[Pmwiki-users] ?pagename= addresses

Neil Herber nospam
Fri Dec 10 22:24:04 CST 2004


At 2004-12-11  01:26 PM +1300, John Rankin is rumored to have said:
>Many people go to a wiki for the first time by following a
>link in an email, for example. Or it's read out over the
>radio. Or you tell someone over the phone. Or...
>
>One test is to try speaking the address:
>
>"question mark lower case pee equals, er the letter pee for Papa"
>
> >
> >And on PmWikis using PATH_INFO, they won't ever see it!
>
>Yes, but as I understand the proposal, ?p=Group.Name will
>be the default behaviour. Surely we should strive to make
>the default as clear as possible?

If clarity and simplicity and readability are worthy objectives, then the 
default behaviour should be to use PATH_INFO style links with all slashes 
and no oddball punctuation. (Unfortunately not everybody can.)

If you are following a link from an email, the structure makes little 
difference as long as it fits on one line. Having ?page= rather than / 
makes it longer.

If aural recognition is a goal then "slash" works better than "question 
mark, page, equal sign".

How often does a complex URL get transmitted aurally? I could never read 
and a listener would never correctly copy this URL:
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/020171499X/qid=1102742329/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_0_1/702-0598332-8231211
and yet I can get you there by telling you to go to "amazon.ca" and enter 
"Wiki Way" into the search box.



Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 




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