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

Wed Sep 29 16:43:41 UTC 2004

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 06:27:26 -0300, e2m <e2m at ig.com.br> wrote:
> Por que este recurso não é usado para tratar com as diferenças do tipo
> "behaviour" e "behavior" ou "center" and "centre"?
> 
> Why this resource is not used to deal with the differences of the type
> "behaviour" and "behavior" or "center" and "centre"?

Because:
a) it would require linking every instance of those words (if we were
to use *exactly* the same mechanism); which would be ugly.
b) nobody seems to mind that much, and the general consensus is just
to leave the variant spellings in place, or pick one version or the
other for a specific article (UK spelling on UK articles, etc)
c) nobody thought of applying this particular bit of the software to
that before and/or nobody thought of this bit of the software as a
particularly generic tool before

However:
If you look at some of the discussion, here and on wikitech-l, about
the zh-tw / zh-cn issue, you will see that there is a forthcoming
software feature which includes syntax for entering two variants of a
word into an article (" {-zh-tw some word zh-cn other word-} " IIRC).
Suggestions to apply this to other languages (e.g. en-us / en-gb) have
been made, but people still aren't convinced this particular one needs
a technical solution.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]