User:Pdebee/Sandbox for before & after

Introduction
The purpose of this user page is to enable me to experiment with improving prose extracted from existing articles in main space, without running the risk of interfering in any way with the original article, or causing edit conflicts there. It is a useful sandbox when working on particularly difficult or protracted pieces of text.

The idea is to copy the original prose into the "Before" section below and then work on it in the "After" section until it's done. This way, it's easy to refer back to the original extract in the "Before" section, while experimenting with successive changes in the "After" section. The "Sample:" section contains an extract from another article, with markup clauses to emulate when working on the "After" section.

When done, the improved text can be copied back to replace the original in the article itself in one clean edit, and the "Before" and "After" sections can then be emptied until the next project. The optional "Comments" section can be used as a notepad for reminders, or for suggestions to another editor when working on a joint project.

New table with plainlist (to copy back into Hanseatic League)
Changes from the original table:
 * 1) Applied new, fixed column width, all expressed as a subset of 100%. ✅ (12:01, 14 February 2020 (UTC))
 * 2) Applied   template to all ref tags in the Refs section; this aligns the ref digits vertically, thus narrowing the column and enabling the Notes section to be wider and easier to read. The plainlist also enables ref tags to retain their original   parameters. ✅ (16:59, 14 February 2020 (UTC))
 * 3) Inserted comment block with guidance for future editors. ✅ (17:33, 14 February 2020 (UTC))

New table with plainlist (to copy back into Hanseatic League)
Changes from the original table:
 * 1) Applied new, fixed column width, all expressed as a subset of 100%. ✅ (17:47, 14 February 2020 (UTC))
 * 2) Inserted comment block with guidance for future editors. ✅ (17:47, 14 February 2020 (UTC))
 * 3) Applied   template to all ref tags in the Refs section; this aligns the ref digits vertically, thus narrowing the column and enabling the Notes section to be wider and easier to read. The plainlist also enables ref tags to retain their original   parameters. ✅ (18:02, 14 February 2020 (UTC))

After, with line breaks
Using line breaks aligns the ref digits vertically and thus succeeds in narrowing the Refs column. However, this method: "breaches Manual of Style/Accessibility : "Do not separate list items with line breaks. Use plainlist / unbulleted list ..."." (See: Help:Citation merging.)

After, with exact % in all cols, plus 'nowrap' in all cols except 'Refs' column
In this example, I have reused the original table (shown above, in section 'Before') and simply changed the code to force all columns to a specific % value each (totalling 100%, of course) of the whole table (itself set at a total width of 100%), and I coded the 'nowrap' parameter for all columns, except for the Refs column, which is the only one that I do want to wrap.

Result: I must be doing something wrong, because it does not make any difference at all. Surely, this should do it? Interestingly, the system did not issue an error message when I hard-coded:


 * ... as if the wrap parameter was supported, even though it isn't mentioned anywhere I've looked!

After, with bundling the ref tags
See WP:BUNDLING, and coding details in Help:Citation merging.

'Hansa Proper' table with bundled refs
 Note:  Considered bundling the ref tags. Unfortunately, when  parameters are coded in the ref tags, these will be lost when bundling the citations within a single ref tag. Therefore, it seems the only solution is  after all.

'Hansa Proper' table with plainlist, to preserve (ref name="...") parameters
 Note:  Applying  is the appropriate solution.