Editing Template:R/doc (section)

==Intent==
The {{tl|r}} (''referencing'') template allows to define and invoke any kind of full or shortened references (citations as well as footnotes) in articles in a very intuitive way utilizing an easy-to-remember and very short notation reducing a lot of clutter from article source code, thereby making them easier to read and maintain.

{{tl|r}} provides means for links to references to carry additional information (like pages, quotations and other commentary) in a condensed format, thereby eliminating the need for an additional article section for shortened references (and hence avoiding the problems related to that approach like the extra layer of indirection of links, the real-estate occupied for, as well as the amount of whitespace created by that section, and the often unreliable proprietary linking system with ambiguous or dangling links as well as lacking backlinks from the full citations to the shortened references). Its annotation system can be used to enrich the full citation with information given where a reference gets invoked, to bundle multiple citations into one entry, or to group sub-references under the corresponding full reference (i.e. to implement [[#R-style_shortened_references|r-style shortened citations]]).

By utilizing the MediaWiki Extension:Cite internally (instead of establishing an independent linking system (i.e. [[WP:CITEREF]]) on top of it), {{tl|r}} also remains fully compatible with other referencing systems and will take advantage of any future improvements of the underlying system.

It can be used with raw text definitions for the references as well as be combined with other citation templates (like [[Help:CS1|CS1]]/[[Help:CS2|CS2]]).