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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/PreProcessorDirective]]. 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]]