Talk:Chris Busby

References?

The references on this page are seriously messed up. Maybe the normal style of <ref>citation here</ref> is easier to get right?

Robin (talk) 16:51, 30 April 2013 (IST)

The whole thing is lifted from a pdf and I had a long think about how to do it. Manual editing with 186 footnotes was a non-starter (for a first pass anyway). The way I did it was to convert to plain text then use Notepad++ regular expression search and replace to insert the necessary wikitext around the numbers with brackets removed. For a scientist he is cavalier in his footnote methodology. Not only are repeated references made to the same note (OK but awkward) but low number can make their first appearance late in the text - also he is inclined to specify footnotes in ranges which cannot be linked as specified. I agree the <ref></ref> construct would be better but it's a seriously big job and I can't fahom a way to do it automatically. It may be best just to disable two-way linking because, as things stand, return links simply go to the last instance of the relevant note number in the text. Also, I considered sticking with his footnote ranges and just linking to first one (it would look tidier) - the problem with that is that the actual footnotes would split into those with return links and those without. More thought needed now its up. FI, I have in fact sent him an email to advise of its posting and to invite edits/additions etc. --Peter P (talk) 18:08, 30 April 2013 (IST)

Also, there's clearly something amiss with the 'ref' and 'notes' templates interaction because, after a couple of too's and fro's between refs and notes, the higher text reference renumber cumulatively - not sure how to tackle this one --Peter P (talk) 09:07, 1 May 2013 (IST)

Changes to footnoting

FI - I've spent a while on this. I'm about half way through converting to <ref>note</ref> sytax so don't change the page because any changes will be overwritten when I put the entire thing back. --Peter P (talk) 12:04, 1 May 2013 (IST)