Wiktionary:Schriften

This page is about writing systems. For information about programming in Lua, see Wiktionary:Scribunto.

Vörlaag:shortcut Vörlaag:policy-TT Scripts, or writing systems, are groups of characters.

Conventions

In Wiktionary, each script is recognized by a code and a name. The script codes are usually, but not always, named after the ISO 15924 codes (appendix, unicode.org).

Arab: Araabsche Schrift
Cyrl: Kyrillsche Schrift
Latn: Latiensche Schrift

Some script codes are named after a combination of script and code.

fa-Arab: Araabsche Schrift vun'e Pers'sche Spraak
ks-Arab: Araabsche Schriftt vun'e Kashmiri Spraak
ota-Arab:Araabsche Schrift vun'e Ottomansche Törksch Spraak
pa-Arab: Araabsche Schrift vun'e Punjabi Spraak
pjt-Latn: Latinsche Schrift vun'e Pitjantjatjara Spraak
ur-Arab: Araabsche Schrift vun'e Urdu Spraak

There are also some exceptions:

None: Meant for no formatting at all.
Latinx: Meant for characters in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block, including Old English letters.
polytonic: Meant for Ancient (as opposed to modern) Greek text.
musical: Meant for musical notation symbols.

Functions

These scripts serve a number of functions.

Organization

According to our CFI, Wiktionary, as a dictionary of all words in all languages, includes definitions for individual characters. This naturally involves which scripts they take part of; this knowledge also helps to organize them, by means of categorization and further explanation in appendices.

Scripts are defined in Modul:scripts/data.

Formatting

Additionally, pieces of text may be formatted according to each script, by HTML spans wrapped around them. In theory, browsers should handle formatting automatically, but in practice, they do not do a good job. Specifically, it may be done through these approaches, which have their advantages:

Applying an HTML class attribute, which can be used to format the text using a Wiktionary CSS style sheet, a registered editor's user style sheet, or a web browser's user style sheet.
Changing text-direction, font-family, font-size formatting to improve display in some or all web browsers. Formatting may be applied in an inline style attribute, or by referring to a class in the central style sheet at MediaWiki:Common.css.

Applying scripts to text

For the purpose of formatting text, there is the {{lang}} template, which serves as a wrapper for predetermined formatting conventions. It is a "base" template that applies only the language and script-specific formatting, but does not do anything else. It can be used in situations when it is desirable to write non-Latin text in general. This template takes a required language code parameter, and the text to be wrapped. The optional sc= parameter is used to override the autodetected script, if necessary. The face= parameter can be used to apply a specific style to the text, and can be term, head, bold, or empty for normal text. This allows italic and bold effects to be implemented in a script-specific way, with formatting that is appropriate for the conventions of that script, as well as to enhance readability.

Most other templates that show non-English text also have a language parameter, and a sc= parameter to override the autodetected script. This includes widely-used templates like {{l}}, {{term}}, {{t}}, {{head}} and {{form of}}:

{{lang|sh|sc=Cyrl|вријеме}}
{{term|вријеме|lang=sh|sc=Cyrl}}
{{head|sh|noun|sc=Cyrl|g=n}}
{{t|sh|sc=Cyrl|вријеме|n}}

Most templates, including all of those listed above, perform automatic detection of scripts. They will look at the text that was provided, and try to judge which of the language's scripts (specified in the Module:languages data submodules) is being used. Therefore, the sc= parameter is almost never needed. However, it is necessary to provide it if the text is written in a script that is not one of the recognised scripts for that language.

{{l|sh|vrijeme}} (the default script of Serbo-Croatian is "Latn"...)
{{l|sh|вријеме}} (...but the template will also recognise text written in any other possible scripts listed for Serbo-Croatian, which is Cyrillic in this case)
{{l|sh|β|sc=Grek}} (however, if you want to write Greek letters in Serbo-Croatian, you need to provide the script code, since Greek is not one of the normal scripts for Serbo-Croatian)

List of script codes

Hööftartikel: Wiktionary:List of scripts

Templates exist for all ISO 15924 codes, listed in Appendix:ISO 15924, except these: Ahom, Blis, Cirt, Egyh, Hatr, Hluw, Hrkt, Hung, Khoj, Kpel, Latg, Loma, Mahj, Modi, Moon, Mroo, Mult, Narb, Nbat, Nkgb, Nshu, Palm, Pauc, Perm, Roro, Sara, Sidd, Sind, Syre, Syrj, Syrn, Takr, Tirh, Visp, Wara, Wole, Zinh, Zxxx. (Templates also do not exist for reserved codes.)

Wiktionary also uses several codes which are not listed in ISO 15924. These are included in the central list of scripts, and include codes for varieties of Arabic (fa-Arab, etc), varieties of Latin (Latinx, pjt-Latn), polytonic Greek (polytonic) and some other things (such as xzh-Tibt), as well as codes for musical notation (musical) and the IPA (IPAchar). The code None functions like a script code in some ways.