Recent studies by Håkon Wium Lie <http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/> clearly show that XHTML markup generated by widespread templates such as {{coord}} is overcomplexified. This is mostly what we are able to fix, but sometimes we aren’t due to the limitations we have created for ourselves (Håkon simply pointed it out as he couldn’t know the reasons behind it; this is why having a fresh look is useful). Perhaps the most serious limitation is: We don’t allow attributes for wikilinks. This limitations results in several disadvantages, for example: * Each time someone wants to style a link, they have to create a <span> or something else somewhere inside or outside the link text. In most cases, this is against the semantics and clarity. * We can’t give ids to links so that we can use them in CSS and JS. * Implementations of certain microformats (such as XFN, “url” property in hCard/hCalendar, etc) inside templates is impossible. I propose to extend wikilinks syntax by making links being parsed the same way as we parse file-links. That is, [[Special:Userlogout|log out|id=logoutlink|style=color:red|title=This will log you out]] will be a wikilink with style, title and id attributes. The current syntax is a subset of my proposal, so nothing should break. As the syntax for external links leaves us no opportunity to clearly extend it in the same spirit, I currently think of merging it with external links’ syntax, leaving the current single-brackets for backward compatibility. Besides these advantages, it will make our syntax even friendlier (have you seen newbies trying to insert http:// into the double brackets?), and it will make us implicitly prohibit Protocol://-like titles (they all are erroneous creations by newbies anyway).

— Kalan _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

We don’t allow attributes for wikilinks.

That is, [[Special:Userlogout|log out|id=logoutlink|style=color:red|title=This will log you out]] will be a wikilink with style, title and id attributes. The current syntax is a subset of my proposal, so nothing should break.