Background
Currently in reader mode and in Visual Editor sub-reference reuses are displayed as duplicates and uncessesarily expands the reference list. This is due to the design of the details syntax, which we have accepted as a shortcoming (see below for images displaying the issue). In order to improve this design issue, we will merge the duplicates in Visual Editor and Reader mode so that they seem to be 'reused' when reading and editing in VE.
Furthermore, since many users struggle to understand the built in behavior in Visual Editor and miss transparent workflow mechanisms, we will introduce a new option for VE users for them to intentionally decide the desired behavior after editing re-uses (edit all occurences or edit only this footnote marker). This way we hope to reduce the amount of mistakes that can happen when working with re-uses and also reduce manual effort.
The work to merge the identical duplicates will be organised as follows, after each step we aim to deploy to de.wiki giving users incremental value:
- T385666: Show references with the same details as re-use in the legacy rendering (Merge Use Case) - we will start with the legacy parser because it is the current default on de.wiki, which sub-referencing is deployed to.
- T409065: Show references with the same details as re-use in the Parsoid rendering (Merge Use Case)
- T406467: Show references with the same details as re-use in VE
- T406461: VE: Enable user to make a choice to edit all sub-ref or only one.
- T406454: VE: Enable user to make a choice to add a sub-ref to all or only one main ref
Things to discuss
- At which point will we need a feature flag?
Current behavior and what we expect from this work
