Templates

In MediaWiki, templates are (mostly) pages which contain texts for multiple uses. It is a flexible and surprisingly versatile tool.

In this topic we explore the potential of mediawiki templates. For coordination of template coding and maintenance in Wikiversity, see wikiversity:templates. For introduction to templates, see help:templates.

Learning projects

Recursive conversion

See category:Recursive conversion templates for a list of such templates

These templates are actually programs. They come in hand for demonstrations in such learning projects as Conway's game of life or Calculating the square root of a.

Existing programmes

• {{Euclidean algorithm}} is demonstrated in Euclidean algorithm
• {{factorise}} - so far a very primitive brute-force factoriser. It cannot handle even mildly large numbers, because there are limits on pre-expansion and post-expansion sizes. It can improve a lot.
• {{quadratic reciprocity}} - currently it does not work; to make it algorithmic, I think we should first master factorizations.

More ideas

• It would be good to have a usable list of prime numbers, with ,e.g, {{prime|3}}giving 5, the third prime number; or, {{nextprime|7}} giving 11. It would improve {{factorise}}. The task may be easier after m:StringFunctions is implemented.

Threaded discussions

See THREADNAV

Templates for css and javascripts

• {{click}} - to superimpose an invisible link on an image, but there are problems in its use

Unicode

• It would be great, especially for the language departments, to have such a template {{unihan database}} that {{unihan database|∢}} would give the link to the information page [1] on http://unicode.org/charts/unihan.html. It needs m:stringFunctions. (Please go to bugzilla:6455 and vote!)

WikiProjects on Templates in other wikia

• Meta:m:Help:templates
• Wikipedia: w:Wikipedia:WikiProject templates,w:Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing

See also

• Dynamic contents
• Wikiversity:Templates