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

[Sheldon Rampton]

Rowan Collins wrote:

>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 aware of the difference between Mediawiki and Wikimedia. (In 
fact, I'm the person who coined the term "Wikimedia.") I didn't come 
up with the current name for wmfilter. The name was originated by 
Aldon Hynes, who wrote the first version of it.

>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 don't know if it's "strange" or not. The point is to arrive at a 
common naming convention.

>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.

Drupal has the same prefixing ability, so that a single database can 
be used to serve multiple Drupal installations. Your solution 
therefore doesn't really work. Naming the filter "mediawiki" would 
imply that the module puts an entire mediawiki installation inside 
Drupal -- which is something I wouldn't mind seeing but is beyond the 
limited scope of this particular module.

I see your point, though, about "interwiki" having the status of a 
standard term in the wikiworld. There's even an article about the 
term on Wikipedia. (Go figure.) Here's the URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interwiki

However, it appears that the conventional name for the table used by 
the database is "intermap," not "interwiki."

Is there general agreement here that "interwiki" is the name to go 
with? If so, that's what I'll use for the Drupal module.

Regards,
Sheldon Rampton