Nicolas Weeger wrote:
I was wondering whether it would be possible or not to have extended {{msg:}} syntax which could include parameters.
Yes, of course this would be possible. And of course people have already had this idea. It's just that nobody has gotten around to actually coding it yet.
I imagine this would require some detailed specification and planning before implementation, or else we run into flexibility problems later.
For instance, an obvious solution would be to have $1, $2, etc. in the template. However, once you think about it, you realise that this is stupid because (a) you can only have ten parameters, unless you come up with some complicated syntax to specify whether $10 is supposed to mean [$1] + 0 or [$10]; (b) you can't easily obsolete a parameter you no longer need, because it would shift all the other parameters to other names; (c) it simply doesn't tell you what they mean (d) various other reasons
I suppose a much better idea would be key-value pairs, e.g. {{msg:Template|name=Robert E. Lee|born=19.01.1807|died=12.10.1870}} and then using {$name}, {$born}, {$died} in the MediaWiki text.
This is still rather unflexible because it doesn't allow for (a) default values if a parameter isn't specified (b) conditional inclusion of stuff (e.g. a table row) (c) lists/arrays
It is difficult to come up with a use for the latter, but the former two are very important.
It only gets more and more complicated. :)
Timwi