doc/bugs/Spaces_in_link_text_for_ikiwiki_links.mdwn



Versions 2.0 and 2.1 of ikiwiki, and I think earlier versions as well,
allowed wiki links to have spaces in the link text. For example, [[!ikiwiki
logo page|logo]] should create an anchor tag referencing the logo page, and
[[!ikiwiki logo|logo/ikiwiki.png]] should create an image tag referencing
the logo.
As of version 2.2, this no longer works. I think the pattern \[[...|...]]
should allow spaces before the pipe. I suspect this is the same problem as
reported in [[index/discussion#index11h1]].

The above examples are ambiguous, only worked due to a bug, and were
never documented to work. So I'm not inclined to re-add support for them.
If you look at [[ikiwiki/WikiLink]], it is clear that spaces cannot be used in
WikiLinks. It also shows how to use underscores in the link text if you
want multiple words.
This was a decision I made a long time ago due to the ambiguity between a
WikiLink and a [[ikiwiki/Directive]]. Is "[[foo bar|baz]]" a wikilink to
baz with a link text of "foo bar", or an instance of preprocessor
directive "foo" with a parameter of "bar|baz"? If it's interpreted as a
wikilink today, that could change tomorrow if a new preprocessor directive
is added.
Before version 2.2, ikiwiki actually first treated it as a preprocessor
directive. If that failed, it output the preprocessor directive back onto
the page, and next the wikilink code tried treating it as a wikilink.
In 2.2, I fixed several problems with the way an unhandled preprocessor
directive was re-output onto the page, by prefixing it with a '' ...
which makes it not be treated as a WikiLink.
If WikiLinks had ever been documented to work with spaces in them, then
I'd feel I needed to support the pre 2.2 behavior, but I don't feel that
I have to support old behavior that was never documented and happened due
to a bug, so I current have no plans to bring the old behavior back.
--[[Joey]]


I agree that the grammar should be unambiguous. It seems to me that the
problem with spaces-in-wikilinks is caused by overloading the wikilink
and preprocessor syntax to use the same symbols. If they didn't (and is
there much advantage in them using the same symbols? I know in some
cases you have something which is a wikilink and a preprocessor directive,
but how often?) there'd be no problem with spaces.
If there was ever a future, syntax-breaking major release of ikiwiki
(similar to python3000) I'd like to see this fixed as part of that.
--[[JonDowland]]


You can enable prefix_directives and get the disambiguated behavior
and spaces in wikilinks today. It will become the default in 3.0.
--[[Joey]]


[[done]]