Template talk:Flat

Merge with {{music|flat}}

The "music" template has been around a lot longer. It wouldn't be a big deal, but the two templates depict the symbol slightly differently. DavidRF (talk) 20:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

They look totally identical to me: ♭♭. More extra work and extra bytecount to type the "music|" part. This one is good shorthand. BTW, I tried just typing the actual symbol ♭, but its font is too large and creates extra space between lines. Sharp is the same way. Obviously the wiki code for these templates reduces the font size. There is a problem with this character, though: it adds an extra space before the flat sign. Sharp doesn't. Example: G♭ minor, G♯ minor. Makes displays look really crappy. However, what worries me is both these characters are HTML 5.0. If you have an older 4.0 compliant browser, as many readers do, the symbol will display as a question mark or a square or blob or somesuch thing. I would therefore suggest refrain from using ANY of the flat or sharp templates and just type the word: G-flat minor. The convention is to put a dash between the letter key and the word "flat" or "sharp", with no spaces. I see people do mass changes on pages that have the word spelled out, to the symbol template (always {{music|flat}}, not {{flat}}); bad idea IMO, for compatibility. LisztianEndeavors (talk) 22:31, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

{{flat}} and {{music|flat}} produce exactly the same output because they are the same: {{flat}} calls {{music|flat}}. I can't see a manually typed symbol ♭ as too big; here, it looks the same. Similarly, I can't see the perceived extra space before a flat sign. Maybe that depends on the font used in the browser, maybe it's an optical illusion based on the different geometry of the two signs – the sharp has protruding bits to the left, the flat doesn't. I don't think these characters rely on HTML5; they're just quite ordinary UNICODE characters, and they've been around for some time. I too find the habit of some editors going around and changing spelled-out names to symbols quite irritating and annoying, not so much for compatibility but for searchability: how can I search in a long list of compositions for specific keys? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:26, 29 January 2020 (UTC)