[Wikitech-l] proposal to extend the ref tag syntax

Sorry, I forgot a topic ; reposting the previous message: I would like to extend the syntax of the <ref> tag (Cite extension), in order to deal with footnotes that are spread on several transcluded pages. Since the Cite extension is widely used, I guess I better ask here first. Here is an illustration of the problem : http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Robert_the_Bruce_and_the_struggle_for_Sc… On the bottom of the scan you can see the second half of a footnote. That footnote begins at the previous page : http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Robert_the_Bruce_and_the_struggle_for_Sc… Wikisourcers currently have no way to deal with these cases in a clean way. I have written a patch for this (the code is here : http://dpaste.org/QOMH/ ). This patch extends the "ref" syntax by adding a "follow" parameter, like this : <ref follow="foo">bar</ref> After two pages are transcluded, the wikitext passed to the parser will look like this : blah blah blah blah blah blah<ref name="note1">beginning of note 1</ref> blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah<ref follow="note1">end of note</ref> blah blah blah This wikitext is rendered as a single footnote, located in the text at the position of the parent <ref>. If the parent <ref> is not found (as is the case when you render only the second page), then the text inside the tag is rendered at the beginning of the list of references, with no number and no link. does this make sense ? Thomas