Extension:Cite/Cite.php


 * ''This page is about the extension. See also Help:Footnotes, and Wikipedia:Footnotes for the use in the English Wikipedia.

Cite.php is a Cite extension that adds two parser hooks to MediaWiki,  and  ; these operate together to add citations to pages.

Installation

 * 1) Download the snapshot that matches your version of MediaWiki and put it in the extensions directory.
 * 2) Add the following line to LocalSettings.php:
 * anywhere after the line
 * anywhere after the line

Usage
The basic concept of the &lt;ref> tag is that it inserts the text enclosed by the ref tags as a footnote in a designated section, which you indicate with the placeholder tag &lt;references />. The new format cannot be used interchangeably with the old format — you must pick one or the other.

If you forget to include &lt;references /> in the article, the footnotes will not appear, but a red error message will be displayed at the end of the page.

This page itself uses footnotes, such as the one at the end of this sentence. If you [ view the source] of this page by clicking "Edit this page", you can see a working example of footnotes.

Example
 According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big. &lt;ref>E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.&lt;/ref> The Moon, however, is not so big. &lt;ref>R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46 (April 1978): 44-6.&lt;/ref> &#61;=Notes== '''&lt;references/> 

Multiple uses of the same footnote
To give a footnote a unique identifier, use &lt;ref name="name">. You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. The text inside the second tag doesn't matter, because the text already exists in the first reference. You can either copy the whole footnote, or you can use a terminated empty ref tag that looks like this: &lt;ref name="name" />.

In the following example, the same source is cited three times.

 This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote. &lt;ref name&#61;"multiple">Remember that when you refer to the same footnote multiple times, the text from the first reference is used.&lt;/ref> Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, if different statements come from the same source. &lt;ref name&#61;"multiple">This text is superfluous, and won't show up anywhere. We may as well just use an empty tag.&lt;/ref> A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end. Although this may reduce redundant work, please be aware that if a future editor removes the first reference, this will result in the loss of all references using the empty ref tags. &lt;ref name&#61;"multiple" /> &#61;=Notes== &lt;references/> 

The text above gives the following result in the article (see also section below): This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote. Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, when different statements come from the same source. A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end. Although this may reduce redundant work, please be aware that if a future editor removes the first reference, this will result in the loss of all references using the empty ref tags.

&lt;references /&gt;
Placing  inserts the full text of all pending inline citations defined by , anywhere on the page. For example, based on the citations above, the code:

will yield:

, which incorporates. It provides an optional parameter to display the reference list in multiple columns. For instance, the English, Hindi and Interlingua Wikipedias use the css selector  to make the reference text smaller than normal text.

In the case of multiple references-tags on a page, each gives the references defined in the ref-tags from the previous references-tag. In the case that these references-tags are produced by templates, each gives the references defined in the ref-tags before the first references-tag, and there is an error message that there is a ref-tag but not a references-tag.

Grouped references
This may be disabled by  if desired. However, it is enabled on the foundation wikis.

The following example generates separate reference lists for citations and miscellaneous footnotes:

 According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big &lt;ref>E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.&lt;/ref>. In fact, it is very big &lt;ref group="footnotes">Take their word for it. Don't look directly at the sun!&lt;/ref>. &#61;=Notes== '''&lt;references group="footnotes"/> &#61;=References== '''&lt;references/>  The anonymous group works as before, while the named group reference will show up as, and the references will look like this: section, to the place where they will actually appear to the reader. Thus,

 According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big. &lt;ref name="miller"/> The Moon, however, is not so big. &lt;ref name="smith"/> &#61;=Notes== &lt;references> &lt;ref name="miller">E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.&lt;/ref> &lt;ref name="smith">R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46 (April 1978): 44-6.&lt;/ref> &lt;/references> 

will have the same output as the first example above.

Customization
The format of the output of  and   is almost completely customizable through MediaWiki messages, that can be modified, for example, through the MediaWiki namespace depending on the configuration of the wiki.

For a list of messages that control the output of  and   and the values, if any, that are passed to them ($1, $2, $3 ...), see the code in CVS for an up-to-date listing of their default contents.


 * cite_reference_link_key_with_num
 * key
 * num
 * cite_reference_link_prefix
 * cite_reference_link_suffix
 * cite_references_link_prefix
 * cite_references_link_suffix
 * cite_reference_link
 * ref ID
 * backlink ID
 * count to display
 * cite_references_link_one
 * Used to format the source list that in templates breaks numbering:Issue with MediaWiki regarding in what order things are parsed
 * Using  within a template will create correctly numbered reference mark but it will be missing from the output of a   on the calling page (example) unless the  references tag is transcluded too!
 * It's impossible to pass template arguments to, e.g.  , with older versions of MediaWiki, see bug 4529.  As of 1.12+, it is possible to do template arguments with the   magic word inside of the template:


 * Template substitution misrenders inside  tag.

HTML parameters

 * The citation links generated by &lt;ref&gt; and the backlinks generated by &lt;references&gt; have an empty  attribute
 * Issue with MediaWiki, not this extension. MediaWiki will generate output like  when given input like


 * Missing name= anchors for backwards compatibility ( 5567 )
 * The generated &lt;a href="#_note-n"&gt; links should have a name="_ref-n"</tt>.
 * The generated &lt;a href="#_ref-n"&gt;</tt> links should have a name="_note-n"</tt>.
 * This currently seems to be working.

HTML commenting-out doesn't work
Commenting out  with HTML comments   hides the citation but the reference still appears on the list
 * This would appear to be a parser error…
 * Seems to be fixed with the new parser. —81.241.208.92 14:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

ParserFunctions
cite.php cannot be nested properly in ParserFunctions. For example, " " will return both "true" and "false" as references regardless of the result of the ParserFunction. However, ParserFunctions work perfectly inside &lt;ref&gt; tags.

Blank Special:Version

 * It seems that the following code causes v1.9.2's Special:version page to go blank:

'author' => 'Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason',
 * Changing it to this fixes it (apologies if it's 'translated' wrong):

'author' => 'AEvar Arnfjord Bjarmason',

Rendering
Contents of non-first named  are not rendered, even if all prior tags with same name are empty.

Missing preview
There is no preview for inline citations. This is especially annoying when editing only a section of a page. (Bug 5984)

Users without edit privileges can't see references if sysops can
The following combination of $wgGroupPermissions makes references invisible to users who aren't logged in (Bug 11224). This bug started sometime after Mediawiki 1.9.3. and persists to 1.13.2

Workaround
A current work-around is to set and not grant any editing rights to sysops. Users who are sysops would then need to be part of another group with editing privileges.

Partial fix available
This bug was partially fixed in revision 36333. Reinstall Cite.php and the references would become visible (thus the above workaround is not necessary). However, some bogus behaviour persists: all reference hyperlinks are linked to the first footnote below (instead of their corresponding numbers), all backwards hyperlinks from footnotes jump to the first reference in the text (instead of their corresponding numbers), and references in transcluded pages are not properly handled.

See the discussion page for further ideas on the problem.

Grouping references
If I do  Blah   Walla. </tt>, I get:
 * Blah [1][2][3][4] Walla.

instead of
 * Blah[1] – [4] Walla.

Criticisms
The major criticism regarding Cite.php is that it renders the editing of references much more tedious. Moreover, because many casual Wikipedia users are not familar with the cryptic Wikitext tags that they find with the use of Cite.php, it is likely that the net effect of Cite.php is often to deter new users from making edits to reference sections. Although Wikipedia supposedly got its name from the Hawaiian word "wiki-wiki", meaning "quick-quick", Cite.php is arguably neither quick nor easy for the average Wikipedia user.


 * A possible solution would be to have the actual reference section contain all of the references with given names, then throughout the article, simply reference by name, instead of the full citation. This would also reduce confusion concerning multiple uses of a reference having different text, but only showing the first instance (causing confusion with sections are shifted around, the displayed reference might change, while the text hasn't). I.e.:

Some text that needs a ref. Another sentence that uses a ref, followed by another usage of the first ref.


 * Using cite.php makes citing page numbers harder. Each reference usually cites a different page of the book/journal/article, but there is no way to indicate a different page number when using a self-closing tag.  As such, all  simply refer to the work as a whole, rather than to a specific page number in the work (unless the author makes each page number a seperate reference).  Perhaps a future revision of cite.php could allow a page number argument to be passed to the reference like so .  This would dramatically increase the reputability of the citations, because they could then be checked/verified, and the citations would be a more useful resource.

Past problems

 * The extension didn't generate id attributes that could be uniformly styled with CSS2 attribute selectors: Issue in Cite.php, see bug 4579
 * Using multibyte characters, colons, spaces and other values that need to be encoded according to the HTML spec breaks internal links:Issue with MediaWiki, not this extension, see bug 4461.
 * Using  in image captions breaks the XHTML output:Issue with MediaWiki, not this extension, see bug 1887.

Comparing ref/note style and Cite.php style
They are actually very similar.


 * To make a single use footnote:
 * Ref/note
 *   at the in-text place.
 *  # text of note at the proper place in the Notes list.
 * Cite.php
 *   at the in-text place.
 * (Only needed once per article)  under the Notes heading.
 * To make a multiple use footnote:
 * Ref/note
 * With strict ref/note style this was impossible, but a number of alternative forms had been created, for the details of which, see the appropriate pages.
 * Cite.php
 *   at each in-text place.
 * Alternatively    A self-closing tag on every use after name=foo has been defined.
 * (Only needed once per article)  under the Notes heading; exactly the same as to make a single-use note.