PITS /

00746: Link markup broken in 2.1.6

Summary: Link markup broken in 2.1.6

Created: 2006-05-27 21:50

Status: Closed - declined

Category: Bug

From: Simon

Assigned:

Priority: 4

Version: 2.1.6

OS: on PmWiki

Description: The links

[[(PmWiki:)PITS/00741]]

[[PmWiki:PITS/00741]]

worked in previous versions of PmWiki, but no longer. (See also InterMap), it should be changed back

Fails with the message

PmWiki can't process your request

?invalid page name

We are sorry for any inconvenience.

It seems that the default InterMap entry was changed to point ot the PmWiki group, rather than the PmWiki wiki. This PITS entry thus requests that the PmWiki Intermap entry be restored.

Technically this isn't a bug. The PmWiki: shortcut is to the PmWiki group on pmwiki.org, and so adding an extra group name results in an invalid pagename.

The correct way to link to a PITS entry is to use

PITS:00741

PITS:00741

Pm, The reason I formatted it like this is because I copy text from Simon to other PmWikis, and it saves me (re)typing, and it did used to work! What changed?

There was a problem with some invalid pagenames resulting in infinite redirect loops. So, where PmWiki used to try to make the best of a bad pagename (and sometimes guessed wrong), it now lets one know directly when an invalid pagename has been entered.

I may be able to improve this again in the future.

--Pm --Thanks Pm

(2006-07-14) Why does the InterMap entry for PmWiki: not point to the root of the site?

It is PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/,
it should be PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/ to allow access to all groups.

Because it points, and refers, to the group called PmWiki, just as Cookbook and PITS point and refer to those groups. The result enables short and simple links in the form Group:Page when referring to documentation (in the PmWiki group), Cookbook recipies, and PITS.

Logically, PmWiki should point to the wiki PmWiki, not the group PmWiki, in the same way that the default InterMap entries Wiki point to the C2 wiki, UseMod points to the usemod wiki, etc. Someone changed this recently and it broke all the links to the wiki PmWiki.

The logical argument comes down to "compared to what": intermaps to PmWiki.org locations (CookBook and PITS) or to other sites. Anyway, looking at the Change Log I see that way back in Version 2.0.beta8 (13-Dec-2004) Pm "Fixed incorrect PmWiki: location in intermap.txt."

Initially I thought it was a problem with changes to the ways links were parsed, and hence the PITS entry, it was not till subsequently that it occurred to me that the intermap entry had been broken. The logical argument compared to what is both compared to other entries in the PmWiki intermap, and in the way intermap entries are used in other wikis, eg UseMod:InterMap and MoinMoin:InterWiki. (More on Wikipedia:InterWiki).

I am closing this entry (declined) for the following reasons:

all pmwiki.org intermap links PmWiki:, Cookbook: and PITS: consistently lead to the WikiGroup
the bug that existed before and which is requested here, was fixed in 2.0.beta8 almost 5 years ago -- I trust that by now wikis relying on it have either changed it localy, or don't use it (or never needed to upgrade)
currently there are many PmWiki: links in the core documentation, to pages on pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/ which are not included in the download; we wll not break everything and then have to fix it
a wiki can always modify this entry locally, the way it requires, or add a new one, like PmWikiOrg: to the root.

Thanks, --Petko October 03, 2009, at 09:29 AM