[WikiEN-l] Suggestion on how referencing system could be improved

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Thomas Larsen <larsen.thomas.h at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The current <ref>...</ref>...<references/> system produces nice
> references, but it is flawed--all the text contained in a given
> reference appears in the text that the reference is linked from. For
> example:
[snip]
> Once way I could conceive of correcting the problem is to have a
> reference tag that provides only a _link_ to the note via a label and
> another type of reference tag that actually _defines_ and _displays_
> the note. For example:
[snip]

Thats a lot like what we used to do, the problem is that references
were *constantly* orphaned, scrambled, etc.  The references were often
nonsense.

My view is that the current behavior is bad mostly because it makes it
very hard to read the text in edit, you get this wall of meaningless
markup.

Instead I propose: Have javascript mediate the edit box so that inline
references are converted to little red [R] text,  moving your cursor
into the [R] area by clicking or arrowkeying causes it to expand to
display the full reference.  You can add references by simply typing
them like normal and then they'll collapse when you navigate away, or
you can press some "insert reference" button that pops up a dialog
that asks for the relevant information which then types the completed
reference for you.

This type of hiding could also be applied to other common inline
markup and dramatically improve usability.

This type of edit box mediation has been done by other edit-helper
userscripts, so it's certainly possible.

Thoughts?