[WikiEN-l] Ok, so about that ISBN template...

[maru dubshinki]

On 8/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now that I've read the reasoning
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_July_9)...
>
> Here's the deal. I created this ISBN template {{ISBN}} which does
> nothing very exciting. It simply substitutes the text "ISBN {{{1}}}".
> However, my reasoning for creating it seemed sound: to provide an
> abstraction layer so users don't have to learn the rather arbitrary
> syntax that Wikipedia uses to deal with ISBN codes. Instead, they can
> use the same syntax they use everywhere: {{template name|argument}}.
>
> Is this a bad idea? Personally, I find the ISBN markup extremely
> arbitrary and maybe not that well thought out. We apparently only
> allow pure ISBN numbers, with no hyphens, spaces or slashes, although
> they are usually presented that way in other contexts. By wrappering
> this syntax in standard template syntax, we would clear the way for a
> future, more forgiving ISBN syntax to be implemented.
....
>
> Steve

I'm not sure what you're complaining about here. I've never had any
problems with ISBN syntax, and definitely no problems with spaces,
slashes or hyphens; ex, [[Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from
Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century]]'s ISBN link works fine
even with hyphens in it.

~maru