I don't edit as much as I did in years past, and my memory is obviously
feeble, as I find that I'm often making mistakes with subst'ing.
Worse, the explosion of parser functions has made the templates incredibly
complex. Subst'ing is increasingly less "user friendly".
It's hard to document ("subst" doesn't seem to translate well or mean
anything to many folks), harder to remember, and hardest to type:
{{subst:TEMPLATE|P1|P2|subst=subst:}}
I'm often forgetting that final parameter, and conscientiously have to edit
again. Others don't bother subst'ing at all!
Is there a solution proposed anywhere already?
===
If not, here's my rough idea:
Leading {{:: -- easy to type (already holding the shift key) -- same as
{{subst: -- only happens in edit parsing, no change to database.
Leading {{## -- easy to type (already holding the shift key) -- obviously
must be different than {{:: -- used inside templates, tells the edit
parsing to "subst:" only subst'ing, otherwise ignored and treated as
concatenation. Same as C pre-processing operator.
Are these already in use?
Would be a heck of a lot easier to document....