Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:05:30 UTC
Having just read several other bug/enhancements, such as (Bug 845) and (Bug 3527), and waded through en: documentation before proposing, it seems to me that the "pipe trick" doesn't behave the way that many folks expect. In particular, the effect of leading colons and other marks has unexpected behaviour. Part of the problem is that it doesn't appear until after saving, so folks don't know whether it worked properly. Understanding that it won't affect the actual database (as a preprocessing trick), I propose that a more complete and uniform syntax be adopted. Leading empty pipe -- "[[|" -- keep leading elements. That is, "[[|One, Two]]" yields "[[One, Two|One]]". And "[[|One (Two), Three]]" yields "[[One (Two), Three|One]]". (Note: This would replace the current parentheses pipe trick in a non-astonishing way, and might be easier to parse. It would handle nearly all the requested enhancements, including the odd placenames. This would be more consistent with expectations, and should work for any non-blank specials.) Leading multiple empty pipes -- "[[||" or "[[|||" -- keep multiple leading elements. That is, "[[|||One, Two, Three, Four]]" yields "[[One, Two, Three, Four|One, Two, Three]]". (Note: It's been requested, but not sure that it's worth the effort. But it should still be documented for future use, or to avoid conflicts, or just to disallow.) Leading special pipe -- "[[ |" or "[[ |/|" -- keep leading elements using the specified special, rather than just any special. That is, "[[ |One Two]]" would yield "[[One Two|One]]". And "[[,|One Two, Three]]" would yield "[[One Two, Three|One Two]]". (Note: This should be possible syntactically, as these are not legal leading links. Perhaps these should be limited to a few specials, or even just blank. The blank form has been requested repeatedly for "Placename type, Division, Country" to extract the Placename alone.) Non-empty lead with single pipes in the middle would operate as proposed in (Bug 3527). That is, "[[Some|thing|where]]" yields "[[Something|Somewhere]]". (Note: the two single pipes are probably closer in user expectations from template parameters, and better than trying to recognize "||" or "|-", but the programmers will tell us.) Trailing empty pipe -- "|]]" -- keep trailing elements. That is, "[[WP:VIP|]] yields "[[WP:VIP|VIP]]". (Note: This is what would be used for colons, but handled in a more consistent manner.) Trailing multiple empty pipes -- "||]]" -- keep multiple trailing elements. That is, "[[:en:WP:VIP||]]" yields "[[:en:WP:VIP|WP:VIP]]". Trailing special pipe -- "| ]]" or "|/]]" -- keep trailing elements using the specified special, rather than just any special. (Note: Currently, these are minor errors yielding blank spaces and other wierd behaviour. Now they do something, giving a visual indication to future editors.) Combining the techniques should work as expected. That is, parse the leading and trailing elements, generate the combined display string.
I got lost two paragraphs in -- this is not simple or consistent, it's jut confusing. :)
