For referencing audio files inline, such as pronunciation demonstrations, Wikipedia has relied on linking to the raw file using `[[Media:...]]`, via templates like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Audio|{{Audio}}]].
This has many problems:
- Not all browsers support playing the linked file (which can be Ogg Vorbis, WAV, FLAC, WebM, Opus, or MIDI), causing them to download the file instead of playing it, even though the servers automatically transcode audio files into Ogg and MP3 specifically so that browsers can play them.
- And even when the browser supports it, it is not user-friendly to suddenly send them to a different page with nothing but a player on it (a violation of the principle of least astonishment).
---
Luckily we have HTML5 and `<audio>` now, so we can let browsers figure out which format to use without much hassle.
I'm wondering if something like the following is feasible:
```
<audio file="Example.ogg">Link</audio>
```
in wikitext will turn into something like:
```
<a id="unique-id-link" href="/wiki/File:Example.ogg" title="Example.ogg">
Link
</a>
<audio id="unique-id-audio" preload="none">
<source src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Example.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
<source src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c8/Example.ogg/Example.ogg.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
```
and a JS will trigger the playback of the audio upon clicking the link. For those with JS turned off, maybe we could preemptively attach `controls` to `<audio>`, which the JS would cancel upon being loaded (with the `width` of `audio` set to a few dozen pixels or a few ems in CSS so as to not disrupt the text in FOUC or with JS disabled).