[pmwiki-users] Reasons for/against Disabling WikiWords

[Wade Hudson]

Thanks to all.

We will disable WikiWords.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick R. Michaud [mailto:pmichaud at pobox.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 5:19 PM
> To: Wade Hudson
> Cc: Pmwiki-users at pmichaud. com
> Subject: Re: [pmwiki-users] Reasons for/against Disabling WikiWords
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 12:06:09PM -0800, Wade Hudson wrote:
> > I?m considering disabling WikiWords but I?m concerned that doing so
> > might deter experienced wiki users from contributing. Otoh, 
> experienced
> > wiki users would know how to use a pipe to display a WikiWord.
> > 
> > One concern of mine is that we will be including the names of many
> > websites that use the CamelBack format in the name of their
> > organization. Presently, in those instances, I must use [= ? =] to
> > prevent forming an undesired link.
> 
> Note that you can also use the (`) character to suppress WikiWords --
> i.e.:  `CamelBack is basically the same as [=CamelBack=].
> 
> > Another concern is that in general, I prefer that the site display
> > regular words. They are easier to read and less puzzling to 
> novices who
> > suspect that the author made a typo.
> 
> After playing with this for a few years now, I don't see anything
> wrong with disabling WikiWords and restricting links to the [[...]]
> markup.  In versions of PmWiki prior to 2.0 this wasn't that easy to
> do (because the link markup was more convoluted), but it's 
> very workable
> in 2.0.  In fact, in many ways 2.0 prefers using the explicit 
> link markup,
> but continues to support WikiWords by tradition and expectation.
> 
> I think there are good arguments for and against WikiWords 
> depending on
> a site's purpose and audience.  In your case I think you'd be better
> off disabling WikiWords.
> 
> One other point that is often overlooked -- one can always configure
> PmWiki so that links are only formed if the target page exists...
> 
>     $LinkPageCreateFmt = '$LinkText';
> 
> With this setting, "PmWiki" and "PmWiki.DocumentationIndex" 
> will still 
> become links to the corresponding pages, but "PhD" and "McDonald"
> will generally not become links (unless those pages are created
> by some other mechanism).  Unfortunately the above also has the
> side-effect of getting rid of the edit page link for [[...]] style
> links.  It seems to me that the easy answer to this is to provide
> an $EnableWikiWordEditLinks option that says whether WikiWords to
> non-existent pages should generate edit links or be left alone.
> This would give many sites the best of both worlds.
> 
> Pm
>