[emacs-wiki-discuss] RE: bug report: emacs-wiki.el -- recognizing extended links

[Raymond Zeitler]

I started researching the "spaces in links" issue when I loaded
planner-bookmark.el, by Dryice Liu.

First, the [:space:] construct works only in v21 of Emacs, according to
the eLisp manual.  Here's an excerpt from the node "Special Characters
in Regular Expressions":

     Starting in Emacs 21, a character alternative can also specify
     named character classes (*note Char Classes::.).  This is a POSIX
     feature whose syntax is `[:CLASS:]'....

Second, there is no Planner / Emacs-wiki documentation that thoroughly
describes the syntax of [[some_URL][some text].  This should be given
its own node accessible from the top node of PlannerInfo.  The issue of
whether spaces can be used should be mentioned, as well as instruction
on how to *properly* change that behavior.  Valid protocol options can
be mentioned as well:  bbdb://, bookmark://, irc://, lisp://, etc, with
links to their respective nodes.

Third, given the second point, it doesn't matter whether the Planner
Maintainer makes "spaces in links" the default because the user can
customize the behavior.  FWIW, my preference is to allow spaces in
links.  Windows users have ridiculously long path names (with spaces in
them) to such important directories as "desktop" and "my documents".
How do I refer to them?  And I'm surprised to witness the "protect the
user from him/herself" mentality that led to the banning of spaces from
links.  That's what ` emacs-wiki-markup-nonexistent-link' is for.

Fourth, I wish I *could* customize this.  But for some reason, when I
modify emacs-wiki-extended-link-regexp, I cannot get the behavior to
change.  :(  As well, Sacha's suggestion from March 24 didn't help.  But
I've got more important things to worry about, having procrastinated
many too tasks already.  :)

All the best!

-- 
Raymond Zeitler <address@hidden>

-----Original Message-----
 Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:22:42 -0500
From: Michael Olson <address@hidden>
Subject: [emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: bug report: emacs-wiki.el --
        recognizing     extended links
To: address@hidden
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Earl Kent <address@hidden> writes:

> There seems to be a bug or new behavior introduced in the latest
> version of emacs-wiki.el.  Previously in wiki mode any text
> surrounded in double brackets, e.g.  [[Some Text]], would show up
> and behave as a link.  Now, emacs wiki seems not to accept spaces in
> extended links.  So, you must write the above as: [[SomeText]].
>
> It's not clear why the new line was replaced for the space, but it
> breaks things.

I made the change to not allow spaces in links a few months ago.  Most
recently, the change was from " \t\n" to "[:space:]" in the first part
of extended links, which is correct in itself, AFAICT.

Could you tell me why you need to have links with spaces in them?
What is that supposed to link to?  If I can understand why you need
that functionality, I'll put it back in.

Spaces aren't normally allowed in most kinds of links, from what I
understand.  The only time a space has been needed in a link so far
has been links to Info nodes, but those can be escaped with "%20" and
are done so by default when you create a task from an Info node.

So by not allowing spaces in the first part of extended links, it is
supposed to help someone who accidentally puts a space in the wrong
place by refusing to display it as a link.