ChoralWiki:CPDL support, help, and feedback
CW:SUP redirects here.
Documentation
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Starting a new topic: Click on the [edit] link at the right of the General topics (most recent first) section and type
== <title of new topic> ==
at the beginning of a new line, below the comment line that reads "Start NEW TOPICS immediately below this line, ABOVE (BEFORE) any other topics." Then post your initial message as described below. Thus, a new topic will appear before (above) any other topics, to make for easier browsing. For example, typing
== Looking for works in Quenya ==
will start a new topic, appearing as:
| Looking for works in Quenya | [edit] |
Starting new topics in the Announcements and special topics section should follow the same protocol, but such topics should only be started by CPDL Admins/Sysops.
When adding a message to an existing topic, simply click on the [edit] link at the right of the topic title and post your message below any previously posted message(s) on the topic as follows:
Posting a message (note NEW syntax): Start a new line, and use the Template:ItemPost in the format:
{{ItemPost
|by=<your name & date>
|text=<your message>
}}
The easiest way to sign and date your message is to type four tildes (~~~~) for <your name & date>. Thus, for example, typing
{{ItemPost
|by=~~~~
|text=
Here is a sample message
spread
over
several lines.<br>
It even has more than one paragraph.
}}
resulted in:
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Here is a sample message
spread
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several lines. It even has more than one paragraph. | |
N.B. The old syntax for Template:ItemPost still works but is now deprecated in favor of the new syntax.
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Announcements and special topics (most recent first)
Use of this forum
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Use this forum for HELP at Choral Public Domain Library as well as FEEDBACK. It is an alternative to the corresponding forum on the external Bulletin Board. | |
General topics (most recent first)
Template:Composer - being used and misused?
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I've recently come across instances of Template:Composer being used on score pages which most likely do not conform to the intent of Philip Legge, whose version of the template been in effect from 2006 April 9 until today. Just why this is happening, I'm not sure, since the template does not appear in Category:Templates. Perhaps users, having seen it used on score pages of works by Byrd, Monteverdi or others, have concluded that this is the "best" or "proper" way to specify the composer field on a score page. To see what the problem I'm addressing is, consider the following instances of the use of this template: Typing {{Composer|William Byrd}} on a score page does two things: (1) it produces the line Composer: William Byrd (followed by a line-break) and (2) it adds the Category:William Byrd compositions to the page, and the resulting category provides an alphabetical-by-title listing of all the pages in that category. This is all well and good for Mr. Byrd, whose works on the composer page are (a) plenteous and (b) (more importantly) split into three groups (Sacred in Latin, Sacred in English, and Secular). However, only 81 (fewer than 1/3) of Mr. Byrd's score pages have been categorized this way. Mr. Palestrina does not fare so well: Category:Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina compositions lists just one score page! But, at least the category page has been "created" (ie. it has descriptive text, so that the link to the category appears in blue). It is the same for Category:Johannes Brahms compositions - just one page in the category. Alas, for Orlando di Lasso, whose composer page lists many scores grouped into Sacred and Secular works, the Category:Orlando di Lasso compositions contains just 2 entries, and the category hasn't even been created (since the link to the category appears in red)! Unfortunately, there are numerous instances of a composer's compositions category appearing in red (because of the use of Template:Composer and, more often than not, listing very few (usually only one) entry. Only the ("uncreated") Category:Clément Janequin compositions lists more than ten entries (19). Indeed, only 5 compositions categories have been created, and only two of these (Monteverdi and Byrd) have a reasonably large number of entries). What is wrong here, and what should be done about it?
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As no doubt some have noticed, it is mainly I who have been adding this particular template to score pages in my usual day to day edits. First of all, allow me to apologise for not discussing and documenting this template appropriately (it's something that I've been meaning to do but not got round to... not a good excuse but there you go). The way that I see it, there are two very good reasons for including this template on all score pages.
So much easier to make a powerful search with the DPL functionality than browsing. At the moment, CPDL uses the wiki base but the information in CPDL has not been integrated to use the wiki effectively. Anyway, to reply to your specific points, Chuck:
As to the issue of score pages being categorised with non-existant categories, this is already what's happening with Template:NewWork. Categorising with non-existant categories doesn't do any harm and if, in the future, the category is to be created (when someone takes on a composer's score pages as I suggested earlier) then there's one (or several) less pages to edit. | |
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Thanks, Rob, for explaining your rationale in the context of DPLs. I guess that's a rather wider purpose than what I perceive was Philip's original purpose. I had thought you were simply using fewer keystrokes through the template (which would make sense, too)! I would, however, suggest that whenever a composer's composition category is created, that category should itself be categorized in a category, something like Category:Compositions by composer or simply Category:Compositions. In true Wiki philosophy and practice, nearly every page, whether article or category should itself be categorized, and these compositions categories will be very numerous when and if your vision for them is realized. | |
{{ItemPost|Philip Legge@ Φ 13:35, 6 April 2008 (PDT)|Hi guys! Like most of the templates I've tinkered with, {{Composer|<i>composer name</i>}} was designed to be simple to apply but to be extensible to do something useful, and the immediate usage I saw was automatic generation of a works category. I'm sorry the template hasn't been properly documented, but the erasure of four months work of 2007 resulted in the loss of a lot of documentation as well as several new templates and additional features added to others. I suppose one handy extension to the composer template would be to add arbitrary sort fields for DPL, but I'm not sure whether this would break the existing instances of the template.
Art Songs category not working sorting by name of work
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All the new Parry Art songs are showing up under "A" in Art Song category. Any idea why ? | |
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My bad, I fixed the Template:Cat | |
List of current CPDL problems
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Feel free to add items to this post
NB: Items with a * have been added to the list subsequent to its original posting. | |
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Please note: for the forum-related items, a (temporary?) solution is available already using the phpBB3 forum at http://choralia.altervista.org/phpbb/, which have been set-up with the same forums and categories as the "old" phpBB2 forum. | |
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Added item to list ( * ) | |
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Score count for March 1 - Same as Feb ?
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I'm waiting to the 10,000 score mark for CPDL (party time?) - but this month the number of scores stayed frozen at 9081 ! The composer count stayed the same also... Is the counting mechanism faulty, or weren't these figures updated ? - just curious - | |
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Those numbers on the Main page are not automatically updated, but instead must be updated by hand by an Admin/Sysop (see Template:CPDL statistics). I have made a point of updating the statistics at the beginning of every month since the restoration after the crash, and prior to that numerous times as well, at least when I noted that they had not been updated (Raf is the only other person to do an update). Fortunately, Raf had commented in a very old phpBB message to Admins about how to do it. On January 4, I posted updating instructions with the CPDL statistics template. Good thing I did, because Raf's original phpBB message has since been lost, due to recent pruning of the phpBB. BTW, I just checked the count, and we are only now up to 9101 score pages, so there is still a long way to go before 10000 score pages. One should realize that the count is score pages, not scores, and that the number of score pages goes down whenever pages are merged or combined. Also, the score count at the beginning of February was 8970, at the beginning of March 9081, for a difference of 111 score pages. | |
Naming: Unaccompanied vs. A cappella
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While I really wonder whether it's worth mentioning, I'm curious if anyone else cares that the term "a cappella", because of its literal meaning, would not apply to many of the more modern styles of unaccompanied choral music. Might a catagory name change be considered? | |
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I suppose that a cappella (Italian "at chapel' or Latin "from the chapel/choir") is right up there with the contemporary meanings of other secular-world interpretations of terms with religious or sacred connotations, such as Christmas, Halloween, Shrove Tuesday (a.k.a. Fasching, Carnival), Anthem (originally a song set to a religious English text, but now co-opted to mean also a song of celebration for a particular group of people, as in "National anthem"). I think that, nowadays, we generally take the term to mean vocal/choral music for which no additional specifically instrumental parts are composed. And, as such, a cappella is now throrougly ingrained, at least into the English speaking world. Of course, it is quite likely that much a cappella music was and is, in fact, performed at times with instrumental doubling (or substituting) some parts. To use the them "unaccompanied" in place of a cappella would tend to exclude what this latter type of long historical performance practice has been. In light of this generally accepted convention/definition, it does not seem to me that a change in category name is warranted. | |
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I agree, Chuck. The term a cappella has evolved way past its original meaning so that I believe the current categorisation is appropriate. | |
I've reposted a missing score (moved)
Moved to: Sheet music requests and questions
Should we consider setting up a mirror site ?
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In light of the service interuptions, perhaps it is time to set up a mirror site. It may also be a good time to consider incorporating CPDL. I have a lawyer friend who would do the necessary filings for free. A bit of money would allow the mirror server to be paid for, and incorporation would put an official face on the organization, and also some protection for the contributers and administrators. What do people think ? | |
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I understood there already was a mirror of some sort in place, following the disastrous site failure last May. Maybe I am wrong about this, or maybe it's only the data that is mirrored. Was the recent downtime a server-level problem, or an Internet connectivity problem? On another topic, the new forum is looking good, but it is worrying that it's on the main server (i.e. downtime cannot be discussed). I am also a bit worried that you do need wiki editing skills to submit forum entries - judging by their posts on the old forum, a lot of new posters of scores have never seen a wiki before. Are there any possible ways of front ending/simplifying this? I am happy to do some research myself if it would be useful. | |
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I reckon a mirror site would be nigh on impossible to create. Allow me to explain. I don't know a lot about wikis but I do know that they are constantly changing (people are always making edits). Now if there were a mirror site which synchronised with the main site, say every 24 hrs, what would happen to edits on the mirror? If I edited a page on the mirror and someone else edited the same page on the main site, which edit should/would be kept? However, as Mandy rightly says, there is a static mirror at http://www.choralwiki.org however, this site contains the bare bones of CPDL and isn't a resource that I think should be advertised (no searching, categories, texts and translations etc.) As for incorporating CPDL, I think that's a positive move but one should only be made with the appropriate support from Raf and other admins. It is a subject that would require discussion at great length. Mandy: Unfortunately, with new posts on the old forums being overlooked because of technical problems, I felt it best to advise users (on the main page) to post on this new bulletin board. I agree that it may be harder to use for some users and if you have some suggestions, I'm sure Chuck (who started this up) would be happy to hear them. However, I have to say that I haven't got a clue as to how this might be done. | |
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Re mirroring, the only way you could mirror the data properly in a wiki context, without the sort of simultaneous update problems you mention, would be to set up some sort of automatic replication and then, in the case of a failure, fail over to the other copy, then, when all was well again, re-synchronise and go back - i.e., never to try to use both versions at once. The replication could be done at regular intervals (in which case we might have to do a bit of tidying up once things were back to normal) or continuously (probably better). It all rather depends on how the data is stored, though. Re easier wiki editing - I'll have a poke around - there are a couple of wikis I'm involved with that do provide a nice 'rich text' wiki text editor, maybe there is an open source version of this. I guess what is needed is | |
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About one year ago I activated an automatic monitoring service that regularly checks the availability of the CPDL website. If we exclude the "big crash" of summer 2007, the measured availability is around 98.5%. This means that, if one tries to access CPDL at random over a sufficiently long period of time, he/she will experience one failed attempt every 66 successful attempts (approximately). Professional websites, using redundant servers in different locations, mirroring, etc., usually provide better figures, however I think 98.5% is acceptable for the nature of CPDL. What's important, in my opinion, is that the main asset of CPDL, i.e., the about 10 thousand scores, is safely stored. A temporary loss of access is far less important than a permanent loss of the scores. So, I would certainly recommend to pay a lot of attention to the back-up policy (e.g., frequent back-up of the scores onto a remotely located server) rather than to the real-time access. As far as the forum is concerned, I think it would be relatively easy for me to reproduce the structure of the current CPDL forum on my servers of Choralia. I can activate the same PHPBB application, so the "look and feel" will be essentially the same as the normal forum. It can be used as a back-up until the normal forum is up and running again. Please just let me know if you (admins) want me to do that. | |
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A new BBS that works sounds good to me. I don't think (judging from the lack of postings) that most CPDL users know how to post in the new way, and I miss the convenience and redundancy of the old BBS System. | |
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I agree with John on all counts. A new PHPBB based forum would be excellent. Incidentally I have been investigating rich text editing for MediaWiki based wikis. While a new PHPBB forum is a much better way forward in my view, I do think there could be benefit in enabling a rich text editor. There's a nice example here. It doesn't sound as if such an editor would be that hard to implement, but it has to be configured on the server. (By the way I generated that last paragraph using the rich text editor - found it really easy to use.) | |
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The phpBB that we have been running is rather out of date (which I see every time as I log in as an admin there), but there is little that anyone except Raf can do about it (which is the main problem). I set up the alternative board here because I had the feeling that the phpBB issues are not likely to be resolved with the expediency needed to keep lines of communication open. Yes, this is more awkward to use (especially if one is wiki-unaware), but at least it seems to be working (it took awhile for the phpBB board to get used when it was originally set up, too). What we really need is for Raf to upgrade the phpBB installation and/or restart the board. Mirror sites, rich text wiki-editors, BB's that have better antispam protection, and many other bells and whistles (eg. from MediaWiki) are all wonderful, and I wish we had them (good grief, you probably have no idea just how many spam accounts are deleted from the phpBB by hand, by me and by other admins) ... but without help from Raf on these issues, I'm not sure just how much we can do. | |
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Chuck, all points taken - it's clear that the admins are working within some pretty tight and frustrating constraints here. I think though that Choralia was offering to set up a new phpBB forum, to look like the old one, but on his own server. Re editing, I was just passing on my optimism that, when the wiki does at some point in the future get upgraded/tweaked, this functionality might find its way in & make the lives of new users (and therefore hopefully admins) a bit easier. (Also the sandbox I linked to may be useful to some as a MediaWiki wiki markup learning tool. I've been working with wikis myself off and on for a year now, but I still have to use the Preview button extensively - and it took me until very recently to find out that not all wiki markup languages are the same.) | |
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I've set up a prototype new forum at Choralia. You can access it at http://choralia.altervista.org/phpbb/. If you like it, I can give the admin credentials to somebody who may possibly improve and refine the whole structure better than me. | |
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I've tried out the new BBS and it works well. Suggest as an interim measure we advertize it as an option. | |
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Let's test it a little bit internally before advertising. I'm finding it rather slow at the moment | |
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I've just up-graded by a significant factor the quantity of resources available to the forum (database space and power). Let's see whether speed improves. | |
Can the CPDL Catalogs be brought up to date ?
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Can the CPDL Catalogs be brought up to date - they are over 2 years old now. | |
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I think the answer of whether this can be done depends once again on Raf Ornes' time availability - he is still the only recipient of the email list that documents the submission of new works; if anyone else were to attempt it, that person would have a much harder time tracking down every addition to the CPDL since 2006. | |
Can we add a category for "Art Songs" ?
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Can we add a category suitable to categorize Parry's "English Lyrics" ? I would suggest "Art Songs" "Lieder" is there, but these are in English ... | |
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Hi John. A while ago, I created the Category:Art songs and have it already listed on the ChoralWiki:Music Subcategories page. | |
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Thanks, Chuck. Must have been using a capital S in songs... | |