A WikiWord gets linked if there is a certain prefix pattern, ([\*\s][\(\-\*\s]*). Basically it means a match (thus a WikiWord link) if there is an asterisk or a space, followed by optional parenthesis, dashes, asterisks or spaces. The idea is to prevent unwanted links, i.e. a "WebHome" should not get linked (i.e. if located inside a parameter).

This worked well so far, but we had a case in WebServicesUDDIorWebDAV where Ref-By did not work. The topic name gets expanded to a spaced topic name (Web%20*Services%20*UDDIor%20*Web%20*DAV), needed for the Ref-By regular expression search, and *UDDI matched a second time as a abbreviation link. This garbled the Ref-By link to: UDDIor%20*Web%20*DAV%5B%5EA-Za-z%5D">Ref-By.

I simplified the prefix rule to require a space or an parenthesis, e.g. to a regular expression of ([\s\(]). This is safer, but does change the WikiWord link match criteria.

If there are no objections I will put this into Alpha. TWiki.org is updated, so the Ref-By problem in WebServicesUDDIorWebDAV is fixed. Please test drive the rule change.

-- PeterThoeny - 22 Nov 2001

I just noticed that, wondered what was up. I had highlighted some items in a list like *WikiWord, and the links suddenly died. But that was no big deal, using an asterisk, especially. I'm not sure what else it affects that might come up fairly often.

There should be a rules table for docs, listing the results of all the main combinations of shorthand... Translating the regex stuff into practical examples isn't necesarily that simple even if you understand regex - also, the order of handling things comes in. WDYT re a rules table?

-- MikeMannix - 22 Nov 2001

Asterisks, equal sign and other special chars are excluded by purpose to prevent unwanted links. They can be linked with the square bracket syntax if needed. Documenting the exact syntax of other markup could be done.

Change is now in TWikiAlphaRelease.

-- PeterThoeny - 23 Nov 2001