list of links to the more important help page (in the same language) followed by a list of links to the alternative language version of the same page. This list, the one of the alternative language, is obtained using the method described below by the use of the parameter enname. Use of other old methods to pass the list of language alternative page is still supported at the moment (see below), but it will be soon discontinued. All editors are strongly encouraged to use the enname parameter to this purpose.

After you or someone else has already created an equivalent in your language of Template:h:f Help as described below, the recommended way to include the footer template is to include at the bottom of your page

{{h:f|langs=|enname=pagename in English}}

where in place of pagename in English you should put the name of the equivalent English page (with the namespace part Help: omitted). For example if you translate Help:Go button you will insert the following line:

{{h:f|enname=Go button}}

Please note that you must NOT translate the "Go button" in your languge.

Note: Until the transition is complete you should still insert a dummy parameter langs like in the following example:

{{h:f|langs=|enname=Go button}}

This paramenter allows old methods to continue to work. When the transition phase will be over the Template:h:f will be changed and the langs parameter will be no longer used.

When you save the page you will see at the bottom of the page a list of already present links to other languages. If your language is not already present (or if there is but the link is not correct) click on the +/- links to automatically edit the correct template. You have to insert the correct link to your language version in the template just opened. This change will automatically reflects on all pages of all language that use this method (you will may have to refresh the page to see the effect of this change)

How to create a language specific footer template

The first step is to figure out the name of the template (...)

Perhaps the easiest way to create a language-specific footer template, if one does not exist yet anywhere, is to copy another one that already exists, for example Template:h:f Help. You have to translate the English words and correct the link to the corresponding help page in your language. Some examples:

Template:H-langs:H:f Help

langs parameter deprecated

A parameter langs has been used for the interlanguage links, but unfortunately something like langs={{Go button}} does not work (it is not possible to include the content of another template in a parameter value), so no template could be used containing the list of interlanguage links.

For some versions of the first templateTemplate:Unclear there are still calls of that template that specify a non-empty value for langs; for those templates, this variable is not yet removed; it has been put at the end, so that the help page is rendered with a line of interlanguage links looking the same regardless of whether they are due to the value of langs or the contents of the second template.

For versions of the first template that still have the langs parameter, it is recommended to call it with "{{hcen|langs=}}", etc. and create and use the second template instead. When for a given language, no non-empty values of the langs parameter are used anymore, it can be removed from the version of the template for that language and "|langs=" can be removed from the template calls (but there is no hurry for that because on a template that does not use that parameter it has no effect).

Namespace not using langs anymore

This is the list of the namespace where it is been verified that the parameter langs is not more used

it Italian: [[Aiuto:Sommario|]] [1]

Maybe this section is outdated, and the old langs= is already replaced everywhere.

Template:H:f

For the Template:H:f Help (en) output see the end of this page.

Some of the following templates use customised versions of Template:Tim to provide an edit link. This is not strictly necessary, Template:Tim offers to use any link text on Meta, and of course Template:ed could be translated on projects with a single language. Here at Meta with its multilanguage Babel the following versions of this template are known: Template:H-langs:ed

Interlanguage links

For each help subject there is a template with links to the master pages of the help pages in all languages about that subject. Typically the master page is on Meta, but if not, the link shown is to the master page elsewhere, often on the Wikipedia for the language concerned. Do not use newlines in the wikitext of the templates: although they do not show up on the template page, they break lists, including those below.

The templates are shown below, with the value of the parameter enname.