Implicit Link Names

[Rad Geek]

On Sat,  3 Apr 2004 09:08:16 -0500, John Gruber <gruber at fedora.net> wrote:

> european bob <bob at wolfwall.com> wrote on 04/02/04 at 10:51p:

>> 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 agree with this, and it's probably a good summary of why I didn't
> start from the get-go supporting just one set of brackets for
> implicit links.

> I realize that when you *want* to create a link, this:
>
>     [this] is a link
>
> looks very appealing. It's easy to type, and it's easy to read.
>
> The problem is that you can't tell by looking at it if it's supposed
> to be a link or not.

> Everyone seems to agree that this:
>
>     [this][] is a link
>
> is slightly ugly/kludgy/crufty whatever.

> But it's also obvious at a glance that it's a link.

. . . etc. . . .

Forgive a recent convert if I'm dredging up things already decisively put 
down, but why not do the implicit-link syntax using double-brackets? Thus:

	Here is my [[text]] with a link in it.

It has a family resemblance to the other link syntax, but avoids (I think) 
the crufty appearance of the [current solution][] and the various other 
suffix solutions. It also avoids collision with normal use of [brackets], 
and has the benefit of precedent (from WikiPedia et al.) behind it.

What do y'all think?

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