[Mediawiki-l] Embedding tarballs in mediawiki

[Scott T. Emery]

	Mediawiki is really fun and easy to use. I think my initial
issues with it are all resolved.  There is one small task I would like
to do using mediawiki, but it may be outside its baliwick.  I want to
embed a tarball in a wiki page for download using syntax similar to
the image and media file links.  This would be a sort of "arbitrary
file link" which would download the file for processing on the remote
computer.

	I would like to embed tarballs in a mediawiki page and make them
available for download. While what I mean appears obvious to me, I will take
a moment to explain exactly what I want to happen.

Upload file

	I want to upload the tarball, just like I currently do .jpg
and .png files and have them "go somewhere". 

Link into wiki

	I want to link the tarball into mediawiki with a syntax similar
to web links.

[file:ball.tar ball distribution]

I want the above to show "ball distribution" as highlighted text in the
wiki.

download tarball

	I want to be able to click on "ball distribution" above and download
the ball.tar file using either http or ftp. 



I could accomplish an equivalent of the above by linking to a web server
from inside the wiki, but I would like to do this using the wiki software
itself.


Perhaps this is an abuse of wikis in general or perhaps this is outside
the boundries of mediawiki's target design.  Or maybe it's already implemented
and I didn't notice... :-).  It would be helpful, but I will find some other
way to do what I need if it can't be done in mediawiki.