It seems like all of the definitions that have more that one line now have a "/" at the end of each line.

If we can make this go away, it would be nice. If not, it's not a big deal

This is a suggestion that we were trying because some users were not able to clearly tell whether there was an intentional linebreak at the end of a long line indicating a separate definition for a separate reading, in the official definitions. But perhaps it is not worth having slashes everywhere. What do y'all think?

i ain't diggin' it

You could go back to having commas at the intentional linebreaks. These are much less jarring, yet still help us parse the definitions.

Personally, I really prefer if there is some way to distinguish the different definitions. Context is not always enough, and it is very slow to judge.

I think it should be better to be quite cautious before changing suddenly the look of the definition in bulk...
In my opinion everything that changes suddenly the format is quite disturbing.

I personally use a format like that

. contorno, profilo
. ampio, largo, esteso
. espandere

and you can easily guess how disturbing could be to find now a slash at the end of each line, really too much signs...

Of course I'm used to "my" format since a long time, but I have to say that I find it pretty clear and "not destracting" at all, in a word the best way to clearly separate each different meaning using the less signs I can.

But when I do some correction, or enter some new definition in the baller section I prefer to use something like that

contorno, profilo; ampio, largo, esteso; espandere

and I normally use the intentional linebreak only in case of different pronounce of the same character

leaving everybody free to edit (if they want it) just as they prefer...

I also think that commas should separate similar meanings (or pronunciations), whereas semicolons should separate dissimilar meanings (or pronunciations). However, the current (opposite) usage of commas and semicolons has prevailed for a long time here and I also don't like large, sudden changes.

BTW, what does "baller" mean and what is a "baller section"?

I actually like the /. Much clearer.

I would suggest to leave it as it is, which is the line break. We had put some effort into this and I'm afraid that readability may decrease in German, if slashes are used instead of line break. In the German definitions slashes are often used between somebody/something; comma are also used quite often between enumerations and in sentence like definitions. German uses much more commas than English and it took me some effort to change back ";" to "," when a script changed this about one or two years ago. So please don't change it, at least not for the German definitions.

Nick,
Could you please post an example of each type so that we can see what we are "voting" on. I have found the parsing with commas and semicolons in the past to be confusing, so I am inclined to prefer "/" but wanted to be sure we are all talking about the same thing.

Is it feasible to put bullet points at the start of each line, like laurenziano suggested?

I don't mean to propose my personal formatting style as the best, even though I could say why I don't like slashes in end of line, this is not too much important..

The fact is that.., I think that one of the (many, and very good indeed) points of skritter is the freedom of any user to edit each word or character as he prefer.
I consider this feature very important because one can change the definition, even more times, according with the development of his studies; in other words, something that is good now can be no more, or less good in a different stage of learning; you can find new relationship, new hints, new links with other expressions; I suspect all this work could be strongly useful for the procedure of learning such a difficult language.
The possibility of editing is also given to the format; if you don't like semicolons you can change and use commas, if you want to add a line or a dot in the beginning of line you can, if you want using italics or bold, you can; I remember in the first times I was using skritter I used slash to separate different meaning, then I found out that (for me) it was much clearer using a simple dot in the beginning of each new line, corresponding to a different meaning. In my opinione even this "work" is not a waste of time, on the contrary, something that make your brain "spin" and find new solutions, even grafical or semantical.
That's why I consider very important to mantain this freedom of changing the things, for everybody, and in every moment.
Introducing something that changes the things, suddenly, in bulk, may heavily interfere with the variety of some possible solution.
This is not a question to solve with a pole, because everyone should have this freedom to find its own solution.
I guess, for instance, that laguages that may have longer words (and longer lines!) could find more problems; and what is worse, you cannot edit these slashes; in fact they simply don't appear in the edit box; you can't do nothing but throwing away the new lines.
I think the best solution would be leaving everything as it is, or, at least, letting the usage of these slashes as an option.

I also have to replay to the previous post of Dependable Skeleton; a "baller" is simply someone who (for a given language) makes new definition, or in some cases correct existing ones (and that can be corrected by other ballers); hope I've said it not too much wrongly..

deeply apologize for the lenght of this post, and the quality of my English too..

Michele.

了: le5, liao3, liao4
Here's the definition format with the newlines marked with ¶

(particle for a new situation or completed action)¶
finish; understand; clear¶
observe

Proposals on the table include:

0) Slashes
(particle for a new situation or completed action) /
finish; understand; clear /
observe

1) Commas
(particle for a new situation or completed action),
finish; understand; clear,
observe

2) Pipes
(particle for a new situation or completed action) |
finish; understand; clear |
observe

3) Bullets (•, ◦, ‣ , or ∙)
• (particle for a new situation or completed action)
• finish; understand; clear
• observe

4) Numbers
1. (particle for a new situation or completed action)
2. finish; understand; clear
3. observe

5) Bullets or numbers and commas
• (particle for a new situation or completed action),
• finish; understand; clear,
• observe

6) Nothing
(particle for a new situation or completed action)
finish; understand; clear
observe

I'm kind of digging 1 and 3. What do y'all think?

I think one of the best qualities of Skritter is the exact opposite of what you say: I do not want to customize each and every entry in my vocabulary, and I don't need to, since all words are kept in a central dictionary. This leaves more time to actually study.
Regarding the formatting, I don't see why anyone would prefer anything but standard dictionary style notation... A semi-colon dividing each separate meaning.

I like bullets. If people are that opposed to change maybe you could just add an extra space to widen the margins?

If there is not much of a problem maybe it would be a good idea to make this a poll on the front page. Probably a lot of users don't even go to the forum.

Laspimon, if you don't like to edit the definitions you find in the "central dictionary", well, for me it's OK, and that's exactly what would happen if things remain as they are (just as I'm strongly asking!)
But I also think that everyone should have the same freedom (or even right) of not having to edit again definitions that has changed (for an imposed bulk change) on what he may already have changed for many and many itemes since a long time, right?

I repeat myself; the problem is not one of direct "democracy", the point is: "not forcing anyome to change things already done".

As there was here the freedom of editing, many, or few people can have chosen to use this freedom, and I don't see why should they be compelled to work again on many words, and this time, not for his free choice, in this case really wasting his time...

I personally don't care what symbol you use, but the only benefit of this is for Skritter's default definitions. I don't particular want my thousands of hand written definitions to have random /'s in them, or any other character. Either hard code it into the default definition, or make it otherwise only apply to the default definitions.

@Laurenziano, I agree with everything you have said! I change my definitions to reflect the parts of speech definitions that is in Pleco's ABC dictionary. One day I want to get to the stage where all my definitions are in Chinese.

@Nick, just to clear up a slight fear I might have because of Laspinon and Laurenziano's comments. Could you please confirm that a) personal definitions won't be affected by these proposed changes b) we will still be able to edit personal definitions .

We can make it so that custom definitions do not have this formatted applied, yes.

Excellent! Thanks for clarifying that Nick!

Nick,
0) as I said before slash is used in German for other purpose,
1) please don't do that!!!!!!!!!!!!
We might come back to the same mess as before. Firstly, the comma is used for enumerations within a definition and not between definitions. Last time, when we decided to move away from comma to CR, we had an intermediate step with ";" which lead to a lot of ; within definitions. It took me quite some work to correct it and as Laurenziano said you can do this once, but one would not be willing to waste his time for a second time.
5) The same.
Please consider very carefully, especially make your judgement not only based on English standard definitions, but also on other languages and "compatibility" with user definitions. I strongly support Laurenziano's point of view, so you have already 2 Ballers proposing "do nothing".

I really like option 3. This won't conflict with any other use of punctuation. Also, I like the separator at the start of the definition rather than at the end.

What happens when a single definition has a linewrap? Will the second line start under the bullet point, or be aligned with the text above it?

I'm still not diggin' the /

I like 3. Give each variant or discrete definition its own line and accent with a bullet. Much better than strings with commas and semicolons, in my view.

"We can make it so that custom definitions do not have this formatted applied, yes. "

Super! Thanks.

Let's try 3 (bullets for accenting intentional newlines) for default definitions only. Custom definitions won't show the bullets, so if you edit a default definition that includes them, they'll disappear. If it turns up other problems, we'll consider getting rid of them, but it sounds like they're all-around better than slashes. We'll work on this soon.

Yay for 3

Three cheers for 3!
:)

Okay--I've uploaded the change. Give it a shot and let me know what's what.

Love it.

I've tried just a few items..

it looks like my custom definition are STILL affected by the new change, in fact now I have double dots for each line, my old little dots and the new big ones before them...

If i try to edit, nothing appear to be cancelled, then, coming back to the study screen, the big bullet disappear, BUT, if I go back to a couple of items, then I go forward, the bullets come back again...

do custom definitions should no more be affected anyway?

Not just you laurenziano :p.

I see what I did. Okay, try it now.

Great, thanks !

this morning just tried something... seems now everything works fine..

Nick, thank you so much!

I don't see any bullets in the iOS app. I cleared local data and synced again, but the definitions still look the same.

Right--the iOS app won't display this change. The text formatting over there is entirely different and has its own blasted complexities--I'd rather not try implementing it there, but if people really like it on the web, I might.

+1 people. I really like it on the web (and I used the web version just to say that).

I do hope something similar can be put in iOS some day because it is even less clear on a small screen-width when a newline is intentional...