2. Identifying
document fragments for translation is another instance of the
same problem of associating metadata with document fragments *across edits*.
Citations, content-translation, comments-as-documentation, authorship
information, maintaining-association-between-translated-fragments, etc. are
all different instances of this problem. Translate extension seems to be
using comments in wikitext markup as one way to maintain this
cross-edit-association. Maybe there is value in thinking about this problem
broadly.
Definitely. As we have discussed earlier, the definition of what is a
"breaking change" does vary between the different use cases, and in
fact is left to a humans (translation admins) to decide in the page
translation feature. But the other approach of each tool implementing
it from scratch is not ideal either.
Slightly, but not entirely tangentially, here are some old notes of mine
about metadata markup. Don't get hung up on the specific form of the
syntax. And, I am also not proposing that we change cite to use that new
markup ... I am mostly noting that cite is not "that special" in terms
of this model of metadata annotations on dom nodes.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSastry_%28WMF%29/Notes/Wikitext#Core_i…
I have not updated these notes for over a year now ... so, it might be
dusty in there ..
Subbu.