On 8/15/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Why? I can't think why. Of course, the software would have to automatically renumber them if references get deleted or moved around.
I said why in my last post:
The advantages of having the full reference in the text are that it works with section editing, and the ref doesn't break invisibly if someone transplants the section or whatever without thinking to move the refs as well. Trust me, that's constant and horrible with the {{ref}} style: I've had to spend half an hour or more on more than one occasion digging through page histories to figure out where the references disappeared.
I stressed the second point, but the first is important as well: to add something with a source, you have to either make two edits or do a full-page edit rather than a section edit, either of which is annoying. Both styles are imperfect; I would guess that Avar tried out the inline one because people complained about the flaws of the then existing ref-at-end style. I still prefer the inline style overall, if those are the only two choices, because you don't get horrible numbers of broken refs with that.