Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
And yet, AFAIK, {{yesterday}} *is* a template. If it
isn't now, it
certainly started as one, and that's the old cycle: you implement the
feature you need with what you have, and if it's useful and
inefficient, you then push it down into the core.
You haven't, as far as I can see, provided a
cogent argument as to why
it's good. Hopefully, I have clarified both my point of view and my
perception of yours, and some other folks will also jump back on this
bandwagon, that we may hear theirs as well.
As the person who wrote that {{yesterday}} template allow me just to say a
big "ditto".
I agree that alot of this 'stuff' would be better handled in the MediaWiki
software... but I'm not going to hassle the developers to implement this
feature and that feature and the other feature. I take whatever they give
me and use it to the limits of it's applicability. At some point, if they
are useful, those implementations become widespread enough that their
inefficiency is a notable issue and they are replaced with a new
capability in the base system. That is happening right now for 'qif',
'calcadd', and various unit conversion templates.
Yes, we could put {{yesterday}} and {{tomorrow}} and {{leapday}} and
{{NextMonth}} and {{switch}} and {{if defined call}} and all the rest of
them directly into MediaWiki, but we aren't there yet... adding just Tim's
proposed 'if:' and 'expr:' will vastly simplify and improve the efficiency
of all these existing applications. It isn't neccessary to replace each of
them with a MediaWiki equivalent right now. Maybe somewhere down the line
on or more of those will become as widespread as 'qif' and warrant direct
implementation, but they are fine the way they work currently and would be
improved by Tim's changes.