Currently, in a number of instances there is a need to use a template called {{nop}}, at English Wikisource to force a paragraph and other types of break in the content, which is then later tidied up by the parser. Currently on English Wikisource {{nop}} is implemented as a template rather than a "magic-word".

However the current usage of this template is overloaded, as it's used not only for it's original function of marking a nominal paragraph break, it's also used as a 'table-continuation' at the start of page content.

The overloaded use of {{nop}} is not ideal, and the current inability of Mediawiki and some extensions to cleanly handle the situation of a 'continued' element (Such as table/list/div etc) is a concern.

It would be appreciated if there was at some point appropriate changes made so that:-

• {{nop}} becomes a magic word, and is de-overloaded so it returns to it's original purpose of marking a paragraph break only.

• There was some kind of page_property which the parser, renderer, extension(s) could use, to explicitly know there was a clear structural break between pages (and or sections), and amend the parsing/rendering behaviour accordingly, without needing to rely on the (non) presence of a specific template or templates

• There was an implementation of other "render-hint" magic words, to control the behaviour of the parser/render output so that issues like a continued table or list elements can be addressed in a less obscure way than at present. (The thinking would be for something like this)

...
|-
|lorem ipsum||1984||678
{{!tflow-next}}
<page discontinuity>
{{!tflow-prev}}
|-
|lorem||1985||901
...

Which would provide the hinting, ( As an aside putting the {{tflow-prev}} on it's own line could have a side-effect like the current overloaded use of {{nop}}, but ideally for things like templates it would be nice to have it so that a specfic line-feed/whitespace character wasn't explicitly required.)

# Item 1.
# Item 2.
# Item 3.
# Item 4. which is continued...{{!lflow-next}}
<page discontinuity>
{{!lflow-prev}}... on to the next page.
# Item 5.

To give 2 examples in respect of uses cases I've come across. However, figuring out where to "close up" elements in the output and under what circumstances might be tricky.

• In summary, it would be nice to have mediawiki markup extended so that it CAN be used more cleanly with content built from "multiple" page and Labelled sections, which is encountered a lot on Wikisource, but rarely on more popular wikis like Wikipedia...