Topic on Help talk:VisualEditor/User guide

In the template editor dialog, there is a [[]] button on every field. Its tooltip is "Fall back to plain wikitext". I always saw it, but never really understood what it is. I didn't even realize it's a button until I read what User:Robin Strohmeyer (WMDE) wrote about it on the page :meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Templates. And even after reading that, I don't understand what does it do. I see that it changes the text fields to a monospaced font, but I don't see any other effects. If I understand correctly, the values in these input box are plain wikitext in any case, although I might be wrong.

So, if it doesn't do anything, perhaps it should really be removed, as the proposal on that page says.

If it does something, I don't understand what it is, and it should be documented here. I can't see that it's mentioned in the User guide, but maybe I am missing it.

Thanks!

If I understand correctly, the values in these input box are plain wikitext in any case, although I might be wrong.

You are indeed wrong in theory, though in practice most templatedata types aren't enforced yet, as there were too many disagreements between community members as to how their templates should be written.

Curious.

Can you give me any links to discussions about this?

Are there any types for which this is implemented? Maybe this button could be shown only for those. If I'm not wrong again, I think that it is shown everywhere now.