Genii Weblog

Wiki links - First steps

Mon 15 Nov 2004, 07:38 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
OK, the first step seems to be to define the term.  I am using the definition on this Wiki Links page as a starting point, but if I discover new and different information, I'll try to incorporate it.  We will need to bend the definitions a bit since this is NOT a wiki, after all.  Where necessary, we may expand the definition.  Whatever I do, I assume I'll make it available to any intrepid soul who wants to do such things in their own Domino based weblog.

Four traditional types of links
According to the Wiki Links page, there are four kinds of links to deal with.  My guess is, we'll incorporate three and add two more of our own, but that's getting ahead of myself.  The four are:

  • Wiki links - These links are created simply by smashing together capitalized words (at least two of them). Example: SourceForge appears as SourceForge.  This is, ironically, the hardest to implement in this weblog, since we don't use squished names for posts.  Richard does, so if he used the system, you could refer to WikipediaPolitics and it would become WikipediaPolitics.  I guess you could use BeyondHypotheticalCarrots and it would become BeyondHypotheticalCarrots, but since I use long names frequently, and a fair amount of punctuation, I'm not sure this would make sense. 
  • Free links - These are links that are not smashed together, but instead are written as ((my link page)), which would become a link if there were such a page.  In that instance, you could have ((Matrix Revolutions - A contrary view)) become Matrix Revolutions - A contrary view, which is slightly more useful.  In the case of this weblog, we would probably want to redefine this slightly, and allow  ((link)) to refer to pages on this website rather than posts from this blog, so ((MidasLSX)) could become MidasLSX.  More useful than this might be the extension, whereby you use the vertical bar syntax to give an alias to a website, such as ((MidasLSX|Midas Rich Text LSX)), which would become Midas Rich Text LSX.
  • Regular outside links - In this case, any URL starting with http:// would become a URL link.  Nothing fancy would work, but a simple http://www.GeniiSoft.com would become a link the way it does in Notes and other e-mail systems.  This does not currently work in the weblog for responses, but does for my posts.  There is an additional syntax which is not currently supported, but could be.  In that syntax, a regular outside link enclosed in square brackets would be reduced to a number, much like a footnote.  For example, http://www.GeniiSoft.com would become [1] if it was the first link.
  • Shortcut outside links - These are outside links which take a parameter, such I could use (Google:Midas) to automate a search for Midas, or (rhs:WikipediaPolitics|Wikipedia Politics) to become Wikipedia Politics.  These outside links would have to be registered somehow, although I'm not sure how yet.  I think there is a lot of cool stuff that Midas can do with these, especially examples such as (help:LinkMatching method) or (supportSearch:dynamic tables) or that sort of thing.  I am open to suggestions.

Two non-traditional types of links
Beyond those four, there are a couple of extensions I can think of based on the idea that it will mostly be responders who will use these notations.   These would be:

  • Respond to Responder links - These links would be created just by using {{2}} to refer back to a specific response, or possibly {{228.1}} to refer to a response to a previous post...

TO BE FINISHED LATER...

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