Some more thoughts#
The great thing about Wikipedia references and one which I will try to reproduce whether or not creole makes it part of the spec is the ability to automatically list all the references at the end of the page.
Logically a reference placer ought to be something in the form:-
[Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008|#]
Which on the face of it says: the text "bugs and ...." should be replaced by an empty internal reference or alternatively it could be thought to say "bugs and ...." should be replaced by a number (#). As this is what a reference is, I would suggest something like this.
There are then two additional problems:
- How to refer to the same reference a second time
- How to put a place holder for the list.
Now I suppose, if internal references are tied to headings as I suggested on the Intra Page Links then "=" is an unlikely symbol in the link (especially as it can't be used in the hyperlink).
So how about a naming convention:-
This is a some text about bugs[Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008|#=Bugs] ... This is more text with the same reference [#=Bugs] ... and this is yet another reference where I want to have the same reference[#=Bugs]
Which just leaves the question of how to trigger the creation of the reference table. Here are some suggestions:
1. [#] 2. [##]The first probably is ambiguous because if [#ref] means a link to http://www.example.com/thispage.htm#ref then [#] really means: "make a hyperlink to http://www.example.com/thispage.htm# i.e. the top of the page.
The second means "make a hyperlink to #" or "make a link to number" which if that were to produce a list of references with back links to the numbers/references would be quite logical:-
[^] Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008
[^] Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 20008
OK, I've now realised that
[Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008|#]Is illogical because '#' implies a reference to this page. But I now see it would be logical to have:-
[Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008|##] or alternatively:- [#Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008]And another as such there is no need for ##= so additional references should be done using the syntax:-
First reference[Bugs and how to find them, Isonomia 2008|##Bugs] Second reference[##Bugs] More reference to same reference [##Bugs] ==Refences== [##]
Footnotes#
Whilst I'm not a great fan of footnotes, it seems that references and footnotes need a similar notation. So given the list # & * I would propose a parallel footnote system:-Some text [This is a footnote|#*] or [This is a footnote|**] or some more text with alternative style [*This is another footnote]
<End of normal text>
==Footnotes== [**]
==References== [##]
After all this I quite like the [*footnote] and [#reference] style but there is nowhere to put the label, and [#text] is already used for internal references, so how about [**footnote] and if it requries a label use the syntax:-
[**Footnote=<Label>]which logically shrinks if the following references do not include the reference/footnote to the form:-
[**=<label>]or [##=<label>]
Yep. I think I have the proposal:
- References in the form: [##<reference>] (displayed as [1])
- References with label: [##<reference>=<label>]
- References to same labelled reference [##=<label>]
- Force creation of list of above reference [##]
- Footnotes in the form: [**<footnote>]
- Footnotes with labels as per references.
- Force creation of list of footnotes [**]
Isonomia -- 2008, Apr 28