Template talk:LanguageBar

Floating the bar

Unless some wiki feature breaks it, you can replace

<div align="center"> 

with

<div style="margin:auto">  

to avoid using deprecated features. If we then use

<div style="margin:auto;clear:both">  

we should prevent anything wrapping with this bar. (Or we could use

 <br style="clear:both" />  

above and below.) The next step is to eliminate the table entirely and use "float:left" for each cell. You can see the gory details in Template:FourUp where padding and margins are used to make a nice display. The advantage to this is that if they down't fit in the screen width, the elements in the bar will wrap rather than force a horizontal scroll. M. Lucretius Agricola 10:01, 9 April 2006 (CDT)

Latin and English

The Lex Cornelia de Linguis Publicis (adopted 27 Feb 2002) states that:

I. Due to the increasingly inter macronational nature of the Citizenship of Nova Roma, it has become necessary for the official language policy of the Republic to be defined, in such a way that acknowledges our historical antecedents, practical concerns, and the sensibilities of all of our Citizens. To that end, this Lex Cornelia de Linguis Publicis is adopted.

II. Latin is hereby adopted as the official ceremonial language of Nova Roma. As such, it shall be used in rites conducted by the curule magistrates and appointed priests of Nova Roma on behalf of the entire nation, as well as other circumstances where it may be deemed appropriate.

III. English is hereby adopted as the business language of Nova Roma's central government. As such, it shall be used in official communications from and day-to-day business conducted by the central government (defined for purposes of this proviso as the Senate and non provincial magistrates). Other languages may be used in such communications where deemed appropriate, but an English translation must accompany such communications.

This makes it absolutely clear that there are two languages that have a higher status than all others in Nova Roma, and they are Latin, the glorious language of our forefathers, and English, the most widely spoken language both inside of Nova Roma and outside. It is my firm conviction that it is absolutely in line both with the letter and the spirit of the Lex Cornelia de Linguis Publicis to divide the language bar into two: a primary, shorter one, above, including Latin and English, in this order and in some form of highlighted type (bold); and a secondary, longer one, below, including all other languages that may be considered necessary.

Now regarding those other languages, the Lex Cornelia de Linguis Publicis also has something very clear to say:

IV. In order to accommodate the Needs of Citizens who do not speak English, or who speak English as a Second Language, and in accordance with section IV 9 of the Constitution the Decuriae Interpretes is established.

...

4. Interpretes for the five non-English and Latin Languages most widely spoken in Nova Roma are hereby established. Until such time as the Senate determines which languages are most widely spoken, The Interpretes will provide translations of the French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish Languages.

5. The Language that the remaining four Interpretes shall provide shall be chosen by the Senate of Nova Roma.

This makes absolutely clear which are the other languages that are to be given a place in the secondary language bar, these are French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and four others that shall be chosen not by any given individual, but by the Senate of Nova Roma.

AGA 18:28, 4 July 2006 (CDT)

Until we need the space for more languages, why not keep the new order, but on just one line? As it stands now we are using up two lines of valuable screen space when only one is needed. M. Lucretius Agricola 03:56, 5 July 2006 (CDT)

I'm afraid I disagree. I think it is important to convey the spirit of the Lex Cornelia de Linguis Publicis that clearly gives two languages a higher standing than any others in the Republic. This couldn't be conveyed by putting them all in the same line. Also, the "loss" of a line (but one can easily scroll down) doesn't seem to me at least to be such a big problem in comparison. In any case, at the discussion section of the Main Page, I suggested another alternative, which is to put the languages in a separate box on the left hand side frame, as it is done in the non-English Wikipedias. Now, that would be a way to save space. AGA 11:38, 5 July 2006 (CDT)

I don't know enough about wiki internals to be able to do anything in the left navigation area; though static links would be easy, determining whether articles in each language existed and rendering the links appropriately is harder. For now, I think, we'll have to keep a language-switching widget within the article text itself.

I do know this, if it helps a little, that if you change stylesheets you get different navigational layouts. Some things disappear, others move. The disappearing, though, could simply be the "display" attribute being set off.M. Lucretius Agricola 17:57, 5 July 2006 (CDT)

I've reformatted the language bar again, as the two-level layout was unattractive; now, Latin is at far left, with a gap between it and the vernaculars. Marcus Octavius Germanicus^(t) 12:06, 5 July 2006 (CDT)

How about another gap between English and the other vernaculars? Perhaps this would satisfy friend Avitus' desire to distinguish the two official languages from all others.M. Lucretius Agricola 17:57, 5 July 2006 (CDT)

I've done that, putting English on the extreme right for the sake of symmetry. For my money this gets fairly close to the spirit of the lex Cornelia. Cordus 09:39, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

Esperanto

I'm not sure that including Esperanto really gives us very much. It is not very widely used outside of the sphere of the Romance languages, and we have those covered pretty well. If we are going for completeness, a good case could be made for Finnish. That would probably serve more people. (5 million people at least speak Finnish. 2 million people at most speak Esperanto.) Of course, if we have an Esperanto translator eager and waiting, then by all means we should go ahead.

I know that Esperanto is promoted as a "universal" language, but it is only seen as such by Europeans. For people who do not use the Latin alphabet or do not speak a Romance language it is just another foreign language. It may have simpler syntax than English, but English syntax has not prevented English from becoming the most studied language in the world. M. Lucretius Agricola 16:59, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

I think its inclusion should wait until we have a translator appointed; there's no sense in adding lots of links to pages that will never exist. Marcus Octavius Germanicus^(t) 17:18, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

I agree that it is preposterous to add Esperanto, especially in the context of Nova Roma. We have our own Roman, international language already, and that is of course Latin. Please see above for a discussion of the languages that should appear in the language bars AGA