Brion Vibber:
Or, if you specifically mean what goes into the <h1>...</h1>, that's set by whatever fun function is running the output for this view (eg, Article::view, Article::edit, the special page, etc.).
Yes, I'm only referring to this output part which is set with setPageTitle. There you currently have something like "Talk:Main Page", which is rendered into
<h1 class="firstHeading">Talk:Main Page</h1>
in MonoBook. The skin has no logical knowledge of the title other than as a single string.
I'd like to be able to style the text "Talk:" separately from the text "Main Page", perhaps add an optional icon (which could be configured in the namespace manager). Other possible uses would be visually separating subpages from main title parts, allowing skins to visually treat a prefix like "Editing .." differently from the title itself, etc. Generally, piecing together raw text and passing it on to skins doesn't strike me as good design, I think we should pass on the components and let the skins decide how to display them.
Does that make sense? It's not a major change, but I thought I'd see if anyone has a problem with it before diving in. :)
Erik