On 8/15/06, Timwi <timwi(a)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.