People use the [
http://example.com http://example.com]
syntax because
our parser is not intelligent enough to ignore punctuation marks after
the URL; most commonly the problem occurs with parentheses.
Yes, and I'm 99% sure there used to be a style-guide suggesting people
use this rather than assuming the software would always autolink
plaintext URLs. It seems to have gone now (or I can't find it), and
perhaps it dated to when the software was in the process of being
rewritten or something.
Personally, though, I would very much prefer if every
link had a
sensible link text. While I admit the URL is better than "click here", I
still think it's pretty lame, and you can *always* find something better.
Yes, there are a few instances where it's valid - like, in order to
construct a sentence which tells the user what the address is for
future reference, and turns that address into a link at the same time
in case they want to go there right now; but mostly, it's just links
waiting for a decent description.
It's bug #974082, BTW.
Actually, that's exactly an instance of elegant
degradation. In
plaintext you get the full information: brief link text plus the URL.
With CSS on the web page, we can hide the URL since you'll see it when
hovering over the link anyway.
I see your point, but this is information that neither Wikipedia, nor
any other website I can think of, traditionally shows *at all* [even
Slashdot only puts the domain]. People are usually quite happy to let
their browsers tell them where links head if they want to, and writing
out the whole URL can take up quite a bit of space and rather breaks
up the flow of text and layout that the article's author(s) thought
they were creating.
Although your reasons seem sound, your stance raises
the question: Does
that mean you reject the idea of using the same HTML for different
layouts? Thing is, that is the whole purpose of CSS.
Well, I guess it does rather raise that question, but my answer would
be that I love the concept of CSS, and the idea of using one page for
multiple formattings is great. But in reality, like all things
web-based, it has to be done in a way that makes no assumptions about
the client's environment - and since it's entirely a client-side
technology, that means a lot of compromises. So, for instance, the
non-CSS'd version of a page is best written in an order that will make
sense for a linear display (e.g. the venerable lynx). I think the
non-CSS'd version having the same *information* as the CSS'd one - no
more, no less - is similar, but that's just an opinion.
I had another thought, though, about a possibly nicer way of having
this option if people really want it - enable it in MySkin but not
Monobook, so that people can reconstruct "monobook but with visible
link text" if they want, but it's not there by default. That may be
more coding than it's worth though, if MySkin is just literally
MonoBook minus the CSS; I don't really understand how the skinning
works.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]