"Jay R. Ashworth" <jra(a)baylink.com>
wrote in
message news:20071119185958.GB392@cgi.jachomes.com...
On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 09:25:41AM -0000, Mark
Clements wrote:
> I think it's very important to drop the use of the word 'magic' in
> describing these types of things. There is nothing magic about
syntax-based
> substitution. 'Magic' words in
MediaWiki are "ISBN", "RFC",
> unquoted
URLs,
etc.
These are plain-text elements that are automatically turned
into
links, whether the user wanted that or not, and which do not
require any
extra syntax.
And that is *why* they're magic: they are active copy with no special
syntax to *declare* them as active; every little bit o' warning you
give users that such things are even possible is no little bit too
much.
That's my point. Things like ISBN, RFC, etc. are magic words.
Things like
__NOTOC__ and {{PAGENAME}} are no more magic than [[Link]], and so
shouldn't
be described as such.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
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=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054