And if the line break after the /ref tag adds a space
it's no problem
since that's usually intended anyway.
Uhhh, no. This is a very very very bad assumption. At least 80% of my refs
do NOT appear in a place where a break is appropriate.
I don't like this idea much, it seems likely to
make the references a
lot more "fragile" than they currently are.
I can't imagine a LESS stable system than the one we have currently! One
missplaced char in the tags and the rest of the article disappears!
There's a basic rule here that is best known in the computer industry:
longer code contains more errors. By separating the ref "markers" from the
ref "body" the main article text becomes smaller and easier to read. This
will lead to LESS errors with refs. It will also mean that cutting and
pasting will not lead to the sorts of errors we see today where someone
moves a para containing a placeholder to an earlier ref and the entire ref
system stops working again.
If you've referenced a large
block of text this way then one could easily wind up cutting and pasting
chunks that might break the citations, and it goes back to the {{ref}}
template's old problem of having to change two separate sections of the
article when adding or removing a reference.
This is a valid concern, but was the problem worse than the terrible mess we
have now?
I like the current system because it's so
"atomic"; a reference's text
lives in just one location
I'm not sure this is any different. If I use one ref in a couple of places
in my article (quite common) then you end up with one body text and several
pointers to it. The only different here is that ALL body text would be
pointers -- as an option, of course.
It seems to me the only reason this doesn't work now is because the original
ref body must appear before all references to it. If this were changed one
could do refs any way they want, as well as fixing the problem with editing.
Maury