This is the documentation page for the main data module for Module:category tree/poscatboiler, as well as for its submodules. Collectively, these modules handle generating the descriptions and categorization for almost all category pages. The only current exception is topic pages such as Category:en:Birds and Category:zh:State capitals of Germany, and the corresponding non-language-specific pages such as Category:Birds and Category:State capitals of Germany; these are handled by Module:category tree/topic cat.
Originally, there were a large number of Module:category tree implementations, of which Module:category tree/poscatboiler was only one. It originally handled part-of-speech categories like Category:French nouns and Category:German lemmas (and corresponding "umbrella" categories such as Category:Nouns by language and Category:Lemmas by language); hence the name. However, it has long since been generalized, and the name no longer describes its current use.
The main data module at Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data does not contain data itself, but rather imports the data from its submodules, and applies some post-processing.
subpages
list at the top of Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data.The poscatboiler system internally distinguishes the following types of categories:
LANG LABEL
(e.g. Category:French lemmas and Category:English learned borrowings from Late Latin). Here, LANG
is the name of a language, and LABEL
can be anything, but should generally describe a topic that can apply to multiple languages. Note that the language mentioned by LANG
must currently be a regular language, not an etymology-only language. (Etymology-only languages include lects such as Provençal, considered a variety of Occitan, and Biblical Hebrew, considered a variety of Hebrew. See here for the list of such lects.) Most language categories have an associated umbrella category; see below.LABEL by language
, and group all categories with the same label. Examples are Category:Lemmas by language and Category:Learned borrowings from Late Latin by language. Note that the label appears with an initial lowercase letter in a language category, but with an initial uppercase letter in an umbrella category, consistent with the general principle that category names are capitalized. Umbrella categories themselves are grouped into umbrella metacategories, which group related umbrella categories under a given high-level topic. Examples are Category:Lemmas subcategories by language (which groups umbrella categories describing different types of lemmas, such as Category:Nouns by language and Category:Interrogative adverbs by language) and Category:Terms derived from Proto-Indo-European roots (which groups umbrella categories describing terms derived from particular Proto-Indo-European roots, such as Category:Terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *preḱ- and Category:Terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰeh₂- (speak)). The names of umbrella metacategories are not standardized (although many end in subcategories by language
), and internally they are handled as raw categories; see below.
LANG phrasebook/AREA
(e.g. Category:English phrasebook/Health), whose umbrella category has the nonstandard name Phrasebooks by language/AREA
(e.g. Category:Phrasebooks by language/Health). Another example is categories of the form LANG terms borrowed back into LANG
, with a nonstandard umbrella category Category:Terms borrowed back into the same language. Both of these examples are handled by disabling the standard umbrella category support and listing the nonstandard umbrella category as an additional parent.by language
suffix; an example is Category:Terms borrowed from Latin, which groups categories of the form LANG terms borrowed from Latin
. There is special support for umbrella categories of this nature, so they do not need to be handled as described above for umbrella categories with nonstandard names.LANG LABEL
as regular language categories, but with the difference that the label in question applies only to a single language, rather than to all or a large group of languages. Examples are Category:Belarusian class 4c verbs, Category:Dutch separable verbs with bloot, and Category:Japanese kanji by kan'yōon reading. For these categories, it does not make sense to have a corresponding umbrella category.Under the hood, the poscatboiler system distinguishes two types of implementations for categories: individual labels (or individual raw categories), and handlers. Individual labels describe a single label, such as nouns
or refractory rhymes
. Similarly, an individual raw category describes a single raw category. Handlers, on the other hand, describe a whole class of similar labels or raw categories, e.g. labels of the form learned borrowings from SOURCE
where SOURCE
is any language or etymology language. Handlers are more powerful than individual labels, but require knowledge of Lua to implement.
A sample entry is as follows (in this case, found in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lemmas):
labels = { description = "{{{langname}}} terms that give attributes to nouns, extending their definitions.", parents = {"lemmas"}, umbrella_parents = "Lemmas subcategories by language", }
This generates the description and categorization for all categories of the form "LANG adjectives" (e.g. Category:English adjectives or Category:Norwegian Bokmål adjectives), as well as for the umbrella category Category:Adjectives by language.
The meanings of these fields are as follows:
description
field gives the description text that will appear when a user visits the category page. Here, {{{langname}}}
is automatically replaced with the name of the language in question. The text in this field is also used to generate the description of the umbrella category Category:Adjectives by language, by chopping off the {{{langname}}}
and capitalizing the next letter.parents
field gives the labels of the parent categories. For example, Category:English adjectives will have Category:English lemmas as its parent category, and Category:Norwegian Bokmål adjectives will have Category:Norwegian Bokmål lemmas as its parent category. The umbrella category Category:Adjectives by language will automatically be added as an additional parent.umbrella_parents
field specifies the parent category of the umbrella category Category:Adjectives by language (i.e. the umbrella metacategory which this page belongs to; see #Concepts above).The following fields are recognized for the object describing a label:
parents
name
and sort
. In the latter case, name
specifies the parent label name, while the sort
value specifies the sort key to use to sort it in that category. The default sort key is the category's label.breadcrumb
setting, as described below.)raw = true
to specify that the parent is a raw category.lang = "code"
to specify that the parent is a language category for the language code code
instead of the current language. Note that template substitutions happen in the lang
field; see #Template substitutions in field values below.lang = false
to specify that the parent is an umbrella category.is_label = true
and lang = "code"
to specify that the parent is a language category with the specified language code. Template substitutions happen in the lang
field, as above.is_label = true
and lang = false
to specify that the parent is an umbrella category.Category:
it is interpreted as a category outside the poscatboiler
system. It can still have its own sort key as usual.sc = "script_code"
to specify a script code for script-specific categories (e.g. Category:Pali nouns in Thai script) and/or args = {...}
to specify additional arguments, for categories implemented using a handler that accepts or requires additional arguments passed to {{auto cat}}
(e.g. a category like Category:Latin terms suffixed with -inus or Category:Okinawan language). Template substitutions happen in the values of both of these properties; see #Template substitutions in field values below.description
additional=
field described below, and put {{wikipedia}}
boxes in the topright=
field described below so that they are correctly right-aligned with the description. Template invocations and special template-like references such as {{{langname}}}
and {{{langcode}}}
will be expanded appropriately; see #Template substitutions in field values below.breadcrumb
name
and nocap
. In the latter case, name
specifies the breadcrumb text, while nocap
can be used to disable the automatic capitalization of the breadcrumb text that normally happens.displaytitle
{{DISPLAYTITLE:...}}
magic word (see mw:Help:Magic words). The value of this is either a string (which should be the formatted category title, without the preceding Category:
) or a Lua function to generate the formatted category title. A Lua function is most useful inside of a handler (see #Handlers below). The Lua function is passed two parameters, the raw category title (without the preceding Category:
) and the language object of the category's language (or nil
for umbrella categories), and should return the formatted category title (again without the preceding Category:
). If the value of this field is a string, template invocations and special template-like references such as {{{langname}}}
and {{{langcode}}}
will be expanded appropriately; see below. See Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/terms by etymology and Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific/nl for examples of using displaytitle=
.topright
{{wikipedia}}
and other similar boxes. Template invocations and special template-like references such as {{{langname}}}
and {{{langcode}}}
are expanded appropriately, just as with description=
; see #Template substitutions in field values below. Compare the preceding=
field, which is similar to topright=
but used for left-aligned text placed above the description.preceding
description=
field. The difference between the two is that description=
text will also be shown in the list of children categories shown on the parent category's page, while the preceding=
text will not. For this reason, use preceding=
instead of description=
for {{also}}
hatnotes and similar text, and keep description=
relatively short. Template invocations and special template-like references such as {{{langname}}}
and {{{langcode}}}
are expanded appropriately, just as with description=
; see #Template substitutions in field values below. Compare the topright=
field, which is similar to preceding=
but is right-aligned, placed above the edit and recent-entries boxes.additional
description=
field. The difference between the two is that description=
text will also be shown in the list of children categories shown on the parent category's page, while the additional=
text will not. For this reason, use additional=
instead of description=
for long explanatory notes, See also references and the like, and keep description=
relatively short. Template invocations and special template-like references such as {{{langname}}}
and {{{langcode}}}
are expanded appropriately, just as with description=
; see #Template substitutions in field values below.umbrella
false
to indicate that there is no umbrella category. The umbrella category is normally called "LABEL by language". For example, for adjectives, the umbrella category is named Category:Adjectives by language, and is a parent category (in addition to any categories specified using parents
) of Category:English adjectives, Category:French adjectives, Category:Norwegian Bokmål adjectives, and all other language-specific categories holding adjectives. This table contains the following fields:
name
umbrella = false
and list the nonstandard umbrella category as an additional parent (and add a raw-category entry for the umbrella category itself; see the implementation of categories like Category:English terms borrowed back into English for an example).description
description
field of the category itself by removing any {{{langname}}}
, {{{langcode}}}
or {{{langcat}}}
template parameter reference and capitalizing the remainder. Text is automatically added to the end indicating that this category is an umbrella category that only contains other categories, and does not contain pages describing terms.parents
Category:
prefix), a table with fields name
(the category name) and sort
(the sort key, as in the outer parents
field described above), or a list of either type of entity.breadcrumb
displaytitle
topright
topright=
field on regular category pages; see above.preceding
preceding=
field on regular category pages; see above.additional
additional=
field on regular category pages; see above.toc_template
, toc_template_full
umbrella_parents
parents
subfield of the umbrella
field. This typically specifies a single umbrella metacategory to which the page's corresponding umbrella page belongs; see #Concepts above). A separate field is provided for this because the umbrella's parent or parents always need to be given, whereas other umbrella properties can usually be defaulted. (In practice, you will find that most entries in a subpage of Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data do not explicitly specify the umbrella's parent. This is because a default value is supplied near the end of the "LABELS" section in which the entry is found.)toc_template
CODE-categoryTOC
, where CODE
is the language code of the category's language. (If no such template exists, no table of contents bar is displayed. If the category has no associated language, as with umbrella pages, the English-language table of contents bar is used.) For example, the category Category:Spanish interjections (and other Spanish-language categories) use Template:es-categoryTOC to display a Spanish-appropriate table of contents bar. (In the case of Spanish, this includes entries for Ñ and for acute-accented vowels such as Á and Ó.) To override this behavior, specify a template or a list of templates in toc_template
. The first template that exists will be used; if none of the specified templates exist, the regular behavior applies, i.e. the language-appropriate table of contents bar is selected.
{{{langcode}}}
(to specify the language code of the category's language) can be used in the template names; see below.false
to disable the table of contents bar.toc_template
value of {"{{{langcode}}}-rom-categoryTOC", "en-categoryTOC"
}, which first checks for a special Gothic-romanization-specific template Template:got-rom-categoryTOC (which in this case does exist), and falls back to the English-language table of contents template.toc_template_full
toc_template
but used for categories with large numbers of entries (specifically, more than 2,500 entries or 2,500 subcategories). If none of the specified templates exist, the templates listed in toc_template
are tried, and if none of them exist either, the default behavior applies. In this case, the default behavior is to use a language-appropriate "full" table of contents template named CODE-categoryTOC/full
, and if that doesn't exist, fall back to the regular table of contents template named CODE-categoryTOC
. An example of a "full" table of contents template is Template:es-categoryTOC/full, which shows links for all two-letter combinations and appears on pages such as Category:Spanish nouns, with over 50,000 entries.catfix
catfix()
function in Module:utilities on this page. The catfix()
function is used to ensure that page names in foreign scripts show up in the correct fonts and are linked to the correct language.
LANG
in pages of the form LANG LABEL
). If the category has no associated language, or if the setting catfix = false
is used, the catfix mechanism is not applied.catfix = false
is used, for example, on the romanizations
label (which holds Latin-script romanizations of foreign-script terms, rather than terms in the language's native script) and the terms with redundant transliterations
labels (which holds pages mentioning terms in the language in question with redundant transliterations). If this is omitted, for example, then pages in Category:Manchu romanizations will show up oriented vertically despite being in Latin script, and pages in Category:Cantonese terms with redundant transliterations will show up using a double-width font despite mostly not being Cantonese-language pages.catfix = "en"
is used for example on categories of the form Requests for translations into LANG
(see Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/entry maintenance) because these categories contain English pages need translations into a given language, rather than containing pages of that language.catfix=
will normally cause that language's table of contents page to display in place of the category's normal language, and setting a value of false
will normally cause the English table of contents page to display. In both cases, this behavior can be overridden by specifying the toc_template=
or toc_template_full=
fields.|hidden = true
|can_be_empty = true
Arbitrary template invocations can be inserted in the text of description
, parents
(both name and sort key), breadcrumb
, toc_template
and toc_template_full
values, and will be expanded appropriately. In addition, the following special template-like invocations are recognized and replaced by the equivalent text:
{{PAGENAME}}
{{{langname}}}
{{{langcode}}}
en
for English, de
for German). Not recognized in umbrella fields.{{{langcat}}}
Raw categories are treated similarly to regular labels. The main differences are:
raw_categories
table. The key is the full category name (rather than the label name, as in the case of language categories), and the value is a structure much like for language categories.umbrella
and umbrella_parents
fields are unnecessary and do nothing. If you want an umbrella category that groups several related raw categories, you should add the umbrella category yourself as an additional parent (and create a separate entry in the raw_categories
table for this umbrella category).See Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/modules for an example of a module with several labels and raw categories.
It is also possible to have handlers that can handle arbitrarily-formed labels and raw categories. There are two types of handlers:
<var>lang</var> <var>###</var>-syllable words
for any lang and ### (e.g. Category:English 3-syllable words), and <var>lang</var> learned borrowings from <var>source</var>
for any lang and source (e.g. Category:Spanish learned borrowings from Ancient Greek);Rhymes:<var>lang</var>/<var>rhyme</var>
for any lang and rhyme (e.g. Category:Rhymes:Polish/ajkɛ).Note that the difference between the two is that label handlers are used for categories prefixed with the language name (and associated umbrella categories, such as Category:3-syllable words by language and Category:Learned borrowings from Ancient Greek by language), while raw handlers are used for arbitrarily-named raw categories. Raw categories may have a language name or code in them (as in the example above), but it generally does not occur as a prefix.
As an example, the following is the label handler for the label terms coined by <var>coiner</var>
(such as Category:English terms coined by Lewis Carroll):
table.insert(handlers, function(data) local coiner = data.label:match("^terms coined by (.+)$") if coiner then return { description = "{{{langname}}} terms coined by " .. coiner .. ".", breadcrumb = coiner, umbrella = false, parents = {{ name = "coinages", sort = coiner, }}, } end end)
The handler checks if the passed-in label has a recognized form, and if so, returns an object that follows the same format as described above for directly-specified labels. In this case, the handler disables the umbrella category Terms coined by <var>coiner</var> by language
because most people coin words in only one language.
The handler is passed a single argument data
, which is an object containing the following fields:
label
: the label;lang
: the language object of the language at the beginning of the category, or nil
for no language (this happens with umbrella categories);sc
: the script code of the script mentioned in the category, if the category is of the form <var>lang</var> <var>label</var> in <var>script</var>
, or nil
otherwise;args
: a table of extra parameters passed to {{auto cat}}
.If the handler interprets the extra parameters passed as data.args
, it should return two values: a label object (as described above), and the value true
. Otherwise, an error will be thrown if any extra parameters are passed to {{auto cat}}
. An example of a handler that interprets the extra parameters is the affix-cat handler in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/terms by etymology, which supports {{auto cat}}
parameters |alt=
, |sort=
, |tr=
and |sc=
. The |alt=
parameter in particular is used to specify extra diacritics to display on the affix that forms part of the category name, as in categories such as Category:Latin terms suffixed with -inus (properly -īnus).
For further examples, see Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/terms by lexical property, Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/terms by script or Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/terms by etymology.
Raw handlers are similar to label handlers in that they also accept a single argument data
, but this object contains only the following fields:
category
: the raw category;args
: a table of extra parameters passed to {{auto cat}}
.Here, there is no language or script object passed in. If there is a language in the category name, it needs to be handled inside of the handler. For example, the following is the raw handler for categories of the form Varieties of <var>lang</var>
:
table.insert(raw_handlers, function(data) local langname = data.category:match("^Varieties of (.*)$") if langname then local lang = require("Module:languages").getByCanonicalName(langname) if lang then return { lang = lang:getCode(), description = "Categories containing terms in varieties of " .. lang:makeCategoryLink() .. " (regional, temporal, sociolectal, etc.).", parents = { "{{{langcat}}}", {name = "Language varieties", sort = langname}, }, breadcrumb = "Varieties", } end end end)
Note that if a handler is specified, the module should return a table holding both the label and handler data; see the above modules.
Support exists for labels and handlers that are specialized to particular languages. A typical label such as verbs
applies to many languages, but some categories have labels that are specialized to a particular language, e.g. Category:Belarusian class 4c verbs or Category:Dutch prefixed verbs with ver-. Here, the label class 4c verbs
is specific to Belarusian with a description and other properties only for this particular language, and similarly for the Dutch-specific label prefixed verbs with ver-
. Yet, it is desirable to integrate these categories into the poscatboiler hierarchy, so that e.g. breadcrumbs and other features are available. This can be done by creating a module such as Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific/be (for Belarusian) or Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific/nl (for Dutch), and specifying labels and/or handlers in the same fashion as is done for language-agnostic categories. See Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific/documentation for more information. Note that once you create a per-language module, you must add the language code to the langs_with_modules
table in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific listing all the languages with language-specific modules; otherwise, the corresponding categories won't be recognized.