Last modified: 2014-02-27 22:46:09 UTC
Where articles use the {{ref}} and {{note}} pair of templates to generate footnotes, e.g. [[List of highest points of Canadian provinces and territories]], it is impossible to edit the contents of the notes in VisualEditor. The {{ref}} template is editable in the transclusion editor, and works as expected. The {{note}}-generated notes are apparently one block. No transclusion icon or indication of uneditablility (green stripes) appears on mouseover or when the block is clicked. If a link in the notes is clicked it functions as a link would in read mode- ie. the link is followed and you leave the page. VE gives no warning about unsaved edits (although Firefox does). If the backlink to the location of the {{ref}} template is clicked it functions as above - i.e. it loads the page in read mode at the position of the note, exactly as if you had followed a link to that anchor from any other page on the internet. It is possible to select the block when selecting content before and after the block, although no indication is given that it has been selected. Once selected it is possible to apply bold/italic formatting to the block and other selected text using the B/I buttons, but it is not then possible to remove it using these buttons while the note block is selected. It is possible to remove bold/italic using the clear format button. The clear format button does not remove any links in the notes block, but does remove links from any other text selected at the same time.
Created attachment 14662 [details] <head><meta content="width=device-width; height=device-height;" name="viewport"><link href="resource://gre/res/ImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><link href="resource://gre/res/TopLevelImageDocument. <head><meta content="width=device-width; height=device-height;" name="viewport"><link href="resource://gre/res/ImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><link href="resource://gre/res/TopLevelImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><link href="chrome://global/skin/media/TopLevelImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><title>attachment.cgi (PNG Image, 1247 × 669 pixels)</title></head><body><img class="decoded overflowing" alt="http://bug-attachment.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=14163" src="http://bug-attachment.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=14163"></body>
<head><meta content="width=device-width; height=device-height;" name="viewport"><link href="resource://gre/res/ImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><link href="resource://gre/res/TopLevelImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><link href="chrome://global/skin/media/TopLevelImageDocument.css" rel="stylesheet"><title>attachment.cgi (PNG Image, 1247 × 669 pixels)</title></head><body><img class="decoded overflowing" alt="http://bug-attachment.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=14163" src="http://bug-attachment.wikimedia.org/attachment.cgi?id=14163"></body>
cklim: Not sure what your random HTML and image posted here has to do "VisualEditor: Cannot edit notes that use {{ref}} and {{note}} system". Please file a separate ticket as this seems unrelated to this bug report.
Cite.php is designed a certain (bad) way. It has issues, and we will replace it at some point, but the way to fix its issues is not to make horrible hacks in wikitext using loopholes over-looked when the code was written to try to re-design in. This is one of those cases, and is not sanely supportable in VisualEditor, so I'm going to mark this as WONTFIX.
