I would like to extend the syntax of the <ref> tag (Cite extension), in
order to deal with footnotes that are spread on several transcluded
pages. Since the Cite extension is widely used, I guess I better ask
here first.
Here is an illustration of the problem :
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Robert_the_Bruce_and_the_struggle_for_Sc…
On the bottom of the scan you can see the second half of a footnote.
That footnote begins at the previous page :
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Robert_the_Bruce_and_the_struggle_for_Sc…
Wikisourcers currently have no way to deal with these cases in a clean
way. I have written a patch for this (the code is here :
http://dpaste.org/QOMH/ ). This patch extends the "ref" syntax by adding
a "follow" parameter, like this :
<ref follow="foo">bar</ref>
After two pages are transcluded, the wikitext passed to the parser will
look like this :
blah blah blah
blah blah blah<ref name="note1">beginning of note 1</ref>
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
blah blah blah<ref follow="note1">end of note</ref>
blah blah blah
This wikitext is rendered as a single footnote, located in the text at
the position of the parent <ref>. If the parent <ref> is not found (as
is the case when you render only the second page), then the text inside
the tag is rendered at the beginning of the list of references, with no
number and no link.
does this make sense ?
Thomas