Greetings. I'm a Unix/Linux programmer who has been active in en:WP for
some time. I recently used a modified pywikipedia tool to create
templates for flag icon templates such as {{flag|USA}} (displays small
flag with text link to country's page).
I have code which I will upload shortly for a footnote/References tool.
It converts various footnotes to [[Wikipedia:Footnote3]] format
([[Template:Ref]]/[[Template:Note]]). It converts inline external links
to Footnote3 links, and makes matching entries in the References section,
with an attempt to get a Title by extracting a <title> entry through the
URL. Testing has revealed some needed adjustments before release.
A sample modification is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:SEWilco/Sandbox&diff=183…
Note that only five of the numbered References had been manually created
before the bot ran.
Discussion of the syntax being used is at
[[Wikipedia_talk:Footnote3#Footnotes_vs._inline_web_references]]
Summary of bot and future direction is at
[[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Wikicite#Citations_bot]]
(Wiki links for your cut and paste enjoyment. If there is a WP-enabled
mail tool do let me know.)