Ask HN: How to insert references in comments here?

1 pointvalarauko5 comments

I often see comments on HN with references added at the end, but am unclear how they did it. I would guess its some sort of MultiMarkdown, but how? Are people writing in a text editor in MMD and copy pasting it here, or is there a browser extension everybody uses I don't know about?

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You just type them with square brackets, like this [0]. There's no feature [1] involved.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_feature

That is surprising to me, since this essentially replicates MultiMarkdown with none of the benefits. I have used MMD -> HTML for lengthy Reddit posts, but least there the citation links are live.

You mean like this? [1]

1. https://something.somewhere.org

Just type it out. There's no magic. You can put them inline (which I prefer) but if they're in the middle rather than at the end of a paragraph it's harder to read.

I've written them manually in the past like so, but when I see comments with 10+ links, I wonder if everybody else has a different system for writing these than I do.

I see your point. I agree that a sort of word processor with markdown-simple WYSIWYG tools/automation could be very useful.

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