Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:05:52 UTC
This was specifically brought up by issues with the video game template which uses Japanese Article Number (JAN), or should for quality articles, in almost every article for a video game. Many of the rest (including a lot of overlap) use Universal Product Code (UPC) and a few European Article Number (EAN). Newer JAN and EAN are comparable and under the same division of Internal Article Numbers (IAN), but not older ones. Unlike ISBN, even though they are under the larger IAN umbrella, they are still refered to by the original numbering sequence, JAN and EAN. UPC is also suppose to be computable with this, except 12-numbers instead of 13. Furthermore, unlike isbn these also may have more varied codes, like shorter sequences for smaller products that cannot fit the code or specialized products like magazines which need more info. Generally the code would need to figure out what the country of origin is based on the id for assigning whether it was JAN, EAN, UPC or another (see http://www.gs1.org/barcodes/support/prefix_list for prefix info).
WONTFIXing per bug 3663 comment #12. We really don't want to be adding more of these magic links to the software (and it's been said other places than that, I just can't think of where off the top of my head). Things like this are best done in templates.
