[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

[Andrew Gray]

On 05/06/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > [[User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me|32Can't sleep, clown will eat me]]
> >
> > I think that's 70 characters including spaces, punctuation and
> > brackets.  Just for reference purposes.
>
> [[User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me|]]
>
> That's considerably shorter.
>
> And of course it's not normally necessary for users to choose ridiculous names.

This prompts a thought.

Most people know of the pipe trick with wikisyntax - typing [[Article
name (modifier)]] displays as _Article name (modifier)_; typing it
[[Article name (modifier)|]] - ie, with a single | character but no
alternate text  - is converted into [[Article name (modifier)|Article
name]], displaying as _Article name_

How difficult would it be to adapt the wikisyntax such that
[[|Namespace:Article name]] or [[Namespace:Article name||]] is
converted into [[Namespace:Article name|Article name]]? I've noticed
this a few times before, often when linking to Wikipedia policy pages
or cats - not quite as useful a shortcut as the pipe trick, but it'd
be handy to have.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk