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These are group names in common use. There is no list, as these are created by the editor. Starting a custom list with @ reduces the chance of using an existing group name. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk03:55, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
List style
One issue is that the in-text label does not match the reference list label. Here the in-text labels are greek and the reference list labels are numeric:
If we use only styles supported by CSS list-style-type, then we can style the list. Adding list-style-type: lower-greek; will fix the issue. Question is how to do this. The reference list style is controlled by MediaWiki:Cite references prefix which sets class="references" that is styled through MediaWiki:Common.css.
Perhaps we can class it with list-style-type: inherit; and set the list-style-type through {{reflist}}. I believe that IE doesn't support inherit until version 8.
Applying a style to ol.references in Common.css would affect all reference lists. The only vialble solution is to create seperate styling classes, or inject the style directly, but that also runs into problems, as there is currently no way to pass a classname or style to the reference list. That functionality would have to be added to cite.php. Bugzilla is the way to go here. — Edokter (talk) — 13:13, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Inherit from what? That only works if there is a parent list present (which there isn't) with CSS that can be inherited. — Edokter (talk) — 14:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Supringly enough, that works. But it still only affects {{reflist}}. If you want to style <references />, cite.php still needs to be modified. — Edokter (talk) — 15:21, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the inline inherit was a dud (killed the default numbering). Current test setting is working, but <references /> remains untouched. There is currently no way around that, short of applying the list-style-type to the entire page. — Edokter (talk) — 16:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Done Thanks! We have the other labels up to three digits or characters, so this fits nicely. I an going to redirect this talk page to a central page soon as I am probably the only one watching. Remember that the in-text label doesn't match the reference list label which is still numeric— this might be rather confusing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk22:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The original labels go up to azz, which is about a thousend. This list reaches into 10,000(!) That really isn't needed, and quite hard on Mediawiki. I've limited it to αωω. — Edokter (talk) — 14:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see; it adds the groupname in the label. I did not expect that. I'll restore that page. (I do think "@decimal" would be a better name for numericals.) — Edokter (talk) — 18:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And I was going to suggest moving it to @decimal to maintain the list-style-type format. Need to update the docs as well, as we will be limited to those names and can't use the bugzilla Klingon example (not that we should). ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk18:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I had been referring to this as "custom cite link labels", but since we are limited to list-style-type, it really isn't open to a lot of customization. I think "cite link label styles" would be better, but I am open. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk19:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. Although the label styling itself is theoretically limitless, the list styling in reflist is limited to the available CSS styles. And until there is a mechanism to pass the list style directly to <references />, {{reflist}} needs to be updated with each addition. — Edokter (talk) — 19:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Since the only drawback for these IE users is that they see numbers instead of Greek letters in the reference list, and current versions of IE and all other major browsers do support the style, I'd say we should go ahead. Although a caution "IE7 users will see numbers instead of Greek letters in the reference list" wouldn't be out of place. Anomie⚔12:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If list names "should match the associated CSS list-style-type value", then perhaps we should rename the current lists from alpha to lower-alpha and such, and loose the "@" in the process, as the chance of a conflicting group name would diminish. This would also enable me to simplify the logic in {{reflist}}, as I could directly pass the group parameter as the style parameter, eliminating the need to upate it with each addition. — Edokter (talk) — 20:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about that at one point. One of the objections to replacing {{ref}}/{{note}} with Cite footnotes has been the increased markup. Only saving five characters though, so if it reduces overhead and eliminates the need for update then lets do it. I am off to work in a few. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk20:55, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If we eliminate #switch in reflist, won't that allow list-style-type to be set to any group name, rendering invalid HTML? I don't have time to check this right now. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk23:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I struck that; As it turns out I can't distinguish between a normal group name and a list-style group name. So the need to update remains for now. I did add a liststyle parameter, for those wishing to customize or override the list style. — Edokter (talk) — 00:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. For a feature that has not even been officially annouced yet, I find it hard to beleive I "broke" anything. This is still in experimental phase. — Edokter (talk) — 00:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is more of an announcment of an added feature for MediaWiki. It's implementation is not set yet, so there may be more unexpected changes, which will always be noted here. So please tone it down a bit instead of stating I "broke everything" and demanding immediate fixes; that's not very constructive. — Edokter (talk) — 14:35, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please— let's be civil here. I thought the notice on the project page would make it clear that this is still under discussion. We have a neat feature here that will resolve a lot of issues, but we need to work out the technical issues then the MoS issues. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk14:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Documentation
We need to add a section to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes). I don't think we should try to fold in this entire project page, as it goes beyond the simple use of the feature.
The in-text cite links and the reference list cites use matching labels that default to decimals. These labels can be styled with predefined group names. Styled labels are generally used in tables, infoboxes and navboxes to separate them from regular footnotes.
Group name
Style
decimal
Decimal numbers
lower-alpha
Alpha, lower case
lower-greek
Greek, lower case
lower-roman
Roman, lower case
For example, using the group name of "lower-alpha", the cite labels will use lower case alpha characters.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|-
! 05/08
| 4266 || 7828 || 7282<ref group=lower-alpha name=elk1/> || 1105 || 224<ref group=lower-alpha name=elk2/> || 161 || 916<ref group=lower-alpha name=elk3/>|| 506 || 231 || 4127 || 6190 || 6487 || 1139 || 241 || 205 || 1165 || 478 || 301
|}
{{reflist |group=lower-alpha |refs=
<ref name=elk1>{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=[[Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses]] |date=November 16, 1972}}</ref>
<ref name=elk2>{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=Anne Elk's Other Theory on Brontosauruses |date=November 16, 1972}}</ref>
<ref name=elk3>{{cite book |last=Elk |first=Anne |title=Anne Elk's Greater Theory on Brontosauruses |date=November 16, 1972}}</ref>}}
The group error-test only contains "a b c", so the other five should display an error, but I don't see any. I just see empty labels. — Edokter (talk) — 16:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The MediaWiki interface page uses {{broken ref}} which uses namespace detection. After the last update to Cite error message started showing on talk pages and confusing everyone. After discussion, errors were suppressed on talk pages. On my todo is to add a class so folks who desire to see these errors can do so. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk18:13, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any plans to support corresponding capital letter versions of the three new styles? Maybe upper-alpha, upper-greek and upper-roman as well? Just curious, but thank you for this feature! Imzadi 1979→03:02, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If there is sufficieant demand and consensus for such styles, then it would be no problem. Beware that upper-greek has very poor support in most older browsers. — Edokter (talk) — 12:29, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
“Cite link” naming
Does anyone else have a problem with the term cite link labels? Every time I look at this page it seems incomprehensible to me until I slowly realise that a cite link is more or less the footnote marker described by Help:Footnotes#Creating a footnote marker. Would people know what was meant if we used footnote labels or even footnote markers instead? (See the second half of Help talk:Footnotes#Rewrite for a discussion about terminology that thoroughly confused me.) Vadmium (talk, contribs) 13:10, 15 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I would certainly agree with changing to something like "Custom footnote labels". The use of these is not restricted to "cites", and it's not clear what's meant by "link" (since typical citation footnotes generally contain external links as well). --Kotniski (talk) 13:38, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Here are examples of how in-text cites (AKA in-text citation or inline citation) appear in the content: [1][a][Note 1]
The element placed in the text that contains a link to the citation, note or other that supports the preceding content. Formatted as a superscripted alphanumeric character (cite label) enclosed by brackets with a link (cite link) to the citation. Many style guides refer to this as an in-text citation or in-text reference; some Wikipedia documentation may refer to it as an inline cite or inline citation.
Cite label
The alphanumeric character or note shown in the in-text cite and in the reference list. Many style guides refer to this as the note reference number.
Cite link
An HTML link from the in-text cite to the entry in the reference list.
Backlink;
An HTML link from the reference list entry to the in-text cite. Named references used multiple times will show in the reference list entry with separate alpha backlinks.
And yes, footnote, cite, citation, reference and source are sometimes used interchangeably. And the Cite system is just called footnotes which is damn confusing. At least the old system was called Footnote3.
BTW: This page is mainly for those who want to create custom labels (which we are pretty much at the end of until browsers support more styles). WP:CITELABEL should be for editors who want to use the current groups. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk14:15, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds quite a good purposing; in that case, can we remove from this page all the information that isn't about creating custom labels (and move it, if necessary - which it usually isn't - to WP:CITELABEL)?--Kotniski (talk) 14:22, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think this could work, although I think information about the alphabetical, etc, sequences should be moved. Last time I checked, this page explained it better than at Help:Footnotes, which was why I added the “main page” link. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 14:42, 15 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I wonder if cite link has much of an origin outside Wikipedia either, considering that my dictionary and wikt:cite both say cite is a verb rather than a noun or adjective. I appreciate it shouldn’t be completely censored out, since that is how the Media wiki extension is named and it’s used in all the MediaWiki:cite_link_label_group page names. How about note reference label for both numeric and other sequences? Vadmium (talk, contribs) 14:19, 15 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I'd say "footnote label" would be better, regardless of whether it's used elsewhere - in "note reference label" both words "note" and (especially in this context) "reference" are ambiguous.--Kotniski (talk) 14:24, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"In-text cite" is certainly not the right term in this context, since (a) the footnotes will not necessarily be citations; (b) for most people a "cite" means the text of the citation rather than the number (or whatever) is used to label it.--Kotniski (talk) 15:03, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible to have formatting for specific reference groups? For example, can there be a specific format for references with the group of lower-roman, for example? I want to know for my own wiki. 108.189.160.48 (talk) 16:52, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I am interested in that, too. I think it could easily be done by css, but i don't know how.
I created two templates for my two groups. Each template uses its own Template.css (with reference and reference number highlighting as descibed at the Help:Cite page), and it works fine, unless both groups are used on the same page.
I would like to add a css selector or id, but am not able to solve this on my own.
