Forum:New Babel Template?

I looked through the Babel templates awhile ago and noticed that there were few standards keeping them together. Some used Wikitext tables, and some used HTML tables, some also didn't place users into categorys like they should, and none sorted themselves seperately from the list of users.

So I'm trying out a new Babel template. The template uses parserfunctions and makes use of a single template using the first parameter for the language and the second parameter for the level. If a language code it dosen't understand is used it defaults to english, and the level when unknown defaults to native. The template is a little longer and less legable when reading the code of course because wikitext dosen't give as much whitespace freedom as normal programming languages do. But the coloring works with the current CSS classes on Wikia (Though I'm considering placing everything into a style section itsself so that the template can be cross-wiki linked from central without needing to mess with the CSS files.) I currently only have en-N0123 and fr-N added to the template for demonstration and to use the template here it would require the current slightly unorganized User language categorys to be set with proper standards on how they are setup. And we might need some users to help fill in all the missing babelboxes that currently don't have anything on them (e.g. I think while ther is a fr-N there is no fr-0123.) But I'm interested to see what people think of a cross-wikia babel which uses only a single template in a way that makes sure all the boxes work alike. The template is over at The Gaiapedia at w:c:gaia:Template:Babel, and I have a example showing it still looks like normal at w:c:gaia:Gaiapedia:Sandbox. Dantman (Talk) 08:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Good idea! A cross-wikia babel sounds very interesting --Ciencia Al Poder ¿Algo que decir? 17:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I've moved it from it's location on the gaiapedia to the central wikia. It's at Template:Babel right now. I'm going to add 2 special paramaters to it now which will allow people to stop it from adding them to a category (For people who don't have the categorys on their wikia) and one which will cancel out the normal sizing and allow the box to fill an entire area. Dantman (Talk) 06:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I've run into something unfortunate. It seams that parameters don't work when using a shared template. This does mean that we cant use  to include a babel template into all wikia. But what can be done, is to make a babel box work on any wikia with this system, someone simply places   into Template:Babel on their own wikia. Then after that, babel will work on their wikia in all languages which are in the template at that time. That means instead of copying dozens of templates into each wikia you want to use babel on, all you half to do is add   to one page in each one. Not only that, but if we ever upgrage the one on wikia with new languages, then all they half to do is replace the contents on their wikia with   and their babel box will be updated with all the new languages in the babel box. Still better than dozens of individual templates, don't you think? Dantman (Talk) 07:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)