Board Thread:New on TrainStation Wiki/@comment-5596770-20140217222504/@comment-15636815-20141208101547

Concerning your next tasks of the Shop and Offer sections--specifically accepting and displaying cost data--I've devoted many hours of thought to the subject of how to get two sets of output from one set of input. With the old  and   pairings, it would be child's play. Now that everyone are used to using Cost and its new variants, it's not so easy anymore.

One option, of course, is to require editors to give the same cost data twice, using different parameters. I dislike this option for two reasons. First, I'd rather we design a slightly more complex template that processes the input twice than ask every editor to input the same data twice in every template. Second, this option would require that the template allow for four different parameters for cost data: Full, Full-to-convert-to-discounted, Discounted-to-convert-to-full, and Discounted-to-display-as-is. If any of that confuses you, just think about how many potential new editors will be even more confused, give up, and never contribute.

The biggest problem with accepting one set of cost data is that all of us are accustomed to assigning a template call as an argument for a parameter. For example,. We've been giving double data in tables, using Cost or CostNoSam for one column and CostSam or Cost for the next column, but we've never done that for infoboxes. If we send a cost parameter using Cost, there's no easy way for Infobox item to take that same input and send it to CostSam--if it's even possible at all.

I've been working, testing, and researching. I've made a bit of progress, though I still don't have a working solution. I'll accept ideas, assistance, or even a slap on the back of the head and a "Yeah, I already figured it out." In the meantime, I'll keep looking for an answer that doesn't involve any of those three things, just in case. ;-)