Steve Bennett wrote:
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.
Can you elaborate on that? What exactly is your proposal, because
anything that involves typing in numbers manually sounds like a
terrible idea, at first glance.
The proposal is that a new reference is added the same way as now, but
replaced at save-time with a number. All references are re-numbered at
save-time so they start at 1 and don't skip numbers.
Currently, if you want to re-insert a second link to an existing
reference, you have to hunt down its name (or worse, first assign one
yourself, for which you would potentially have to know the other names
in use so yours doesn't clash with them). Ideally you should only need
to look at the (rendered) References section to get the number, and then
type something like [1] to insert it.
I find your statement "anything that involves typing in numbers manually
sounds like a terrible idea" amazing -- does that mean you find "<ref
name='blah'/>" easier to type than "[1]"?
That's
another possibility, of course -- although I would still contend
that something like [1], or even if it needs to be [ref:1], is much
better (easier to read, easier to ignore, easier to type, easier to type
without mistakes) than <ref name="ref1"/>.
Still a problem if you have to add the references to a references
section (bad if you're doing section editing).
As explained above, you never need to /add/ a reference to the
references section (unless you want to add one without a link inline in
the text; which, by the way, the current system doesn't allow, which
makes for extremely ugly formatting in many References sections).
However, one should be able to /edit/ the references in the References
section, because that's where they are.
Timwi