Talk:Books and documents

State of completion
Someone has the Caed Nua library complete?! It'll be nice to fix up the missing images. Thx. Arawn76 (talk) 12:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Following poe books are still incomplete: Here are the icons missing
 * St. Waidwen: Farmer Become God
 * Naasitaq Poetry: A Compilation
 * Psalm to Woedica
 * Magranic Benediction
 * Glanfathan Customs
 * Berathian Scripture

Arawn76 (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Categorization
What's difficult to say is another matter.

There are several documents and books that are quest items and vanish when the quest is done and solved. Otherwise they won't vanish but stay in the quest slot.

How shall they be classified? Documents? Books? Quest items? Personally i think Quest items, because they also create journal entries. But then they disappear from the books and document list. This is difficult.

Arawn76 (talk) 22:10, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

And what purpose has the category Personal Journals? Take a look inside they are described as books or as document, but it's item type is defined as journal with no page about this. That's ... If you go after the icons they use same icons as books. Arawn76 (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Take a look at the subcategories to Pillars of Eternity other items (same for PoE2). Books and documents only lists items from these categories, and it's easily done to expand the lists by letters or make other changes. AFAIK, this categorization is not an in-game mechanic (though I might be wrong), but was done for plausible reasons: many items are named "letter …" or "… journal …", books are books, and the rest might be a document. Notes? Either letter or document, I'd say. You want to reduce this?

For quest items: due to auto-categorization, it might become very difficult to make the item_type a list, rather than a single value parameter in the infobox – but it's possible. Alternatively, a separate quest_item flag could be introduced, so that all these items are part of their "real" category and additionally go to quest items. How about this? --  -- You talkin' to me? -- cCContributions -- 19:12, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Not really reducing it, but sorting it and catagorizing it better out, that others have it easy too. Cause momentary this a totall mix up. Can you really define what is what? Or shortly said: What should be a book, what should be a journal, what should be a document and what should be a letter?

Browsing through those pages it seems the icons of these items reveal a bit what they are. But should we go after the icons? Arawn76 (talk) 12:29, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Why not? In most cases that works. First, by name: if it's a letter or journal … you know. Books are thick, blocky ones. Journals often appear as … well, a journal. ;) Letters, notes, "documents" are often only a sheet of paper. Perhaps the category "letters" could be renamed to "letters and notes". As "documents" I understand something with more official content. --  -- You talkin' to me? -- cCContributions -- 19:32, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Hmm i think i'll try it out. I just have to change two redirects from letters to letters and notes. Beside is there a possibility to see which redirects link to that page? Arawn76 (talk) 14:04, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Beside tablets have we too. Think they are ether document, letter notes or tablet. For a book they are to heavy, we are not the Flintstones. Arawn76 (talk) 15:06, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Ok I tried tried a bit so far out. Depending on the icons you can categorize if it's a book, a journal, a document, a letter or note, tablet.
 * Books is easy they look like a book.
 * Journals are diaries, notebooks and journals
 * Documents are bills, invoices, addicts or bunch of papers
 * Letter or Notes are mixed, so best is prolly just one category letter. That should include, letters, notes, logs and reports.
 * Tablets are tablets. but maybe it's better to put them in the category weapons. ;)

Ok last sentence is just a joke. Arawn76 (talk) 16:00, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Ok, i've merged an example: Monsters of the Deadfire Archipelago

Think following guide could be followed:
 * Infobox item poe2 //infobox should be the newest version
 * | name          = //the global name
 * | icon          = //the newest icon version
 * | description   = //the text
 * | added_in      = //the first appearance of the book mostly poe1 maybe a later infobox improvement enlistment of versions.
 * | equipment_slot = //normally unequipable
 * | item_type     = //the type here book
 * | item_category = // same as before => other item
 * | requirements  = //useless
 * | is_soulbound  = //useless
 * | is_unique     = //useless
 * | value         = //the highest value here 80
 * | shop_value    = //the highest shop value here 400
 * | range         = //useless
 * | item_bonuses  = //useless
 * | enchantments  = //useless
 * | rel_quests    = //here are the quests enlisted
 * | rel_items     = //useless
 * | rel_abilities = //useless
 * | rel_talents   = //useless
 * | internalname  = //it seems that it's both the same lore_book_monsters_deadfire_archipelago
 * | location      = //here are all locations enlisted
 * | guid          = //useless

Arawn76 (talk) 21:43, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

The whole book/journal/document categorization seems a bit trivial, so I don't really have much to say about that - but I do have opinions about the merging of poe1/poe2 pages, so excuse me if this seems a bit out of place. This is regarding the example above, and changes to Monsters of the Deadfire Archipelago (book). It would've been better just to make a sandboxed example instead of editing an existing page. If you didn't know already, you can do this by creating a page under your user page, for example User:Arawn76/Some page here

In most cases, I think that items that exist in both games should always have their own pages. This is especially true for things that clearly differ, like weapons and armor. For books and documents, while they are for the most part the same, fields like item id, value, locations and even the content in some cases can differ. Given that these items have little importance in terms of contribution to gameplay, it does irk me to have two different pages - but the easiest solution is still just to have two pages, and link them with a disambigmsg. However, there's no harm in discussing the possibility of having one article in these cases. What you've put forward I think isn't the way to go. The infoboxes shouldn't be a what-fits-best sort of case, the item infobox for poe1 and poe2 should always contain the data from that specific game, even if there are some overlap. Here are my suggestions: Given this, I have two possible thoughts as to a solution: Join pages, including both infoboxes *without* merging data, but hide one of the infoboxes using. This way, you still get the auto categories, and cargo entries - and still have one infobox. I was going to made a dedicated page for the book The Midwife's Memoirs, for poe2 - but I too am guilty of editing public pages for testing, and have made an example of this idea there.
 * Don't try to mush together the infoboxes, this ends up polluting cargo and I don't think has any benefit other than preventing duplicated data.
 * Never have two infoboxes on one page. I've seen cases where this has happened, and it never looks good. If this ever needs to happen, enclosing the infoboxes in a div  helps a bit, but generally if you're doing this you might as well have two pages.
 * Solution 1

I've also used this method in some of the poe2 soulbound items, like Seeker's Fang, where I've substituted the default soulbound table that is generated by Template:Soulbound upgrade with my own - which is a bit naughty, but necessary so that the data from the item is added to the cargo table, and can be still queried.

This is a quick and dirty solution as a middle ground between fully merging data and having split pages, though it's not perfect in the slightest. There will be vardefine overlaps (depending on where you put the infobox), meaning you'll be forced to use the vardefine from the last infobox template in  (even though many poe1 pages still have the locations outside the infobox). Or, you can duplicate/copy/cut the locations list to sit outside of the infobox instead of using a variable - not a good idea. Of course there's the main problem with this solution, where a user won't see any of the data from the hidden infobox.

A more ideal solution to this, instead of trying to mash the data together, would be to create a infobox stack, a template where you pass the data from both inboxes to it, and it draws an infobox based on both data sets. Internally, the template would construct and call both actual infobox templates, therefore still defining the data for each individual cargo table to use, as well as separate vardefines for use on the page. It would group data that is identical across both infoboxes, and display data that is different in it's own section. This wouldn't require that much work, and would really only be appropriate for items like books and stuff, where the differences between them are minimal. You would have to pass the data itself instead of the infoboxes, as parsing through the result of an infobox isn't going to get you anywhere.
 * Solution 2

A huge issue with this solution is the fact that it needs some sort of standard of data and styling between both infoboxes. Just thinking about the potential problems it might have in this regard makes me question even going through the effort.

Anyway here, an example:

I reckon it's probably too much to worry about, so for now I'm still leaning towards duplicated articles for each item.

Heya, that's ok. I've tried that example after you wrote the Midwife's Memoire for poe2, which was giving me some thoughts. Think the solution with hiding one do i like most. Specially that the book appears in both categories. Reason why i like to discuss this is the situation that several pages from poe1 and poe2 allready collide and the solution seems to avoide actual and further collisions. The solution with Midwife's Memoirs seems to be better informativ, you only need to edit one page without need to sync the other and it avoids duplicate pages. Arawn76 (talk) 12:51, 1 December 2018 (UTC)