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wikibits.js / insertTags was originally designed for wrapping selected text with
start and end tags.

Later it was used as a cheap way to enter arbitrary characters not on the
keyboard since it already handled various browsers etc.

Later again the charinsert extension gave us a new tag to make it easier to
create sections of useful but hard to type characters.

Now insertTags is probably used a lot more for charinsert than for inserting tags.

We probably need a new function "insertChar" or "insertSpecial" designed
especially as an extension to the keyboard. It may be impossible to edit the
browser URL bar with javascript but it should be possible to edit all text input
elements in all forms. It would be particularly useful for entering search terms.

Wikis that use a lot of <charinsert> (like the English Wiktionary) will also
become slightly less bloated with a dedicated function that takes fewer
parameters than insertTags.