"Jay R. Ashworth" jra@baylink.com wrote in message news:20071119185958.GB392@cgi.jachomes.com...
On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 09:25:41AM -0000, Mark Clements wrote:
I think it's very important to drop the use of the word 'magic' in describing these types of things. There is nothing magic about
syntax-based
substitution. 'Magic' words in MediaWiki are "ISBN", "RFC", unquoted
URLs,
etc. These are plain-text elements that are automatically turned into links, whether the user wanted that or not, and which do not require any extra syntax.
And that is *why* they're magic: they are active copy with no special syntax to *declare* them as active; every little bit o' warning you give users that such things are even possible is no little bit too much.
That's my point. Things like ISBN, RFC, etc. are magic words. Things like __NOTOC__ and {{PAGENAME}} are no more magic than [[Link]], and so shouldn't be described as such.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)