Implicit Link Names

[european bob]

On Fri, 2004-04-02 at 22:20, Jason Clark wrote:
> The problem is that the author used linknames like [1] [2] [3], and 
> then blockquoted some text that appears to use email-style footnotes.  
> It seems simple enough to write the original block like this:
> 	[Joe][x1] [said][x2] this [the other day][x3]

Why do those nicknames need to be alphanumeric? I don't think you need
the x.

> Remember, if you don't define a link, it doesn't become a link.  I 
> thought the whole concern was over accidentally triggering a link.

Well, that's personally only really half of the concern. I would
personally find having to review a document for missing links tedious,
so don't particularly want mis-spelt links to be valid somehow. 

I think that square brackets would be used too commonly for it to be
ambiguous. If you're looking at the document, even a human cannot tell
what the point of the brackets are - are they actually brackets, or are
they a link? You have to search the document for the nickname to find
out. I don't particularly like that. For example, is [this] a link?

> I wouldn't suggest getting rid of [link][id].  I call [link][] cruft in 
> this context because it would produce precisely the same output as 
> [link] so why support two syntaxes, especially when one has extra 
> punctuation and causes more visible interuption to the text?

What would you do with [link][] otherwise? Just render it as-is - with
the [] as brackets? I think that's horrible, personally ;) If you don't
like [link][], don't use it - making it not work somehow but still
supporting [link][nick] is a bit odd.

> I'm really not trying to be argumentative, I just still don't see how 
> [this] is likely to cause unintended results... at least not often 
> enough to outweigh the potential benefits.  If John releases a version 
> to the list that allows [implicit links], perhaps we'll find examples 
> in use that we won't think of otherwise.

I think there's an issue with "have my links become links? has something
unintentionally become a link?" (and, are my links pointing at the right
place?). It would be nice to be able to tell just by looking at a piece
of text rather than having to search for links or review the output.
Doing "Find [" seems a cop-out to me.

--bob.