Free Links

"Free Links" is the name of the feature which allows page names to contain spaces and period, comma, and dash/minus characters.

To make a free-link, surround text with two square brackets like [[Sample Free Link]] (which is rendered like Sample Free Link, unless the page doesn't exist in which case it is rendered like [Sample Undefined Page]?).

More samples:

• Recent Changes
• [Sample Undefined Page]? (a system-special page which cannot be defined)
• democracy? and Democracy? link to the same page (the first letter is capitalized to form the real page title)
• democracy? and democRacy? do not link to the same page (only the first letter is special). On Windows systems, however, they do, because the filesystem is not case-sensitive.
• [Free Sand/Subpage one]?, [Free Sand/Subpage Two]?
• test [Free Sand/Subpage Two]?
• Numbers are allowed: [US 20th Century History]?
• Limited punctuation: John F. Kennedy, [Peter O'Toole]?, [Red, White, and Blue]?, and [East-West divisions]? (only period, comma, and dash/minus are currently allowed) (... and apparently Apostrophes too!)
• Ordinary wiki-words can be placed in the brackets, like UmNineTest?
• You can use also parentheses as in [Free Links (With Parentheses)]?

This is [an example of a new link type]?. Note that the link description (using the | character) allows links to have arbitrary names--the previous link was created by typing [[Will This Work|an example of a new link type]].

And this way you can use special characters, like in: [El Año del Árbol]?. So non-english users can Wiki in their own language.

---

What if I want the page to be called by a title with special characters? The "El Año" link above goes to a page titled without special characters. --MichaelHerman

You can currently use some special characters (hex C0-FF) if you enable the $NonEnglish option. OddMuse (a descendant of UseModWiki) allows more special characters to be used in pages. --CliffordAdams

Very cool! The $NonEnglish option does what I need for Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and the like. No FreeLinks or "|" required. Just normal wiki words. Thanks!

---

What happens if I want to use a real url (http://www.yahoo.com) and format it like Yahoo??

You can do that with single-bracket links, like [http://www.yahoo.com/ Yahoo] which looks like [Yahoo]. Note that these external links will be displayed with brackets--this warns people that it is an external link.

Yeah, but in the example above, I find the brackets around the external link ugly. Is there a way to turn them off, so that there is no distinction between internal and external links? -- Mike Hudson 2002-08-22

You can do this with a simple change to the code. In the subroutine StoreBracketUrl?, change the following line:

  return &StoreRaw("<a href=\"$url\">[$text]</a>");

...to read:

  return &StoreRaw("<a href=\"$url\">$text</a>");

This change will also make links like [1] appear without brackets (just the number will be a link). I do not recommend this change for publically-accessible sites, since it would allow someone to link to "bad" sites with link that look just like ordinary links. (This could even be a security problem for a huge number of people with unpatched browsers). For non-public sites this probably isn't an issue. --CliffordAdams

Could I suppress the square brackets for InterWiki references only? Or generate some other type of bracket? It's a little hard to keep saying Wiki:BoundedBuffer all the time - but even harder to read! --PaulMorrison

Suppressing square brackets for InterWiki references would take more work (to distinguish the context of the bracketed URL). If you want to generate other brackets, you could try changing the &StoreRaw line mentioned above to output some different HTML for bracketed links. (One UseModWiki variant outputs the ° symbol (°) after links, which is usually not distracting.) Send me mail at usemod@usemod.com, explaining what you want to appear on the screen, and I will try to help. --CliffordAdams

I have found a solution (based on a suggestion of yours) which I am very happy with - I just drop the front end of an interwiki page name and colour the rest green. I find it makes the text very natural and readable, while making clear which are local page names and which are in other wikis. Thanks for your help! --PaulMorrison

(At this stage) Want to get a local Wiki run being able to create FreeLinks. For this purpose bought QuickiWiki? which does not fit this want. Then downloaded UseModWiki and got problems with installation. Is there a solution?-Mark

There probably is a solution, but I would need more details about your installation problems. Send me mail at usemod@usemod.com and I'll try to help. --CliffordAdams