Stupid Node Name Capitalization Convention

[Wuzzy]

Hi! I Have A Simple Suggestion To All Mod Makers (Including Those Of game_minetest).

Can We Please Stop The Convention To Write Every Single Word Capitalized In The Node Descriptions? I Think It Is A) Stupid B) Not Proper English Because It Looks Like These Were Proper Names But They Are Just Descriptions So It Is Wrong And C) It Looks Stupid When You Have To Write About These Nodes In The Wiki, Eg.

Clay can be found on sand beaches (underwater). They drop 4 Clay Lumps when mined.

Therefore I Want To Have Node Descriptions In Proper English, Eg. Instead Of Writing “Junglewood Slab” It Should Be Written “junglewood slab”.

I Already Started To Break This Annoying And Stupid Convention In My Mod “Geology”.

Do You Agree With The Suggestion?

[Bas080]

Agree, current mods i am working on use the proper conventions for capitalization. If i'm not sure then i'll make sure to google it.

EDIT: If first letter is always capitalized i think capitalization should be done by the core or some kind of cascading stylesheet. JK. Serious about the capitalization though.

[rubenwardy]

They are titles. I think it should be like this. With the wiki, you don't need to put the caps

[[Iron Lumps||iron lumps]]

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Just refer to everything by it's ItemString, lol.
default:iron_lump

[philipbenr]

yep. A agree.

[paramat]

Agreed, i only do it because minetest game does, but its a bad convention ... i'll now change to one capital.

[Wuzzy]

Mmmh, I may be okay with capitalizing the first letter only. However, stuff breaks if you use the description anywhere else than just for tooltips, eg. in the middle of a sentence. Therefore, I do not view the descriptions as titles. I view descriptions as descriptions. ;-)

[Casimir]

So one capital or all minimal? If we change the convention we should agree on one standard, not to have two new competing ones.
Minecraft by the way is doing every word capital e.g. "Oak Wood".

[Wuzzy]

Well, I clearly prefer the complete lower-case version and use only upper case if there is actually a proper name involved (eg. “Peter’s example node”). For titles and captions some code magic could be use to make the first letter capitalized again (assuming the English version of Minetest is used).

[Krock]

I Agree.
Caps In First Letter - All Other With Small Ones.

[rubenwardy]

I still like the current format in descriptions for captions. All lower case would irritate me almost as much as a missing close bracket. Just make it lower case for the wiki in paragraphs. Upper case for titles and tool tips.

[vqrulane]

I'vE gOt A bEtTeR sOlUtIoN!

[Don]

I see the description as a title instead of a description. It does not describe the node it only names it in most cases. It is like book titles. Some words (eg. and, with, of) would be lower case but most words have first letter capitalized.
I like it this way but if we decide to have a standard I will support it even if it isn't what I want.

[Calinou]

I agree with this, but my mods try to integrate the default game as well as possible.

Old versions used to use “Lump of clay” instead of “Clay Lump”, which I prefer too.

[4aiman]

TL;DR
Before imposing some new rules, make sure you've followed the old ones. Like licences and contributor's permit.


The actual opinion:

+ Spoiler

There is one good reason for the capitalization:
If one will write "You should use iron lumps in order to create some iron ingots", it would NOT be clear that one is to use an item, namely "iron lump" to produce the other item "iron ingot".
So, if not capitalization, then ItemStrings.
At least for Wiki.

Oh, and while I understand the whole deal, I can't help but highlight one major point here:
Some devs do NOT know how to spell some very simple words.
Maybe we should start from there?

It's good of you, Wuzzy, to want to bring the order and "properness" to MT.
But one can't fix anything just by by imposing NEW (dragon-like) rules.

We already have Rubenwardy, who talks about the "hacky" ways of translation (whilst there aren't any options to do it otherwise) and the "rules of threads naming". The latter one has nothing to do with anything but some strange efforts to support some suggestions about threads naming made by Celeron.
Sorry, Ruben, but does it really matter?
MT won't win at all should we start this stupid war of the formats.
Let the people do what they 're able to.

If you don't want to use capitalization - don't.
Make your own game and be happy with it.
But why the majority should listen and obey to one man/a group of ppl?
I agree, it may piss you off.
But who do you are to think you're of a higher class?

I agree that not quite everyone's opinion matters, though.
Ask only those ppl, who have contributed to minetest_game whether they support you or not, Wuzzy.
Then make changes.
That's how it should happen, if happen at all.

As for the Wiki, again, I don't mind really.
But are there any rules about the Wiki?
I mean, did the contributors new beforehand that their work is to be edited w/o notifying them?
On what terms did the contributed their content?

If you truly wish the best for the Minetest, then find out and do it with respect to the licence.
Bear in mind, that LGPL2 and does NOT forbid to withdraw one's contributions from a piece of work licensed under it.

[Linuxdirk]

Do You Agree With The Suggestion?

Not in general. The descriptions within the game should be seen as titles (mostly upper-case words). When referring to them in continuous text they should fit into that text (e.g. lower-case, conjugated if necessary, etc.).

… the wiki … Maybe create a template for all default items and nodes.

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

It drops 4 {{default|iron_lump|iron lumps}}

And the wiki software generates “It drops 4 iron lumps” from that text where “iron lumps” is a link to http://wiki.minetest.com/wiki/Iron_lump and has a title="" attribute containing “default:iron_lump”.

It first sounds complicated, but it’s actually a pretty easy one-liner.

[rubenwardy]

You are saying that this isn't hacky:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

if RUS then
    minetest.register_item({
         description = "russian text"
    })
else
    minetest.register_item({
         description = "english text"
    })
end


Basically hard coding languages, rather than allowing locale files?

I also don't understand your thread point. What are you talking about? The thread title, ie, [Mod], isn't a guideline, it is required for a mod to be in the release section. The owners of the forum and GitHub have the right to make rules and ban you or not accept pull requests if you don't follow them. (Except where the rules go against GPL, but that is nothing to do with code style.)

Subject of topic must be in one of these formats

Notice the 'must'.

If you're talking about Minetest related projects, I agree the [] tags are unneeded, but I can't edit that topic.
EDIT: I asked a moderator to do it.

[Linuxdirk]

You are saying that this isn't hacky:

No, this isn’t hacky. This is stupidity that can be used as example of how it shouldn't be done in Coding 101.

There is exactly only ONE proper solution how translations are realized, and this is using gettext.

What are you talking about?

As far as I understand it’s about naming conventions (has NOTHING to do with coding).

[Hybrid Dog]

I think the Capitation of every word in descriptions is like the wielding a torch about water transparency bug just one of the features copied from the other game (mc), same for the flowers, a viola > 0.5m, and trees, taking a 1m³ trunk from a tree in less than 1min by bare hand, and more. l'll change the descriptions.