[Wikitext-l] Double-bracketed external links

[Platonides]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Here's a controversial proposal: allow external links to be wrapped in
> double brackets: [[http://foo.com]].
> 
> Rationale: My grammar (and the existing parser, I believe) have to go
> out of their way to detect these malformed external links, then
> explicitly treat them as a normal external link wrapped in extra
> brackets:
> 
> [<a href="http://foo.com">[1]</a>]
> 
> However, what the user almost certainly wanted was:
> 
> <a href="http://foo.com">[1]</a>
> 
> So this is a case of existing wikitext probably being written with a
> different intention to how the parser is actually rendering it.
> 
> Since we have to explicitly detect this situation, wouldn't it make
> more sense to render it how the user wants it while we're at it?
> 
> Steve
> PS This is a somewhat idle query - compared to the amount of work
> involved in rewriting the parser, this is a trivial change either way.
> I'm just curious what kinds of improvements could be made that fit
> within the "don't break existing wikitext"/"mimic what people are
> expecting" guidelines.

Would fit the expectatives. It's a commons mistake among beginners.
However, not only they have a different syntax for brackets, also for 
separators. So if you "fixed" it, you could end up making a link as <a 
href="http://www.example.org/|Nice">site</a>
Also, it would further restrict available pagenames: Things like 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http://www.google.com *do* exist!

It is however an interesting proposal, as you wouldn't need to recognise 
[http:// links at all. You would simply define http: as a special 
namespace linking to that page (same with ftp:, mailto:...).