[Pmwiki-users] PmWiki2 - FreeLinks

[Steven Leite]

I've seen a lot of talk about [[WikiLinks]], but there's not been any
mention of {{FreeLinks}} yet, or how they will be handled in Version 2.

I think this is a very good opportunity to "fix" the limitation where
dots (.), dashes(-), underscores(_) and even spaces (  ) and symbols
($#%%^) are not allowed to be part of a Page Title, or Group Title.

In my previous post which replied to all of Pm's examples of NFL.*.*.*,
and how pages relative pages would resolve could be equally fitted for
FreeLinks. Since the "links" are encapsulated in SquareBrackets anyways,
why not treat them as FreeLinks (one in the same).

The only place it might get tricky is if you wanted a Group name called
"N.F.L." instead of "NFL".  My solution for that is just use a
back-slash to escape the "dot".  This won't be a problem very often, so
I think it's not that big of a deal - but I do think it's a big deal to
"restrict" what people can use as a title.

Here's a few examples (with spaces and other stuff)

[[My Patriots.My State Washington]] would resovle a page called "My
Patriots.My State Washington" (all spaces intact)

NFL with periods between (N.F.L) could be written as
[[N\.F\.L\..Teams.Patriots.Washington]].  Yeah, I know it doesn't look
too pretty, but how often are people going to put periods in a title
name?  But it would be nice if they had the option to do it.

What about symbols and toher things?  What if I hava a page title called
Micro$oft, or WaReZ the !#$&^!!?

It should be simple to create these pages by using the same syntax:
[[My Group.Micro$oft]], or [[WaReZ the !#$&^!!?]].  Of course, local
operating system file restrictions will be in effect, so some error
checking might be required.  A simple error "Could not create page" is
sufficient to alert the user that the symbols/characters they've used in
their PageTitle is unacceptable.

If I was ranking this as a Development Priority, I would rank it a 5 for
my own tastes, and I've never ranked any item a 5 before.  Usually 4 is
about as high as I would go.  But this is a very important feature in my
opinion.  Without the ability to include spaces, and case sensitive
titles, PmWiki's usefulness in a corporate environment is somewhat
limited.  Yes, there are work-arounds, but if it's "possible" .. then it
"should be done" in my opinion.

I also realize that one additional problem could arise from allowing
CaSe SeNsItIvE titles, and that is that some pages could be lost.  There
could be a simple "switch" in the config.php like $IgnoreTitleCase which
could solve that problem.  Similarily, $IgnoreTitleSpace could be used
to ignore spaces, so that

[[My group/My Page]]
[[mygroup/mypage]]
[[MyGroup/MyPage]]
[[My Group/My Page]]

would all link to the same page (if that's what the admin desires)

-Steven