The current implementation of MediaWiki:Sidebar supports a completely
undocumented * {{msg}} syntax.
It works along the lines of:
* header
** {{msgname}}
And ends up with a 'header' section with the parsed contents of
MediaWiki:Msgname outputted into it.
This feature didn't exist in 1.16, was introduced but was seemingly
completely broken in 1.17 and finally made to work in 1.18.
However I have a number of issues with it:
Conceptually:
* The concept makes little sense, it uses the {{}} template syntax, but
actually takes a message from the MediaWiki namespace, and it of course
doesn't support any real transclusion syntax
Implementation:
* The implementation is a mess, with successive {{msgname}} calls in the
same header replacing rather than appending to, and using a mess of a
setup where these blocks are actually put into a separate array which is
array_merged into the real sidebar array at the end.
But mostly I have a problem with the fact that it's getting in my way.
I'm currently trying to fix up the limitation in our skin system that
only allows us to sanely have one type of navigation (the sidebar). With
the implementation of a new navigation message parser that can handle
varying formats of messages. However {{msgname}} is not something that
can see be cleanly implemented in it.
I'd like to remove this feature from 1.18 before it ends up released and
people actually start using this feature in production where we start
having to deal with backcompat.
Are there any objections to it being removed?
--
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]
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