On 6/23/06, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
Rendering foo--boo as an endash would be inappropriate, even if the editor intended an endash, anyway. Endashes are not meant to be used as hyphens, and should have a space on either side of them.
Ok, well, imagine foo=1900 and boo=1910.
Or maybe I'm confusing Wikipedia and MediaWiki here - your solution is perhaps not bad for MediaWiki, switchable by individual site admins. But for Wikipedia it's a bad idea.
I'm not sure I see how something good for MediaWiki is bad for Wikipedia, in this case. Could you elaborate on the difference as it relates to this issue?
I'm thinking flexibility in the software is generally a good thing, as different sites have different needs. Wikipedia, on the other hand, has one fairly well established set of needs.
Of course, considering the miniscule differences between hyphens and endashes, I'm not sure endashes really need to be addressed for general visual formatting purposes. I'm sure there are some strict endash fans who will disagree vehemently with me, though.
Yeah I'd like to hear more about where en-dashes should be used. If it's just for the date range thing, then probably a bot could look for people mistakenly using emdashes or hyphens in those cases. A much less frequent occurrence than people using -- for emdashes currently.
Steve