On 05/09/06, Bill Clark <wclarkxoom(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> There doesn't seem to be any code to handle this currently for AD,
> which is why it didn't occur to me right off the bat. You're right
> though, and it should be included. I'm busy over the next few days
> but I can add this into the patch sometime this week (along with
> whatever other changes people suggest).
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It's been a vexed question on en:. I mentioned it
on wikien-l, you may
want to ask there for any missing features (though I can't think of
any past automatic conversion).
Thanks for the pointer; I've subscribed to that list.
I went ahead and started looking into adding AD/CE rewriting
functionality, and noticed something that might put a damper on those
plans.. AD or CE only ever appear in the right (display) portion of a
wikilinked date, as in:
... lasted from [[August 13]], [[10 BC]]–[[January 23]], [[15|AD 15]] ...
Both the current code and my patch would leave the date on the right
entirely alone, since it contains explicit display text. This makes
sense, since the editor actually went to the trouble of specifying how
to display the date, and we wouldn't want to thoughtlessly override
that.
So it seems we're left with three options:
1) Ignore wikilinked dates that contain explicit display text, leaving
them untouched.
2) Change all wikilinked dates and associated display text according
to user preferences.
3) Encourage a mass renaming of year articles from (e.g.) [[1984]] to
[[AD 1984]].
Even though option 3 is completely unrealistic, I mention it because
it actually makes the most sense (how did we get started having bare
numbers assumed to be a date by default, anyway?). That said, I think
option 2 is the best bet, so long as it's considered more important to
have consistent date formatting than to honor the display text put in
place by editors.
Note that this is already a problem on the current WP, since the
following won't display according to a user's preferences anyway:
[[March 21]], [[1974|1974]]
The current solution is to follow option 1, and that's what's already
in place in the patch I just submitted. I've posted some of this
discussion there as well (bug 7239) in case people would rather follow
up there.
I'm really really going to bed now and not going to work on this
anymore for a few days, I swear, so I'll get back to this later.
-Bill Clark