Talk:It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa

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[edit] No unicode characters

CyberSkull has reverted to the No unicode character template a anumber of times, most recently commenting "no unicode character (strikethru is a font style, not a chraracter)". This is exactly true—so why do we want to claim that one or more of the characters in the title are not in Unicode? This is analogous to a title with one word in red, or bold. It has nothing to do with a problematic character. This just makes Wikipedia look like we don't understand what Unicode is. (By the way, if you want to get exceedingly technical, the title doesn't say Dr. Dre anyway—the album cover clearly shows those words with an X through them, not a strike-through.)

Having this warning on 386MAX makes even less sense. First of all, there are in fact superscript characters in Unicode, for compatability with old character sets. And second of all, this is again an issue of mere formatting, not missing characaters. Would you claim the same thing for LaTeX? There are dozens of such titles in Wikipedia with raised or lowered characters. —johndburger 15:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I choose the tag in question because it best fits the situation. There are no characters that match the given text. A font style must be applied. All article titles are plain text. The only characters that can be represented by superscript characters in unicode are numbers. 386^MAX uses a superscript style because there are no superscript letters in unicode. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 09:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Again I ask, exactly which character or symbol in the title of this article is "not found in Unicode"? I think the above shows quite a misunderstanding of both Unicode, and the template. Unicode encodes abstract characters, and I believe the template is meant to suggest that some element of the title could in principle be an element of Unicode, but is not, at present. The symbols in the Zoso album are a good example. "There are no superscript letters in unicode" because superscript letters are not characters! The strikethrough and the superscripts are indeed font style issues as you say, nothing to do with Unicode one way or the other. Using your reasoning, you should put the template on your own user page, because the bright red C and the dark red l are "not found in Unicode". Mis-using the template advertises to the world that WIkipedia does not get this fundamental idea. I suggest spending some time with the Unicode Standard, perhaps reading the definition of character. —johndburger 12:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode strikethrough

There is a really dodgy way of displaying the title (almost) correctly with unicode:

It's On (D̶r̶.̶ ̶D̶r̶e̶) 187um Killa

On my display the strikethough on the 'D' doesn't extend far enough to the left but after looking at the Unicode code chart that may be an error in the font.

[edit] About the title

Sorry to beat a dead horse here, but I changed the {{no unicode character}} tag to {{wrongtitle}} because the issue here is not a Unicode thing. There are two potential technical limitations on this title that I see:

1. "Dr. Dre" is crossed out
2. "187um" appears as "187^um"

Both of these are font style things. I think that the first one actually contributes to the meaning of the title; that is, the fact that "Dr. Dre" is crossed out means something different than if it weren't crossed out. I'm not so sure that the fact that "um" is in superscript means anything, but I may just be ignorant of that meaning.

Issue #1 merits the use of the {{wrongtitle}} template because there isn't a template in Category:Wrong title templates to address the strikethrough issue. Issue #2 merits the use of the {{downsize}} template. Since #1 is a definite issue, I think that {{wrongtitle}} should be used because it covers the general case of an incorrect title. Using {{downsize}} would be confusing since it would mean disregarding that #1 is also a problem.

Obviously album covers use all sorts of fonts and handwritten, sometimes scrawled, words. These things are usually only considered worthy of {{wrongtitle}} and friends if they are actually meaningful and genuine. The strikethrough issue pretty obviously falls into this category for me, while the superscript issue is marginal. That being said, I don't have a problem with the title argument to {{wrongtitle}} being changed to "It's On (Dr. Dre) 187^um Killa" if there is concensus to do so. Mike Dillon 03:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)