With regard to [https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:VisualEditor/User_guide&diff=2099012&oldid=2099006 this suggested addition to the VisualEditor user manual], I was not able to replicate your instructions. Can you point to an edit that you did, using VisualEditor, where you inserted an interwiki link?
Topic on User talk:AhmadF.Cheema
The discussion in this phabricator topic made me think that it was already solved. The edits which were mentioned there, are here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?diff=729932.
According to the phabricator topic: "... external links are now silently converted to interwikis when appropriate by Parsoid," This comment was made back in March, 2014.
I tried it again, and they for the most part seem to be working.
It appears that,
- When the user is in the Visual edit mode and enters such interwiki links they are practically OK. Although it seems, for determining whether the linked page is already created or not (i.e. when deciding to present a red coloured link or not) it checks from the local wiki's database instead of just presenting a blue link regardless of whether the linked page is already created in an external wiki or not (like the way it happens in the preview for wikitext editor). This does not appear to be a consistent problem, I got it when I tried [[mw:Download]].
- However, even the red link in such a case goes to the correct page when, while using the VisulaEditor the red link is right-clicked and "open link in new tab" option is selected.
- When the page gets saved, the red link problem gets solved and links appear to be working completely fine.
- However, when the user goes back to the VisualEditor window these interwiki links appear as external links, but practically speaking this is not a problem because when the user saves the page, they again look and work as internal links.