[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

Wed Oct 6 17:56:11 UTC 2004

On 6 Oct 2004, at 15:28, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> David Friedland wrote:
<snip>
> I have rememebered wrong for which I am sorry, the curly brackets do 
> hide the difficult stuff. This makes a world of difference.
>
> However, which word are you to use for the template "colour" or 
> "color" ?

You could just use one of the two and make a redirect for each 
alternative spelling.

> The point is when you decide you want to edit an existing article you 
> have to search for the place where you want to edit. This is because 
> of the difference in layout. When the words also change because of 
> these templates, it will be that much harder to find the right 
> location.

True, but is this really a major problem?
I gather that a majority of people on this list isn't all that bothered 
about "fixing" British/US spellings, but a non-trivial minority is, as 
the subject keeps cropping up.
Implementing the technical plumbing for David's "curly brackets plus 
templates"-suggestion would enable people like him that are really 
serious about "fixing" these things to work away and do it, while not 
really inconveniencing the rest of us (and yes, it would be more 
difficult to do, for the reasons you've just mentioned, but hey! you 
and me don't have to do it ;-) .

One thing should be clear however: No bot should ever be set lose to, 
e.g., seek all non-curlified color's and colour's and curlify them, as 
this would break a great many things (think ColoUr Graphics Adapter). 
This will only ever be a human job to do (in the absence of significant 
AI breakthroughs ;-) .

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com