Template talk:Reference page/Archive 1

Page numbers next to note-letter in refs/footnotes section?
Is there any way to have the page numbers appear next to the letter of the note in the references/footnotes section rather than in the body beside the number?  Lara Love  02:23, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No; the display of stuff in the  (or Reflist) section is entirely determined by the core MediaWiki software.  There are alternative means, however. You may be looking for Ref harv (though I warn you that the Ref-based citation system is very geeky and a bit complicated.) —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 14:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Can we remove the space generated after the citation?
Note these examples (there are two examples total ) of citations. When the rp is used within a sentence or after a sentence, everything looks fine. However, if the citiation follows a fact within a parenthetical, there is additional space added by the template. Therefore, perhaps the space generated after the citation by the template can be removed, leaving the spacing to each individual editor? kilbad (talk) 02:02, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That seems reasonable to me. (And it may even have been my recent changes that added the space, if so I apologize.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 04:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. I love this template when compared with the alternative never-ending list of page references, so keep up the good work.  With regard to removing the space, I will defer that to someone else who edits templates frequently, as I am not sure how to do that. Thanks again! kilbad (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So will someone fix this spacing issue for us? kilbad (talk) 19:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I went ahead and removed the blank space. If you have any questions or concerns, please post them here. kilbad (talk) 22:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Making superscripts too long
The superscript links to the footnotes are already quite bulky, especially in controversial articles where some statements are followed by four or more three digit numbers. Rather than adding to the size of the footnote links, it would be better, IMO, to find a way to add the page numbers into the footnote itself. It also makes more sense from a data layout point of view. The other information about the reference (author, date, etc.) is in the footnote itself, so why should page numbers be in the footnote number instead of the footnote itself? Gronky 07:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Harvard referencing, which is used by journals all over the world, and is certainly a well-respect and -accepted referencing style in Wikipedia itself, puts the page numbers in the (sometimes superscripted, sometimes not) inline reference citations. I think you have picked a much, much larger fight that you think. :-)  The scientific community, who use Harvard referencing massively, do not seem to have any "data layout" problems with it. The underlying issue is not this template at all, which simply enables such citation styles with the presently rather technologically deficient   MediaWiki citation code.
 * This template isn't very frequently used, so the problem you envision isn't likely to arise much if at all. And frankly, how problematic could it really be?  Is there any serious difference between
 * Blah blah blah,[7][8][9][14][17][37][38][42][43][124] yack yack yack
 * and
 * Blah blah blah,[7][8][9][14]:23-25 [17][37][38][42][43][124] yack yack yack
 * ? I don't see one.
 * If rp ever became so broadly used that it was seen all over the place and was genuinely annoying, this would simply spur The Developers to fix  to be more useful, and a bot would do the conversion within a few days of the new features going live.  The rp template solves actual problems well-explained in its documentation.  A few extra inline characters are far, far preferable to a 400-character reference citation no one can read, or 50 redundant reference citations doubling the length of the page for no good reason; there isn't any problem adding page numbers to references directly inside , on a limited basis; as the documentation explains, the code simply isn't presently in place to allow one to cite a single reference at multiple specific pages or page ranges, without making either one kind of mess or the other, without using this template.  Again, as the template's own dox explain, page numbers normally should be in the body of the reference citation; rp is for a special case (and my quick review of "What links here" shows that it is not being abused and applied to other than that case).  No enmity intended at all, but I find it hard to take your objection as anything but a "what if it were abused" point, which leads me to cite WP:BEANS - we don't need to worry about things that are not demonstrably problematic. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 08:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem between the two examples you give is that the first can be collapsed if multiple numbers link to the same book (when someone fixes the reference system to allow this), but the latter can't. As for Harvard does X, Harvard journals probably don't try to write articles about Hugo Chavez with 100 authors :-)  I agree that this template isn't the problem, but it seems to be developing tools for heading down a wrong path, so I'd like to discuss this with the tool makers in these early stages. Gronky 09:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean by "the problem between" the two examples; do you believe the examples conflict with each other? Getting the developers to fix this problem would be great; I don't know any of them by name, myself, and Village pump (technical) doesn't seem to be particularly effective at getting anything fixed (maybe I didn't try long/hard enough).  As this template's dox say explicitly, it is intended that this template be replaced by better, and   whilst the code blob above has   To eliminate this confusion, please ensure that the sandbox has the desired code, and remove both of the code blobs above (whether they be correct or not). -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm confused now – which version do you recommend? (Perhaps I shouldn't use code "blobs"...) Sardanaphalus (talk) 20:21, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That's why we have a sandbox page and WP:TESTCASES. You put your proposed change in the sandbox version, and set up demonstrations at Template:Rp/testcases that show that not only does your proposal do the extra things that you want it to do, it is also not deleterious to current usage. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:53, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The &lt;nowiki&gt;...&lt;/nowiki&gt; does exist in this talk page "blob", but isn't escaped. To be clear, it should stay. Incidentally, I think that's way too much whitespace, and I've edited the sandbox accordingly. —WOFall (talk) 23:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I partially implemented the changes. Let me know if there is still something that needs to be fixed.  Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  18:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

The recent edit to this template seems to have a bug, forcing page numbers into the main article body, rather than appearing in the footnotes as they should. For an example, see Albert Einstein--Pharos (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This is the purpose of the template; one footnote per reference, with relevant page numbers marked at point of reference. I don't think the behaviour has changed. —WOFall (talk) 17:52, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The only edit in the last three years is . It did nothing to the template output. Footnotes are generated from whatever is between , but the documented usage of is to put the template after the closing  tag; that is to say, in the article text, not in the footnote. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:15, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Deprecate?
Shouldn't this be replaced with a "page=" parameter in most citations nowaday? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:17, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No. Did you read this template's documentation?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:13, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Potential replacement for
The new improvement to  proposed at WMDE Technical Wishes/Book referencing/Call for feedback (May 2018) would obviate the need for the template, as well as provide various other enhancements. The discussion is presently swamped by people who just don't like fully-inline citations and only want to use and page-bottom referencing, but this is a false dichotomy. The discussion isn't about which citation style is better (the answer to that is "it depends on the article"); the question is whether this feature would be good to have for referencing that is fully inline, and the answer is clearly "yes". I would be delighted if my old template was finally superseded by an actual (and more tidy) feature of MediaWiki itself. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:05, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

RP is not working
I am trying to use the RP template in some new editing, but right now it is not working. It does not list the page numbers. My previous uses, several years ago, are still working just fine. The documentation is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Rp. What is the problem and how can it be solved? Thank you. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 10:50, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems to be working as documented. You've got the ":5" after the ref number resulting from . --David Biddulph (talk) 11:09, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * You are correct. Everything is OK. My panic is averted. Thanks. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 11:21, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

RP can generate cite errors
If rp template is used after invoking ref by name, it will cause . Several of these currently appear in the ref list of Second French intervention in Mexico. Dl2000 (talk) 15:24, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Just for the record (this is old), that was not related to . It was caused by the article transcluding, which named and defined references like "Niox". Those same references were again defined in the article and named the same, instead of just referring to them with, e.g.,  or  . This is a general problem with transcluding something that has references –  you have to make sure not to duplicate reference names. Of course, if you refer to those sources from the template and someone edits the template cites, they can break anything that transcludes them. ( fixed the article in December 2019 in the way I noted.) —[  Alan M 1  (talk) ]— 20:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Dashes and en dashes
Is there some reason that dashes are not being converted to en dashes, as is done by the citation modules? It's certainly confusing, and makes articles harder to write in the VE. Please therefore kindly copy Template:rp/sandbox to Template:rp. I synced it beforehand. Test cases at. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) please always ping! 09:31, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Mdaniels5757 (talk) 20:05, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

FYI: coming down the pipeline
Hello, I thought everyone who finds use for this template, and works on it, should know that an integrated alternative has been created within MediaWiki itself during the past several years, thanks to the stalwart and heroic developer team:

...and presumably, one glorious day, will be available here as an option on enwiki. -- ‿Ꞅ truthious 𝔹 andersnatch ͡ &#124;℡&#124; 19:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Broken
This template is broken: it is now appearing as "Template:Rp" in articles. See Latinx for an example. Crossroads -talk- 19:04, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Seems fixed now somehow. Will comment at Template talk:R. Crossroads -talk- 19:18, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * This was unrelated to rp and was caused by a post-expand limit condition caused by a (former) bug in r which kept most templates from expanding on that page. Long fixed.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Request quote parameter
I'd like to be able to include a pull-quote, in the manner of 's quote parameter. This would probably require each such use of rp to generate a new-numbered entry in the citation list, with "ibid" referring back to the full entry at the beginning of the group. Jeh (talk) 05:10, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The template has no connection with the reference list. Yes, it's normally placed after a, but there is no association between the two other than the coincidence of being physically adjacent. As regards ibid, please, no. See WP:IBID. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:21, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok. It doesn't have to say "Ibid". It doesn't even have to be done by the Rp template. Where, then? Jeh (talk) 00:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Try using . Alternatively, Quoted text. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:29, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * But be aware that doing so may be a citation style change, which per WP:CITEVAR requires consensus to implement, at any non-stub article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:06, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * You can use the optional quote (and trans-quote) parameter of rp (and r) to display a quotation from the source as a tooltip when hovering over the link to the reference, however, what you seem to prefer is to have the quote in the full citation. For this, you could either use the quote (and trans-quote) parameter of the CS1/CS2 citation templates, or, if you want to define the quote in the invocation of the reference rather than the full citation, you can use r to define the quote locally and not only make it available as a tooltip, but optionally to automatically append it to the full citation defined elsewhere. For example, the citation could be defined as:
 * Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, ...
 * (The r/reference parameter can take raw citations just as well as, for example, a definition through a CS1/CS2 citation template. In addition to this, local page numbers etc. could be specified as well and would be displayed alongside the superscript link just as with rp.)
 * And now the quote would be appended to the full citation through the a/annotation parameter as:
 * ... sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, ...
 * (The parameter takes free text input, but also recognizes a number of special tokens to take either the page or the quote defined in the other parameters, so you don't have to write it down twice in the template call.)
 * And this is how it looks in the References section:
 * (The parameter takes free text input, but also recognizes a number of special tokens to take either the page or the quote defined in the other parameters, so you don't have to write it down twice in the template call.)
 * And this is how it looks in the References section:


 * Note, that in this simple example I deliberately did not specify a quote in the original definition of the citation, but in the References section it still appears appended to the full citation. This also works for page numbers, page numbers and quotes combined, or arbitrary commentary, even with wikilinks (including backlinks), further embedded citations (to bundle multiple citations under a single entry) or nested references.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:17, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion, state "p" or "page"
Would it be possible to have the template provide "p" with an optional "pp" or perhaps "page"/"pages", so it is more obvious that this is a page number? Jytdog (talk) 14:40, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
 * ? Jytdog (talk) 22:58, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree completely. I am a long-time Wikipedia user (and occasional editor) and I just recently came across a page that uses this rp template. It took far too long to decipher what it meant. There are many other voices on this Talk Page saying the same thing. Why can't this obscure code be made more transparent with Jytdog's suggestion? --seberle (talk) 13:32, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. It now displays a tooltip containing this info. Or switch to ama.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Too obscure
Shouldn't this template give readers a bit more of a hint as to what it's trying to convey? I've just encountered it on a page and assumed it was a formatting error. It wasn't until I went to edit the page that I saw it was actually a template rather than mangled text that I realised it was probably intentional, but still had no idea of the intent until I manually typed in the template's URL and found my way here. Okay, I know I often don't "do" obvious but it still strikes me as being less than ideal. --Vometia (talk) 17:43, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The same thing just happened to me. I jsut stumbled upon a use of rp, and thought the extra numbers was garbage. How many people actually understands this reference method? If you are not used to editing on wikipedia, you ahve no way of finding this template information, and you will be stuck at not knowing what the numbers mean. Moberg (talk) 15:36, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * (Late response) Perhaps the template could add a tooltip that explains the notation when you mouse over it? —[ Alan M 1  (talk) ]— 20:04, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm a huge fan of RP because it keeps the reference sections neat (I know others prefer SVN because it makes reference sections look more like printed bibliographies, and because the in-article citations are shorter). I agree that some sort of "page" indicator might be helpful. --Neopeius (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. It now displays a tooltip containing this info. Or switch to ama.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:16, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

AMA-like mode: new parameters "at", "page", "pages", and "nopp"
Use of these parameters trips the template into "AMA-like mode", a slight modification of the AMA style of citation that uses parentheses instead of the colon and includes a "p." or "pp." for clarity. The names of the parameters are intended for compatibility with citation so please don't change them (though you could add additional parameter names as alternatives if desired.) For usage examples see testcases. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 08:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * In classic AMA style, there is no p. and space, instead there it looks like this1(p30) or this.2(pp30-40) I prefer to leave out the space and punctuation. Could we do that? II  | (t - c) 23:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's been over 2 months now, and this code has not been documented at the /doc page. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 20:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I've documented the page, pages, and at parameters. It looks like the nopp=true parameter causes page and pages to function exactly like the at parameter.  Is the metadata that would be generated by hidden page and pages parameters valuable for anything?  If not, it seems simpler to drop the nopp parameter altogether. LyrlTalk   C  00:49, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * rp does not generate any metadata. Still, no-pp is provided for compatibility with CS1/CS2 (and other citation templates). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:20, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

AMA style and precedent
A while back, I added mention of Template:Rp to WP:CITE. It was removed by User:SallyScot based on lack of precedent (WP:CITE thread). I objected and argued for reinstating it based on the AMA's precedent (second CITE thread), but never got around to doing so. The only major opponent to representing it on that page seemed to be SallyScot. Anyway, this argument of precedent may be a consistent voice against Template:Rp. The most similar citation practice comes from AMA style, which uses looks like[1](p3) or[1](pp3-30) compared to the current default of.[1]:3 Personally I kinda prefer the current default, but switching the default to AMA would overcome any arguments that it's nonstandard and thus inadmissible. II | (t - c) 08:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I see no opposition, and your arguments seem convincing. Let's try it out. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:34, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * On second thought, the current practice of :page seems to provide some visual connection to the citation it applies to. Perhaps [1]:(pp3-30) ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Template now supports AMA style as an option. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 00:30, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And now also a ama parameter to select it (so the page/pages/at etc. named parameters can also be used with AMA style). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:26, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Odd behavior
I often use cites like, which renders as

I see that renders as

However, renders as

Can this be fixed?

As a workaround,, naming parameter one explicitly, renders as

because anonymous parameters don't accept "=" which is quite common in URLs. Then you can use the normal wikitext syntax to define links (as you would have to do in sfn's loc as well). Of course, this also works within page, pages and at if you preper AMA style.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:31, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * This trick is no longer necessary as the named page/pages/at etc. parameters can now be used also for the default ":" display format.
 * See also: now
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:44, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

New |style=ama parameter
I was bold and switched the default display format of this template to use the ":" notation even when the named page/pages/at etc. parameters are used. This is more consistent with the logic used in other templates, and there also have been some sort-of-complaints about this in the past, see:


 * Template_talk:Rp
 * Template_talk:Rp

The tooltip switches between "Page", "Pages" and "Location" depending on if a singular, a plural, or an in-source-location parameter has been used.

There is a new ama parameter to reenable the supposed-to-be AMA-style display with parentheses. Likewise, with ama, this also gives AMA-style output when the page information was given as unnamed parameter 1.

This change also means that editors, who want to link page numbers to external sites, do not have to use the 1 trick any more and can just use the named parameters to provide the link (as with sfn etc.). See also:


 * Template_talk:Rp
 * Template_talk:Rp

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:01, 4 September 2021 (UTC)


 * can you explain why these IP edits are claiming the existing format of the rp template is broken and that style is now required.  I've reverted it as it changes the visible appearance of the refs, adding p. or pp. which to me is just clutter on the page.  That should not be compulsory and I'm hoping you are going to say it isn't. SpinningSpark 17:52, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Colin, they aren't "broken" at all. They have been enhanced. It is just that the behaviour has changed. Previously, this template displayed the page info in "superscript :" format when the page info was given as unnamed parameter 1, then someone added the alternative AMA format using the parameters page and pages and at not considering that these parameter are used for the "superscript :" format in other related templates (and are not associated with any particular output format in other citation templates). This not only led to inconsistencies in the parameter format between the templates but also made it difficult to further enhance the handling for the original ": format", i.e. requiring this odd "1=" trick to use page links in conjunction with the ": format" (which incorrectly made people believe RP would not support linked pages at all), or to not be able to display the proper numerus in the tooltip. Since I was now merging the redundant parts of some related templates to add new features and ease future maintenance, I now changed the interface so that the page/pages/at parameters can now also be used for the default ": format" (as in the other templates) as well, and at the same time introduced a new style parameter to select the AMA output format (and potentially some more, if desired) where this is actually desired. This gives a more logical parameter interface for this template, achieves consistency with other related templates and allows to further enhance the scheme in the future.
 * So, in your example cases, the IP obviously wanted to switch the display format (back) to AMA style. I don't think this was/is a necessary change, but on the other hand, if they prefer this format, that's the reason why we have the style parameter now, so your reversion was not necessary, either... ;-) They were certainly acting in good faith.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * So is it the case that I can no longer see in the revision history what these templates used to render as? That makes the history very confusing. SpinningSpark</b> 18:35, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, while the edit summaries do not (can not) always mention all implications when doing a major rewrite moving functionality into subtemplates and sharing some code among several related templates, this change was documented quite well (to the extent possible in a summary). It may still not be easy to follow the changes when multiple files are involved, I agree. Hence, for the discussion of the reasoning and the implications I created this thread.
 * In regard to rp specifically, if, before the change, the template was called with one of the page parameters, you can be sure the output was in AMA style; if it instead used the first unnamed parameter to supply the page information, the output used the default "superscript :" style. However, this holds true only for rp: ran and r always gave "superscript :" style output with the page parameters (and still do, unless style would be used to choose a different format). Now, after the change, they are consistent in regard to parameters and behaviour.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 20:19, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The article in question quite clearly was not intending to use AMA style because colons before page numbers had been explicitly included. These are not used in AMA style per AMA Manual of Style (10th edition) page 44.  If these have previously been interpreted as AMA style then that is a mistake of the template and I stand by my reversion.  My point about edit history is precisely that I cannot be sure what was intended because the way the template renders has changed (very possibly more than once).  Remember, I may not be looking at the edit that put in the ref, so its edit summary does not immediately help, even if useful.  I'm not actually opposing what has been done here, I was just asking for clarification, but we don't want to end up like Wiktionary where if you go back in the history a few years almost every template is either redlinked or littered with syntax error messages. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 11:03, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I now had another look at the article you linked to. Unless I overlooked something they did not use colons in front of the page numbers. I saw they were using unnecessary narrow non-breaking spaces, and lots of thin spaces between the refs. To me, it looks as if they were, in fact, using AMA style before, so, if they really want it back, I propose to just let them add AMA and be happy (although I, like you, prefer the superscript : format). After all, it's just cosmetics. This answer is only to, hopefully, provide you with the clarification you were asking for - I have no investment in that article and therefore this is a complete non-issue for me. What is important is that the information gets displayed correctly, and it does (and did) regardless of the output format. What's also important is to keep those who are actually working on the article happy, because otherwise it will be detrimal to further article development. So, if they want AMA, let's give it to them. If they don't care, at least I do not care as well.
 * Regarding ending up like Wiktionary, I don't see this situation arising here at all, as none of the changes broke anything (the new implementation correctly displays the provided information just like the old one did, in both formats). While some cleanup work in articles can help to further improve the output, no fixups are actually necessary.
 * I think it is always good to invest some time in a good design (like choosing a future-compatible parameter like ama rather than the originally proposed yes or even just "occupying" the page/pages parameters), as this will likely help to avoid breaking changes in the future, but often enough templates are developed ad hoc with a narrow focus on solving immediate issues only. For example, the way AMA style was originally added to this template, was an example for a crude ad hoc solution without thinking about the future, actually without even thinking about the other format already supported at that time - so we can be happy that it was possible to finally rectify this in a compatible manner.
 * The scenario you describe is what I have seen in the development of other templates, but I have no idea how to avoid this completely unless we would want to stop any further development, which would be the end of the project.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:38, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was assuming the html was for the colon, rather than the thin space it actually was. But if it was pages that removed the colon and turned into AMA style, then that was done by IP edit immediately before the explicit AMA. So thanks for the explanation of where I went wrong, but I still think my reversion as an undiscussed style change stands. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 14:28, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

New hyphen2dash code breaks semicolons?
The new hyphen2dash code appears to convert semicolons to commas, breaking HTML entity code used in 1. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 01:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC) PAGE ]]) 15:24, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95 Should be fixed now. The code from Module:Citation/CS1 had the same limitation since it only dealt with certain defined HTML entities, but I changed the version in String2 so that it uses mw.text.decode to decode all HTML entities, splits the list, and then uses mw.text.encode to re-encode it. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * Well done. Thanks. And, for your reward, I will ask you to take a look at the degenerate case shown under "Missing page numbers" in the documentation. It looks like the semicolon at the end of the style declaration is also being converted to a comma, breaking the display. This case is showing what not to do, of course, but it might be able to degrade more gracefully. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:41, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * More seriously, the new code is breaking usages in article space. See Novalis, where plaintext span tags are being displayed. Also see St. Casimir Church (Cleveland, Ohio). I think the changes might need to be reverted, with test cases from these articles added to the testcases page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95 . --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * You do good work. I'll post here if I come across any more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * See also:
 * Template_talk:Rp/Archive_1
 * Template_talk:R
 * Help_talk:Citation_Style_1
 * Talk:Antoine_Ephrem_Cartier/GA1
 * Template_talk:Sfn
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:14, 12 September 2021 (UTC) (updated 12:53, 13 September 2021 (UTC))
 * Novalis is broken again, showing half-formed span tags in the article prose. Pinging and . – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:13, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * This was caused by the use of plainlink in the page parameter to suppress the external link icon normally displayed for external links. While I consider this to be some form of "abuse", I have to admit that it looks nicer with the external link icon suppressed in the superscripts.
 * However, it collided with our code which reduces spaces to thinspaces in the superscript. Since this also broke two other test cases (with stripmarkers and cat links), I have temporarily commented this out until we have a better solution for this.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:11, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

New code appears to have broken existing usage of asterisk
Please see Wolk v. Kodak Imaging Network, Inc.. I tried restoring the literal asterisk character, but neither that nor the template appear to work now. I put test cases on the testcases page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:43, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I also observed a number of other problems (like invalid encoding of HTML entities) and completely reworked the code (regarding the display of the superscripts it is now almost the same as in r).
 * It would now be easy to make the superscript ":" appearance the default format (also when using the various named page parameters) and introduce a new ama parameter to switch to the AMA format. This would improve consistency with how the parameters are used in various other templates.
 * The hyphen-2-dash code (which has not yet been incorporated into r) might need a bit more tweaking, but I have left it enabled so we can study possible effects (it only works when using the plural page parameters or the unnamed parameter, not when using the singular forms or the in-source-location parameters).
 * I also added the trans-quote (for translations) and the wrap parameters from r.
 * The display of translations requires the definition of a quotation, and the display of quotations requires the specification of a page or location information in the tooltip. Since there have been so many complaints in the past that the rp notation would not be self-descriptive, even when no quote is defined, a tooltip is silently available anyway to display the page information in more verbose form. I hope this will mute those complaints and increase the acceptance of this format.
 * The default for the new wrapping feature is auto-wrapping enabled. This will make sure that wrapping can occur after each superscript link. In the rare cases, where this is not desired, n can be used to disable this (and reenable the previous behaviour), so that sequences of superscript links do not wrap. Alternatively, to allow wrapping inside of (possibly long) page values, wrapping can be enforced using f, but the actual behaviour may depend on the browser and CSS (and thereby the skin used). In rare cases, the auto-wrapping can cause errors when rp is included in other templates, which check the parameter input for invalid input, see: Template_talk:R. In such cases, n can be used to disable the feature. We could also change the default to off, but so far only a few occurences of this issue could be found, so the benefit of keeping it enabled might be higher.
 * If you spot problems, please report them here.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Using Plain_text.main parameter encode=true worked with " < > but broke &, whereas using Plain_text.main parameter encode=false with String.replace " into  worked with " and &, but not with . I have therefore incorporated EncodeDecode.encode with a reduced custom charset of only " . Now   works in the visible superscript page info as well as in the tooltip, but work as well:
 * Hopefully, all possible cases are covered now.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 12:39, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe that the above markup was working for a while, but the last five testcases are broken again. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:16, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks for the quick response above. The asterisk testcases are still broken. They were working a few days ago. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:26, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * (edit-conflict) That's right. The original buggy display you reported was different from the interpretation as "start bulleted list in new line" now (IIRC the asterisk was just suppressed), which I fixed. I also encountered similar bugs for &lt;1 and &gt;1, which displayed as half-formed span tags (but different from those you reported in the other thread above:  instead of just  ), which I fixed as well. Testing this now, there are two more characters producing strange results when used as first character in the page argument, : and # (probably ; as well, but this gets changed to a, as part of the hyphen-to-dash conversion and processing of lists and can therefore be considered okay).
 * → (starts new line with bullet point *1 now)
 * → (starts new line with bullet point *1 now)
 * → (starts new line with bullet point *1 now)
 * → (starts new line with 1 now)
 * → (starts new line with 1 now)
 * → (starts new line with 1 now)
 * → (starts new line with 1.1 now)
 * → (starts new line with 1.1 now)
 * → (starts new line with 1.1 now)
 * → (converted to comma, okay)
 * → (converted to new line in bold)
 * → (converted to comma, okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * They used to work at some point. I know that MediaWiki treats some of these characters specially as first character (Help:Template), but there must be a way to workaround (without reenabling the other problems, that is). Still investigating...
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:52, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * This is fixed now. It was caused by an  clause I had added recently to distinguish between two internal parameters holding the in-source-location information, the normal one (used in the tooltip and elsewhere) and one with optimized contents for the superscript which had hyphens replaced by endashes for plural pages and the space following a comma list separator reduced to a hairspace. I first tried to evaluate the first letter of these strings and replace :,*# by their HTML entities but while this worked in principle the invokes introduced new trigger points where MediaWiki's special treatment of :,*# as a first character occured, so it didn't solve the underlying problem. Using nowiki was also no option here as it would have broken embedded HTML tags and similar stuff. So, just removing the extra   and making 'sup-where' an internally required parameter seemed to be the easiest fix.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 02:04, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Please make sure to use the sandboxes and the testcases page to test future modifications. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:03, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * → (okay)
 * They used to work at some point. I know that MediaWiki treats some of these characters specially as first character (Help:Template), but there must be a way to workaround (without reenabling the other problems, that is). Still investigating...
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:52, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * This is fixed now. It was caused by an  clause I had added recently to distinguish between two internal parameters holding the in-source-location information, the normal one (used in the tooltip and elsewhere) and one with optimized contents for the superscript which had hyphens replaced by endashes for plural pages and the space following a comma list separator reduced to a hairspace. I first tried to evaluate the first letter of these strings and replace :,*# by their HTML entities but while this worked in principle the invokes introduced new trigger points where MediaWiki's special treatment of :,*# as a first character occured, so it didn't solve the underlying problem. Using nowiki was also no option here as it would have broken embedded HTML tags and similar stuff. So, just removing the extra   and making 'sup-where' an internally required parameter seemed to be the easiest fix.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 02:04, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Please make sure to use the sandboxes and the testcases page to test future modifications. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:03, 16 September 2021 (UTC)