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

[Tim Starling]

Steve Bennett 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.
[...]

You're allowed hyphens but not slashes. Are ISBNs sometimes written with 
slashes? If so, we'll add that to the character list. We have to be 
fairly conservative with the regular expression when we're detecting 
things in plain text. I don't think there's any need to introduce a new 
"abstract" syntax before we can make that change.

-- Tim Starling