Translated section titles

Each section under titles defines text that depends on the current user's language. The procedures that apply to {{Fallback}} are used to determine which language should be used.

TODO: Standard titles should be defined in one module so they do not need to be duplicated for each countries submodule. Only items listed in each section are translated once from Wikidata labels. This may require adding also Wikidata entries for them (or locating existing Wikidata items for their topic), and being able to select their plural form when needed.

Pattern or ordered list of subpatterns

Module:Countries/Africa defines pattern twice. The first is a pattern for the text that is normally displayed by {{Countries of Africa}}, while the second applies when the parameter |simple=yes is used.

Each occurrence of {name} in the pattern is replaced with appropriate text. The names used for Africa when simple does not apply are:

You can specify patterns in various ways, the simplest one being a single string containing all the layout wikitext and {name} placeholders described above. This will only generate a static list with a single layout.

But you can also split the pattern into multiple "conditional supatterns" (all of them containing arbitrary wikitext or {name} placeholders), and put them in an ordered table, in the order in which they must appear on the result. This allows some fragments of the layout to be removed (for example dropping the section title if the list after it in the same section is empty, or dropping the static separators between sections).

Each "conditional subpattern" is represented either:

• as a simple string like 'subpattern with {name} placeholders' when there's no condition (this unconditional pattern will be always added to the result), or
• as an ordered table, where:
  • first element is a string for the subpattern, and
  • the other elements represent an union of several (non-exclusive) "conditions"

  for example, { 'subpattern with {name} placeholders', condition1, condition2, ... }

  (if any one of the listed conditions evaluates to true (OR), the conditional subpattern will be used).

Each "condition" listed in a array after the initial subpattern may itself be represented either:

• as a simple string for "simple conditions", or
• as an ordered table of "subconditions", i.e. a conjunction of several (non-exclusive) simple conditions

  for example, { 'subpattern with {name} placeholders', { subcondition1, subcondition2, ... }, ... }

  (if any one of the subconditions evaluates to false (AND), the conditional subpattern will NOT be used according to this condition, but may be used if other conditions part of the union allow it).

Each "simple condition" is used to evaluate tests based on names of variables (usable in placeholders of patterns or subpatterns). A simple condition is represented by a string and can currently take one the following forms:

• 'name'  : the simple condition is true if the variable with that name is non-empty (i.e. the subpattern {name} would be replaced by an actual text);
• '!name' : the simple condition is true if the variable with that name is empty (i.e. the subpattern {name} would be replaced by nothing);

The variable names used in simple conditions don't need to be present within the "conditional subpattern" string to which the condition applies (indicated at start of the table describing the conditional subpattern). This means for example that a subpattern continaining only static wikitext and no {name} placeholder, can be conditional. This is useful notably

• to generate static wikitext (for example breaks or punctuation or other presentational elements), that will be present in the result only if other conditional patterns actually generate text (depending on their own placeholders).
• to suppress every layout elements surrounding the inner content, when there's nothing useful to display: the result can then be entirely empty.

Simple presentation in a single section

If the template that invokes the module has |simple=yes, the simple section is used.

• simple.pattern replaces pattern
• simple.sections specifies which sections from titles and lists will be processed.

In Module:Countries/Africa, simple.sections has

main = { EH = true, },

The fact that main is defined means that titles.main and lists.main will be used. The fact that other is not defined means that titles.other and lists.other will be ignored.

EH = true is used when simple does not apply. When the template is used normally (without |simple=yes), the country identified by EH is ignored. That is done because EH is included in the other section. However, with |simple=yes, EH will appear in the main section.

The simple version can also use a single pattern, or multiple conditional subpatterns like previously.

Orderable lists of items, one for each section

Each section under lists defines a space-separated list of country codes that will be used to display country names. Similarly to titles, the list depends on the current user's language.

Countries are listed by default in the order specified. If the default order is unsatisfactory for a particular language, an entry for the language can be added. The entry should include all the country codes in a suitable order.

For example, lists.main may include the following (where ... replaces some text omitted for simplicity in this documentation):

main = {
    english   = 'automatic',
    default   = 'automatic sorted',
    en        = 'automatic sorted',
    mk        = 'DZ AO BJ XBRTW ... UG ... SADR EH ZM ZW',
    automatic = 'DZ AO BJ XBRTW ... SADR ... UG EH ZM ZW',
},

Each country code such as DZ is defined under countries. All lists should contain the same codes, only ordered differently depending on language; every localized list (keyed by language code) should then have exactly the same length as the one given for the 'automatic' list (which is required), or should be one of 'automatic sorted' or 'automatic'.

The following keys have special meaning when used before =.

The following values have special meaning when used after =.

A module is not able to properly collate names for a language other than en. However, Module:Countries can satisfactorily collates some names that use letters with diacritics which sort after their equivalent letters.

The collation (performed only when the option all is not set when calling the main function Module:Countries) is based on a function, defined in Module:MakeSortKey, creating sort keys from a translated label and the target language code (this language code could be later used to tailor the collation according to sorting rules for specific languages, but for now the sort order is locale-neutral). Generally, this sorting works for most languages, but the localisation may be needed to take into account ignorable prefixes, or for complex scripts that still have no support for a basic collation order.

Definitions of each list item

Several examples from a countries table follow:

countries = {
    CI    = { 'Ivory Coast', "Côte d'Ivoire",  qid = 'Q1008', },
    DZ    = { 'Algeria',                       qid = 'Q262', },
    EG    = { 'Egypt',                         qid = 'Q79', mark = '‡', },
    GM    = { 'Gambia',                        qid = 'Q1005', the = true, },
    XBRTW = { 'Bir Tawil',                     qid = 'Q620634', },
}

The keys CI, DZ, EG, and GM are country codes that identify a particular country. Where available, ISO 3166-2 codes are used by convention, but any code can be used as they only have a meaning within the module (for territories without their own ISO 3166-1 code, you should use a private extension starting by "X" after the ISO 3166-1 country code if the territory is part of another recognized country but has no ISO 3166-2 code, or use one of the standard prefixes reserved in ISO 3166-1 for private use, like "AA", "QM" to "QZ", "X", or "ZZ").

Note that Module:Countries is generic and is not restricted for listing only countries, it can process any wellknown list of up to 200 known items (the module can work for longer lists, but only with the all= option set, meaning that aliases will not be usable: all linked items will be unconditionally listed in the order specified by the list; without this option, errors will occur due to the wiki server limits on costly function calls for existence tests), without any translation and automatic sort); the key defined as countries = {...} above can be alternatively named infos = {...} with the same content for list items; in that case the convention for keys described in the previous paragraph does not apply of such a list. For example, the module could be used for formatting a list of olympic teams, a list of subentities inside the same country, a list of chemical elements, a list of urban areas, etc., that have their own conventional codes suitable as short keys; these short keys can also be optionally be displayed [within brackets] after each linked item (and after its optional trailing mark) in the rendered list.

The country names Algeria and Gambia are the titles of pages which should exist at Commons, and where the category page generally also exists. English names should be used but need to match names used in titles of titles in Commons. If several alternative names are used in Commons to refer to the same country in related page titles (such as "Côte d'Ivoire"), you may list these alternate names which may be found and used in some existing pages (including for disambiguation and compatiblity with the existing content pages that cannot or should not be renamed with the first listed name, which is used by default when it exists).

The qid codes identify the corresponding item at Wikidata. It allows translating the displayed label in the user's language (when option all is not set to render the box). For example,

• d:Q262 on Wikidata is associated to the Category:Algeria on Commons, and will also be used to get the translated label for other related gallery pages like Algeria (note that the module will autodetect when this page is redirected and will link to the redirect target).
• d:Q1005 on Wikidata is associated to the Category:The Gambia on Commons, and will also be used to get the translated label for other related gallery pages like The Gambia (the translated label dose not necessarily use any article).

If the |all=yes option is not set to render the box, or if qid is not defined, or if qid is not found in Wikidata, or Wikidata does not define a label for it, then the first name listed in the data defining the country (normally in English and used in page titles in Commons) will be used as a default (untranslated) label.

Normally, a link is shown in the rendered lists only if a page exists with the defined name (or one of its optional aliases).

But when rendering the list with |all=yes option, all possible page titles will be listed, without testing their existence, and without translating the displayed labels (this will frequently generate red links, but it allows the maintenance of page names on Commons, to find those that redirect to unexpected pages, or to facilitate the creation of missing pages with coherent titles that will be found and used when the |all=yes option will be removed to hide all possible aliases from the list and to get translated and sorted labels). However, each entry will be listed inconditionally, using the first specified English name (the defined alternative aliases are ignored, so the first listed English name should be the most specific one that will be used by default for naming pages in Commons).

The entry for the Gambia illustrates use of the the = true option in the item data, whose effect is that the Gambia is tested for existence before Gambia: if a page exists in Commons using “the ” in its title, this page will be selected as the target of the link.

The wikitext for each link has the following form:

[[PrefixTitleSuffix|<bdi>Label</bdi>]]MarkCode

The entry for Egypt illustrates use of the optional mark = '‡' in country's data, whose effect is that this superscripted mark will be appended after the linked label. This is used as a note call, but the note will be rendered separately (after the rendered sublists). If you use such marks, you should create another sublist (such as partly = '...') inside lists = { ... }) to specifiy all concerned codes (in arbitrary code order); this sublist will not be displayed by itself (because it is not used by any 'subpattern with {name} placeholders' in the data module), but the defined mark is used literally within one of the "conditional subpatterns" that define a static note explaining the presence of the mark ({partlylist} is used as a condition for this "conditional subpatterns"), so the note will appear conditionally if any one of the items (with a key from partly = '...') are effectively displayed by any other "conditional subpatterns".