Template talk:Long dash

Is it possible to achieve this?

Is it actually possible to create a 3-em dash that looks OK to everyone? User:SMcCandlish thinks the kerned version looks bad in Firefox under MacOS X. If I look at his unkerned version, in either Firefox or Safari, I see three m-dashes with little spaces between them, like this: ——— (vector skin, default fonts). Is this resolvable? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:44, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can use U+2E3B (⸻) like I tried to do (in revision 589000233 you just reverted) but that depends on font support. So you trade one problem for a different one. So I think, in short, the answer is "no"—you will always be able to find some conditions under which it "doesn't look right" to someone. ⇔ ChristTrekker 20:24, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this, and for your attempt to improve the template (which is little used anyway). Does the template as it stands produce a "wrong" result for you (it looks good to me, MacOS 10.6.8, Safari 5.1.10)? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like one extra-long dash in the two browsers I've tried. Not quite as long as U+2E3B does, but again, that depends on the font support and the design of the characters. I always include that char in the fonts I design. ⇔ ChristTrekker 14:39, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CS1

I'm curious what the dashes look like when using CS1 templates:

Cook, Nicholas (1987). A Guide to Musical Analysis. Oxford University Press.
Cook, Nicholas (1998). Music: A Very Short Introduction'. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
Cook, Nicholas; Everist, Mark (1999). Rethinking Music. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)

-- Gadget850^talk 15:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm dogged by the feeling that what a user sees is based on choice of fonts, browser options or whatever, rather than any usefully reproducible result. The author-mask parameter in {{cite book}} produces a bad result for me (three slightly spaced em-dashes); I think that may have been what originally caused me to create this alternative. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:27, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's ugly for me when it's this way.

So for some viewers, it looks like ass one way, and for the other viewers it looks like ass the other way. The way I favor is the standards-compliant way. Hmmmm, I think I'm obviously right in this situation, and the people who need ugly hacks to get it to look good should just fix their systems (and/or Wikimedia should add it to their Web fonts). —{{u|Goldenshimmer}}|✝️|ze/zer|😹|T/C|☮️|John15:12|🍂 00:24, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the CSS hack should be obsolete now

Noto fonts are now ubiquitous in modern versions of many operating systems. Can we switch to using the proper Unicode character now, instead of a hack that produces a bumpy rasterization? 177.249.161.44 (talk) 13:29, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]