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

[Rowan Collins]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:01:47 -0600, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
> Hi, all. I've co-written a module for Drupal installations that makes
> it easier for Drupal sites to link to Wiki pages. 
> [...]
> 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." 

Depending on exactly what it is this filter is *for*, that might well
be a very good name for it - i.e. if it's a reasonably generic
implementation of what was originally called "InterMap"
[http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?InterMap], "InterWiki" seems to
be the commonly used term for such. As an example of an existing
non-wiki implementation, I cite Advogato:
http://advogato.org/person/raph/diary.html?start=97
http://cvs.ghostscript.com/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/cvs/mod_virgule/mod_virgule/wiki.h?rev=1.1&view=markup

I must say I'm not sure where "wmfilter" came from - did you mean
"mwfilter", as in "MediaWiki filter"? (I expect you know this, but
note http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Names - "wm" makes me think
"Wikimedia", which is something completely different; but that's
probably coincidence to why you called it that...)

> [...]
> 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."

I may be being a bit conservative about this, but "interwiki" is kind
of a standard term in the wikiworld, and has stuck despite very early
on being co-opted for more general linkage. More to the point, it
seems a rather strange compromise to rewrite part of MediaWiki so that
you can rename an external tool to something that matches a new
internal name.

I note, however, that you say Drupal encourages tables to be
*prefixed* appropriately - are you aware that recent versions of
MediaWiki have the ability to prefix all table names in an install, to
allow them to co-exist on the same mysql server with other projects?
If you really really want your module to be named to tie in with
MediaWiki, why not call it "mediawiki"; that way, the interwiki table
could be called "mediawiki.interwiki", and everyone's happy, and
you've even used the prefixing concept as it was probably intended.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]