Template talk:Iconframe

Tags instead of ordered params?

I see this isn't being used in a lot of places, so maybe we can change its signature w/out too much bother. Icons should have alt text (as in, the "alt" attribute for image tags), which means we could just put a forth parameter, but maybe the parameters should just be tags so the template could be extensible.--The Ultra-Mind (talk) 08:42, 26 March 2025 (MDT)

Icons shouldn't be linked

At least, I don't think they should be. It seems there's a standard out there that says these small icons that appear in articles shouldn't be linked, which would mean adding an empty "link=" tag to the image. That should be the default and maybe overridable if we change this template to use tags instead.--The Ultra-Mind (talk) 08:45, 26 March 2025 (MDT)

Mission

Sorry if this feels like over-explaining but I'm not sure who's reading it so I started at the beginning. Anyway, here we go:

History

I came to this wiki rather recently to update some info on Ultima Underworld. That game stores most of it's graphics within an alignment frame. So for example most inventory icons are a 16x16 graphic, and even if the actual graphic is 10x6 it is padded to 16x16 in such a way that it aligns properly when overlaid onto a 16x16 inventory slot image. When uploading images I debated whether to leave that alignment frame in place or not, ultimately deciding that if its purpose was to align with an inventory frame and that feature is not used here then there is no reason to keep it. I did however leave any unused space as transparent.

Another user informed me that that isn't how it's done here. Icons should be first scaled double size without any aspect correction, anti-aliasing, or other processing. I understand that, I don't fully agree with it, but I don't have a good alternative to it nor strong arguement against it, so I'll go with it.

I was also told that for uniformity images should be centered in a 40x40 box with a white background. This is something I can't agree with. Arbitraty formatting should not be baked into the images. But I don't want to make a stink about it until I can provide a sensable alternative so for my purposes I've been uploading images the raw way (w/o borders or backgrounds) and only providing the formatted one when necessary. See an example of the difference below:

	raw image: tight border, transparent background, sized to content
	formatted image: baked white background, baked margins, forced size of 40x40px

Purpose

The current process is:

1. save an image into a 40x40 white background preset, upload it is Image:MyIcon.png
2. reference it using:

   [[image:MyIcon.png|left|alt=indescribable]]

This presents the 40x40 image in a box to left of the paragraph.

The purpose of this template is to provide the exact same function without needing the baked-in formatting. The template should output an element functionally the same as the one above. That is, a 40x40 box with the actual image centered inside it. If the icon for whatever reason is bigger than 40x40 it should be scaled down proportionally.

Interface

For simplicity I like tight templates with unnamed parameters. Named parameters should be for bigger templates with lots of optional parameters. For the smaller templates, you know the parameters, you know they have to be there, giving them names just makes you type more. A comparison:

{{iconframe|image:myicon.png|left|the most amazing icon you've ever seen}}

This looks nice and tight, only a few characters typed that don't directly affect the output

{{iconframe
 |image=image:myicon.png
 |align=left
 |alt=the most amazing icon you've ever seen
}}

This is concise but looks like a lot of extra typing just to drop a simple image.

Based on my understanding, including the posts by Ultra-Mind above, I propose these parameters:

Name	Named?	Mandatory?	Notes
imagelink	unnamed	mandatory	without this what's the point? Default value?
alignment	unnamed	pseudo mandatory	could have a default value but I prefer to avoid the ambiguity
alttext	unnamed	pseudo mandatory	falls into not-mandatory-but-you're-a-dick-if-you-don't territory
link	named	optional	probably rarely used and defaults to blank as requested above
bg	named	optional	probably rarely used and defaults to transparent

--Sir Robin (talk) 16:43, 26 March 2025 (MDT)

Sorry, but I don't think I followed everything you were trying to say. I will say this though: our first duty should be to try to get images as close to the user experience as possible. That would disqualify a lot of the processing. I think you were saying that the raw data coming out of the binaries is a bit different from what the user actually experiences, so some cropping might be in order, but touching up and anti-aliasing sounds wrong.

I also don't picture that tight border looking quite right in an article. It's as if you've got it in a cardboard box, unlike the other sample which looks more like it's in a display case.

As for parameter names, I know that some templates already have "alt=" so I would call that one "alt=" instead of "alttext=". I don't recognize the other names, but poke around and see if you can find precedent.--The Ultra-Mind (talk) 07:53, 27 March 2025 (MDT)

Image Alt Text

First question, is there a place to have general discussions, like things that shouldn't be tied to a particular page? I've seen a few pages with broken links to a forum, so I'm guessing this website had a forum at some point. Is there anything like that now?

Secondly, I've been giving this some thought. When linking an image into an article, why should it be the editor's job to describe the image each and every time? Shouldn't there be some kind of alt text stored on the file's page and that gets brought in as the alt text, only overridden if specified in the image link? Doesn't that make more sense?

The law of the internet is that if you ever have a problem, you aren't the first, someone else already had it and likely someone else already solved it, so don't re-invent the wheel. So I'm doing some searching figuring there must be some feature for this in the wiki engine, right? I did find a discussion about just this thing, starting in 2009 and as of 2023 still hasn't been implemented yet: Wikimedia Phabricator Issue T21906.

So I've got a proposal: for each file: entry create an alttext: entry to draw on for the corresponding image's alt text.

	Code	Linked
image link	image:UW1AnkhPendant.png
alt text link	alttext:UW1AnkhPendant.png	a silver anhk shaped pendant hanging from a brown necklace
full link	image:UW1AnkhPendant.png|alt={{:alttext:UW1AnkhPendant.png}}

It would be easy enough to make an template that generates an image link also check for and include that alt text.

I wonder how hard it would be to change the parser to do that automatically too. Way over my head though. --Sir Robin (talk) 21:12, 26 March 2025 (MDT)

For a start the purposes for alt text I'm aware of are the following:

1. Screen readers: folk w/accessibility needs supposedly benefit from them.
2. An image that can't load for whatever reason: If you look at our articles on archive.org you'll see a number of them don't get loaded, so there's one practical consideration. Also, it's my hope that our work here will out-live us and our grandchildren, for that matter. Alt text is a good way to help future generations fill in the blanks.

As for alt text being gleaned from a central source, you're absolutely right. If that could be done, it should be done. Unfortunately, there's a lot that MediaWiki can't do or the current version of MediaWiki can't do, and we just have to live w/it. But if you've got a solution, great!

And if you want to see old forum posts, you can find them at the *shudder* Codex of Editable Wisdom: that's that Fandom cesspool where this wiki started out.--The Ultra-Mind (talk) 08:05, 27 March 2025 (MDT)