Template:Re
Reply Template
This an experimental "reply" template for use in discussions. It is currently a proposal only to make discussions more convenient, while keeping things really simple. It's not any more complicated than the current method.
How it looks like
Default
Colours
Usage
In the most simple form: you just type {{re| then your text as usual (with your signature and all), close with }}. That's all. Like so:
{{re| That's what I have to say! }}
Indenting
Typically, it's a custom to indent replies. This is often fiddly and tends to huge walls of texts because to properly indent, each paragraph needs to have the ::::::. So, each paragraph of your wall of text needs to have the proper amount of indenting-::: which is usually avoided out of lazyness. When there's a conflict and someone sneaked in a reply before yours, you have to go back and adjust all of that. The simple solution is thus an easy number that handles this.
{{re|indent=1| my text here... }}
You can easily see the indent number to the text you reply to, and count that number one up, and done. Currently, the template supports all single-digits (1—9), which should be enough for now, but can be expanded very easily.
Technicolor™
It's also possible to give the line left that brackets the comment a specific colour (default is grey), as you have seen above. You could find a colour you like, and always use it. Or people could spontaneously pick one not yet used, and then stick to this during this conversation. Or if you want to be punk, change the colour every time. The template strives to support a vast number of plain english colour names, so that it's easy to use. Fear not, since only the left line is coloured, the page looks nice and clean, even when different colours are in use.
{{re|indent=1|color=wine|My text here... }}
Further Ideas
Such things as "indent" could be potentially be shortened to just the indent number, but that makes it obscure, e.g. {{re|3| My comment }}. I considered that it may do both, but after some reflection, I like it the way it is, since it's also more user-friendly to newcomers and more consistent that way. Preferably, there is an editor button for the lazy people.
The colours are currently contained in the template. It might be useful to "outsource" them into their own template and reference them only here. But that technique is only useful when plain english colours picking is used elsewhere, too.
To Do
The luxury version of this could show the table with all possible colour names (and how it looks like). However that's when the template is accepted.
Issues/Documentation
It's currently made with a <p> paragraph braket to contain the formatting. But that means that the whole comment inside is treated as a one paragraph and which means that a paragraph break within a comment needs to be done with <br /> or two line breaks (which looks not good in the editor), which isn't optimal. Solution is to remove the <p> and put a <br /> at the end, or maybe just a normal line break. This needs some trying out.- Added a tiny hr line, which subtly breaks the left border. This is to prevent that when two comments posted directly under one another, with the same indenting, have a merged border. The HR is white, but should there be some problem in the future, an easy fix is to simply give the HR a 0% width, i.e. add "width: 0%".
- Stylists could potentially also adjust the distance between two comments, with "height:23px" by adding that to the HR parameter at the end. It's currently the default (i.e. 1 pixel).