[pmwiki-users] WikiTerms

[Pico]

Ben Wilson <dausha <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> On 5/30/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud <at> pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> [snip] I know if I type [[markup]]s the link will be
> 'markups' and lead to Main.Markup. What if (:[[markup]]:) behaved
> similarly? That would allow a '(:markup:)' link to 'Terms.Markup. I
> admit that this is a change to PmWiki, which is not Pm's goal. But, it
> woudl be light enough and would allow a way of linking all the
> directives to a relevant support page in PmWiki.
> 

The issue is not simply one of presenting the reader with the additional characters, or having those 
characters appear to be part of the link.  The real task, in this respect, is to provide authors with a 
way to refer readers to a term that has been, or should be, defined.

To use the example of "title" we have (:title:) page directive and the {$Title} page variable that would 
each point to the same page under your proposal: both (:[[title]]:) and {$[[Title]]} would point to [[Title]].

>From an author's perspective, it would be best if you could just identify the term, whether (:title:) or 
{$Title} and mark it with something that identified it as a link containing an escaped string.  While 
ordinary brackets would not work, because bracketed links anticipate further markup rendering, 
as in [[(Group)Page]], [[Alias=Group.Page]], [[Group.Page|Alias]], [[Group.Page|+]] and [[Group.Page|#]],
new markup could be created for links that would not allow any further rendering of markup, for example, 
`` (:title:)`` and ``{$Title}`` or 
@[[ (:title:)]]@ and @[[{$Title}]]@.  

What would not be helpful, however, is requiring the author to make the necessary translations 
between  a term and its page name before being able to refer to it as a term that has been, or 
should be, defined, e.g. [[PageVariableTitle|[@{$Title}@]]] and [[PageDirectiveTitle|[@(:title:)@]]], 
particularly since the initial page names could become outdated over time, as when Directives 
because PageDirectives and TableDirectives.

Finally, aside from all of the above, your proposal would have to account for situations where 
markup is combined with a link to trigger an additional feature.  For example, WikiTrail markup 
contains an otherwise ordinary link that is then surrounded with additional characters that are 
translated into different trail functions:
<<|[[markup|>> 
<|[[markup|> and
^|[[markup|^

Pico