The MoinMoin wiki has a plugin which allows for extensive autolinking.

Description of the plugin:

http://twistedmatrix.com/users/jh.twistd/moin/moin.cgi/GaGaParser

http://devel.linuxwiki.de/gaga/GaGaEn

Personally, it kind of rubs me the wrong way to make everything a link. However, TWiki could benefit from its idea of creating an autolink to any page, not just those created with standard WikiWord syntax names. As long as a word sequence matches the name of page which actually exists, I think a link should be automatically inserted in the rendered text. There shouldn't be a need to require a user to explicitly type '[[...][...]]'.

-- TomKagan - 27 Dec 2002

Tom you just described what this does to a T, the only case where "_everything_" would become a link is in the case where every word on every topic has a topic representing it (much like a dictionary) if you are not running a dictionary, dont worry about this ever happening to your wiki, however, one advantage here is that if you wish to create a new topic you could simply click on the word you wish to use as the topic title and start editing that page.

-- TravisBarker - 16 May 2004

A Plugin that does that could be written very easily. There is a potential performance problem for a large site.

Hmm, not sure if it is a good idea to link words to all existing topics automatically. E.g. if common words are topics they get linked all over the place, like "Web", "Topic", "Word", "Plugin" etc.

-- PeterThoeny - 28 Dec 2002

Peter, "they get linked all over the place" <-- that is precisely the point of this this plugin, however keep in mind if you remove the underlining of links, aspect you end up with very nice looking normal text that it just so happens you can click on. I see no problem here, especially if you consider the ideal of a BlackListTopic where any words listed in that topic dont ever link Unless otherwise forced to do so using the force tag or something.

-- TravisBarker - 16 May 2004

TWiki already has this feature to some degree, for 3-letter acronyms/abbreviations. For example, RCS creates a link to the RCS topic if it already exists - search the code for Abbrev to see how it's done. You might well be able to prototype this by modifying the Abbrev regex in CVS:lib/TWiki.pm in the TWikiAlphaRelease - all occurrences of the abbrev regexes are now replaced by a single definition. However, this may well break many things!

One slight downside to this approach is that it makes it harder to create topics as with WikiWords that point to non-existent pages, but I can see this would be very useful.

An option to only link every Nth occurrence of the word, or perhaps link only the first N occurrences on a page, would help to mitigate the 'every word is a link' problem.

-- RichardDonkin - 29 Dec 2002

3-letter acronyms/abbreviations (while useful) have very little to do with the idea of "EveryWordLinks" so i dont really see the comparison.

as for the [making] it harder to create topics as with WikiWords that point to non-existent pages" i dont see a problem at all with this issue as WikiWords will work in the AllWordsLink model just as well (and exactly like) it always has. all this does is allow the possibility to do things something more like this if you wish which would also cause "something more like this" to link up once that topic is created thereafter. we are talking about an extension of functinality, not making things harder.

-- TravisBarker - 16 May 2004

No offense, but while it might be nice code, TWiki's special case for 3-letter acronyms is still an ugly hack if I ever saw one. It's really just a workaround of the inability to autolink arbitrary words. What about 4 letter acronyms? 5 letters? etc.

• FYI, TWiki links 4...n letter acronyms -- PeterThoeny - 01 Jan 2003

In regards to too much autolinking taking place, I agree it could get kind of hairy. However, implementing my comments in RenderingWikiWordsToIncludeContext might be a clean way to give the adminstrator/user the tools to control the ways the links are rendered and minimize this problem.

-- TomKagan - 30 Dec 2002

I dont see how autolinking could be seen as a "problem" let alone a "hairy" one especially if it were implemented on a per-web basis where linked topics were not underlined and were only hilighted (or colored) if the topic already exists(which is the case now). while i think the idea of Context is an interesting one, I dont see it related to this topic at the moment, or at least its a level of advancement beyond the scope of this discussion AFAIK.

-- TravisBarker - 16 May 2004

DisablingWikiWordLinks is possible with the latest TWikiAlphaRelease usaing the NOAUTOLINK TWikiPreferences variable. This is for sites who prefer to link just with [[...][...]].

-- PeterThoeny - 01 Jan 2003

while the idea of DisablingWikiWordLinks is an interesting idea i think its going in the oposite direction from what i was hoping for in this discussion I want to enable All sorts of linking, not disable WikiWords.

-- TravisBarker - 16 May 2004

btw my old moin dictionary site where i had AllWordsLink idea working has been taken down, but due to recent interest in the idea, im currently in the process of putting it back up just to serve as an example of the concept i have in mind. i will post links to it as soon as the site is active. STAY TUNED!!!

-- TravisBarker - 16 May 2004