Template:Ar
From The Bionic Wiki
The Actor-Role template allows for easy crediting of an actor with a role. It has been abbreviated to ar because it will tend to be used frequently, necessitating brevity.
[edit] Main usage
The point of the template is simply to reduce the number of key strokes to credit an actor with a role. While you could type:
[[Actor]] as [[Role]]<br/>
to get: Actor as Role (with a line break), this template condenses things to:
{{ar|Actor|Role}}
resulting in the same:
Actor as Role
This is arguably not much of a savings when speaking in terms of a single credit, but when building a page with multiple credits, it should reduce the typing burden overall, and reduce the chances of making a formatting error. Note that you don't even need to hit the enter key here:
{{ar|Lindsay Wagner|Jaime Sommers}}{{ar|Richard Anderson|Oscar Goldman}}{{ar|Lee Majors|Steve Austin}}{{ar|Martin E. Brooks|Rudy Wells}}
returns the result:
Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers
Richard Anderson as Oscar Goldman
Lee Majors as Steve Austin
Martin E. Brooks as Rudy Wells
[edit] "No-name" characters
For cases of minor characters given an indistinct name, this template will accommodate a third, "masking" variable to allow for crediting as actually happened in the episode, but direction to the appropriate article. Thus, you can type:
{{ar|Actor|Article Page|Role}}
and still get:
Actor as Role
directed to Article Page
For example. there's Nurse (The Ghosthunter) and Nurse (The Return of the Bionic Woman). Both actors can be credited as "Nurse", with the link pointing to the appropriate page.
- Merry Loomis as Nurse
- M.E. Lorange as Nurse
[edit] Limitations
This template is really only appropriate for lists, where an automatic anteceding line break is highly desirable. Its principal usage is intended to be in Template:SMDM episode and Template:BW episode, the two main episode page infoboxes. It would not be useful within a body of text, as it would create an odd text break.
For instance:
- Although Kill Oscar guest-starred John Houseman as Dr. Franklin
, he would not return to play another character in The Bionic Woman.
However, there is no leading line break, so if you wanted to incorporate a list in the text of an article, you'd have to manually put one in. A leading line break has been deliberately left out, because it would create a massive amount of space in the infoboxes.
