[Mediawiki-l] MediaWIki module for Drupal / rename interwiki table?

[Sheldon Rampton]

Hi, all. I've co-written a module for Drupal installations that makes 
it easier for Drupal sites to link to Wiki pages. The module is 
called "wmfilter.module" and can be downloaded at the following URL:

http://drupal.org/node/14980

The module uses the same interwiki table as MediaWiki. We did it this 
way because we want to make it as easy as possible in the future to 
develop other ways that MediaWiki and Drupal can interoperate. One 
issue this has created, however, is the fact that the name of the 
module ("wmfilter") is different from the name of the table 
("interwiki"). This is a bit of a problem in Drupal, whose modular 
design is intended to let people add their own functionality to the 
software. To avoid namespace collisions, Drupal encourages module 
writers to prefix any new tables associated with their module with 
the same name as the module itself.

One possibility for reconciling this dilemma would be to rename 
"wmfilter" to "interwiki." However, this isn't a terribly descriptive 
name for the module, and in fact the name "interwiki" isn't even 
terribly descriptive of the way the table is used in MediaWiki 
itself. The standard MediaWiki installation currently comes with a 
number of records in the interwiki table that point to non-wiki 
websites. In practice, "interwiki" has developed into a table of 
general interlinks rather than simply a table of interwiki links. I'm 
wondering, therefore, if there would be an interest on the part of 
MediaWiki developers in renaming the interwiki table in MediaWiki to 
something such as "interlinks" or "linkfilter."

--Sheldon Rampton