Thread:VisualEditor/Feedback/Non/reply

Hi Francool50,

Thanks for your note. This is a common request, so the devs are working on it.

True section editing is very difficult. You have to process the entire page, figure out which pieces (which may be located anywhere on the page, e.g., Feature Article templates that are placed at the bottom but display in the lead) affect the desired section, and then throw away the information about all of the pieces that don't affect the current section. Then your results are somewhat less predictable, because changing things in section #1 may change the contents of section #2 without you realizing it. For example, adding or removing a large image may change the page layout for subsequent sections, and you won't be able to see that in section editing. At this point, it appears that it is actually faster to do full-page editing than to do proper section editing.

"Fake" section editing—which is what the old wikitext editor does—is a bit simpler, but it has some serious limitations. For example, you can't see or edit references that are used in multiple sections, unless you happen to be editing the one section that contains the ref's full definition.

Can you tell me why you want to do section editing?