Talk:Glossary

It would be nice if there was a one sentence description after each of these terms. That way this will be a real glossary page that can be skimmed and understood without needing to click to the larger encyclopedic pages for each term. --Lbstone 21:09, 8 Jul 2005 (EDT)

THANKS Randem! --Lbstone 11:59, 10 Jul 2005 (EDT)

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I've added a bunch of terms in here. These are all terms that I found from existing articles. To see which articles I got them from, you can click on the term then follow the "what links here" link on the left of the page. --Lbstone 17:42, 10 Jul 2005 (EDT)

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You can see that I also created a "glossary" template that links all the glossary terms back to the main glossary page. --Lbstone 17:42, 10 Jul 2005 (EDT)

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Certain terms don't seem to warrant a link to their own page. For example, film advance and lens barrel - what more is needed to descibe these terms than their one line descriptions? It seems bombastic to have a page saying exactly the same thing and nothing more. Perhaps we should put some thought into what terms really need a whole page of description and for which one, short sentance is enough. --Mhtaylor 14:18, 19 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Personally, I think terms like that can be easily linked into anchors within a bigger document... similar to what I did with the various flash sync links. Thoughts? --Randem 14:36, 19 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I completely see what you're saying... And I agree that simply duplicating the one-sentence description for the main article is reduntant. (We've added the stub template to the shorter pages letting people know these could be expanded, but still some terms may just not need more explanation.) Keeping all that in mind, I go back to the main reason the glossary was created in the first place... It really just started out as an index of the terms that people are using in the main camera articles. For example the term viewfinder blackout is linked from the Rangefinder and TLR articles. This term may not warrant its own full encyclopedic page, but it's being linked from existing articles... So it makes sense that this link should point to content. When I think about this from that perspective, I start to feel more okay about each term having its own page. I mean, if you're an author of a camera article, you're more likely to link to "x sync" than you are to link to "Flash_sync#X_Sync|x sync"... I guess one of my big concerns is: What will people just naturally link to within the articles? One possible solution to this is to create redirects... like this: x sync ... Although, it looks like it won't redirect deeper into the article to the X Sync section... Hrmmm... Any thoughts? --Lbstone 09:54, 20 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I think redirects are the best plan of action in any case. Whenever you have a world-writable repository such as a wiki, you're going to run into tons of situations where people use different links. For instance, one person may link to depth of field while another refers to it as depth of focus and a third may just put DOF. What's more, the wiki apparently capitalizes the first letter regardless, but counts words in all caps as different, so a link to DOF isn't the same as a link to dof, and depth of field isn't the same as depth-of-field. With redirects, all of these will lead to the same single source... whether it's a section of a large page or a single document by itself. --Randem 10:55, 20 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I agree with the above completely. And regarding the issue of having redundant term definitions: The only other option I can see is to remove the one sentence descriptions from the glossary to make things not redundant, but that makes the glossary pretty useless. At this point I'm fine with the "let's just wait and see" approach. If there's really an issue that needs fixing, I'm sure someone will make some changes to the wiki and we can just take it from there. (After all, the foremost lens barrel authority in the world might decide to add an entire page about the history and physics of lens barrels, heh.) --Lbstone 09:33, 21 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Glossary Entries for Symbols

How about a section in the Glossary for symbols? One entry could be ϕ (the Greek letter phi) which most of us would recognize as identifying the filter diameter for a lens. Another could be the circle with a horizontal line through it, which is widely used to identify the position of the focal plane.

I'm sure there are others. These are just the ones that come immediately to mind. TCav (talk) 04:11, 2 February 2016 (CST)

Yes - I see no reason there shouldn't be a symbols section to the glossary, though I can't think of many more (there's gamma for contrast). We need to know what to call the symbols - a correct name (and cite a reference for it if possible). For example, I've always thought of that focal-plane marker as a Plimsoll line, but I don't suppose that's its proper name. I don't believe the filter symbol is a phi though: see the diameter symbol at WP.

Would symbols go at the end, or between 0-9 and A-B ?

Cheers! --Dustin McAmera (talk) 06:14, 2 February 2016 (CST)

Here's one reference:The Secret Symbol on Almost Every Camera - Gizmodo

... though Wikipedia uses the Phi character in its Wiki on Film plane. I suspect that's not correct though, since an upper case Phi has serifs in some typefaces, which would certainly deviate from the common symbol in use TCav (talk) 06:41, 3 February 2016 (CST)

I think that burying a Symbols Glossary at the end will limit its usefulness. I'd like to see it either before or after 0-9, though that might defy convention. Here's another dilemma: In what order would we list the symbols?TCav (talk) 06:45, 3 February 2016 (CST)

Myself, I'd put it at the bottom; I think alphabetic entries are likely to be the most often wanted. All sections with headings appear in the Table of Contents at the top anyway. I suspect mostly people come to the glossary by clicking a link from a page where one of the terms is used. So in an article about focus (or whatever) we can say the exact position of the film in the camera is often marked on the top housing of the body by the [[Glossary#Symbols|focal-plane symbol]] ⦵. Here, I used Unicode character 10677, which is called 'circle with horizontal bar', referred to in the WP Standard state article. That article mentions that how the character is made varies even within an IUPAC document; I guess this may be a matter of age. The first IUPAC publication cited is from 1982, when it was still common to use printers that you could instruct to step backwards and overtype, to combine (in this case) an 'o' or a zero with a minus sign. When it's actually a Plimsoll line on a ship, the symbol is defined in its own regulations (which specify lines 25 mm thick, and a diameter of 300 mm!). If I were writing this, I think I might call it the 'focal plane symbol', and say it 'resembles' the symbol used for the Plimsoll line and that sometimes used to denote standard states. I might give a reference to one or more of the refs that the WP articles use, not the WP articles themselves - another wiki is never as good as a published ref.

I can't see any reason for any particular order, unless ASCII or Unicode numerical order for any that are an ASCII/Unicode character. Cheers!--Dustin McAmera (talk) 15:42, 3 February 2016 (CST)

I agree that, technically, putting the symbols at the bottom is the most appropriate place. My thought was that somebody that came here to find out what a particular symbol meant, and happened to come to the Glossary, wouldn't necessarily know to scroll to the bottom to see the heading for Symbols. So putting it above the letters might be the most useful place. TCav (talk) 18:38, 3 February 2016 (CST)

Add Glossary to the Navigation Bar

Would it be a good idea to provide a link under Navigation to the Glossary? Also, how about, instead of "A-Z Index" and "List of Companies", use "Company Index" and "Camera Index"? TCav (talk) 18:44, 3 February 2016 (CST)