[Pmwiki-users] ?pagename= addresses

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Thu Dec 9 20:22:02 CST 2004


I've mentioned this a few times before over the past few months, but 
now I'm issuing a "final call" to register objections and/or opinions
about changing PmWiki's default handling of page names via PATH_INFO
and the ?pagename= query string parameter.

For those who aren't familiar with the discussion background: PmWiki
supports two forms of pagename specification.  One uses the
"PATH_INFO" string, resulting in urls that look like 

   .../pmwiki.php/Group/SomePage

while the other form has traditionally been called the ?pagename=
specification, resulting in urls that look like

   .../pmwiki.php?pagename=Group.SomePage

So far PmWiki has always assumed PATH_INFO-style urls as the default,
as they generally give nicer looking URLs.  This is what pmwiki.org
uses for its setup.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of webservers 
and PHP configurations where PATH_INFO urls won't work, thus we 
have to have the alternate ?pagename= option for those sites, and
administrators have to set $EnablePathInfo=0; to get PmWiki to
work properly on those sites.

So, the changes:  First, I'm thinking that "pagename" is too long
a string, so PmWiki should accept ?p=Group.SomePage as a synonym
for ?pagename=Group.SomePage.  Using ?p= is also somewhat more
appropriate for sites where English isn't the primary language.

Second, I'm thinking that the default installation should have
$EnablePathInfo=0 -- that is, default to URLs of the form
.../pmwiki.php?p=Group.SomePage, and an administrator sets
$EnablePathInfo=1 if he/she wants to switch to the 
.../pmwiki.php/Group/SomePage form of link (and if the PHP
environment will support it).

We can also provide updated/better documentation of ways to
configure PmWiki for "cleaner" urls for a variety of
environment types.

So, any objections, comments, or criticisms to:
1.  using ?p= over ?pagename=  (?pagename= will still continue to work)
2.  changing PmWiki to default to ?p= -style urls, and switch to
    .../Group/SomePage urls only if the administrator explicitly
    enables it?

Pm



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