On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:29:44 -0400, Simetrical wrote:
On 10/25/07, Steve Sanbeg ssanbeg@ask.com wrote:
__NOTOC__ is a magic word in the parser. Things like {{defaultsort}} and <ref> can be implemented as extensions, without hacking the core code, which would certainly make life easier when implementing this.
You really think this is plausibly implementable as an extension? Tons of core code will have to be modified to take into account two possible types of redirects. That's aside from the fact that again, I see no reason at all to make two separate systems to handle what amounts to the same problem.
At this point, I don't see why not. That's not to say that it won't require some kind of modifications to the core, but that I don't see the need to add a new ambiguity to the markup when it could be implemented with a consistent syntax.
Basically, I see the need for:
1) an article save/delete hook to extract and create/remove the auto-redirects
2) a hook to render the alias markup - presumably a noop, which would make our concerns about the | being misinterpreted in a parser function moot.
3) a way to access the aliases; either a hook when getting the titles or doing the search. Maybe also some way disable transclusion or linking to the alias.
I see redirects and aliases as solving distinct problems; a way to rename pages with minimal disruption, and a way to augment search. Sure, there's some overlap, and they'd share a lot of their internals, but that doesn't make them the same.
Most significantly, I don't see the advantage to template aliasing, and the worst case of potentially needing to parse millions of records to find (or determine nonexistence of) a template makes me uneasy. If aliases are called frequently in the data, that would lock the data more tightly into the software.