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CamelCase: Difference between revisions
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<b>CamelCase</b>, originally known as <b>WikiWords</b>, and grammatically known as 'medial capitals', is the archaic but historically and significantly important {{tag|Terms|term}} identifying the ability to create an internal link to another page on early [[WhatIsWiki|wiki-websites]]. It did so by removing the space between two (or more) words which began with capital letters. At the time, it was an inspired and revolutionary way of thinking for technology; "What is the simplest thing we can do to make this work?", to paraphrase [[Ward Cunningham]] (the creator of the [[wiki]]). CamelCase is very important for 'LinkLanguage'; that is: writing and adding links easily to your writing, whilst maintaining clarity of an otherwise easily confusable link.<ref>An example of a confusing link which <i>shoud</i> have used LinkLanguage was a Twitter '{{Wp|hashtag}}': <tt>#nowthatcherisdead</tt>. This was mistakenly confused and thus reported (inaccurately) that the famous US pop singer {{Wp|Cher}} had died, presumably from a misconstrued <tt>#NowThatCherIsDead</tt>! The hashtag was actually intended to promulgate the news of the death of {{Wp|Margaret Thatcher}}, a former [[:Category:United Kingdom|British]] Prime Minister, and thus woud have been better stylized <tt>#NowThatcherIsDead</tt>.</ref> Ward has commented that instead of adding ten characters to make a link, he took away one. [[John Abbe]] retorted that you have to shift (on the keyboard) for each word capitalized. | |||
==Etymology== | |||
The term 'CamelCase' is derived from the visual similarity of the humped appearance of the WikiWords link – to that of the double-humped {{Wp|Bactrian camel}} (<i>not</i> to be confused with the single-humped {{Wp|dromedary}} camel). | |||
==Modern {{tag|wiki syntax}}== | |||
Moving forward into todays' '[[Wikisphere|wiki world]]', the now highly popular and ubiquitous [[:Category:MediaWiki|MediaWiki]] wiki engine was developed from [[:Category:UseMod Wiki|UseMod Wiki]]; and, because it was developed for use on an [[:Category:Encyclopedia|encyclopedia]], where proper spelling, word spacing, grammatical and sentence structure are of high importance; the use of CamelCase to create internal links was phased-out, and is completely deprecated in MediaWiki for creating internal links to other articles within the wiki in question. Instead, in order to create an internal link, one must enclose the word or words of a wanted link in double square brackets: <code><nowiki>[[]]</nowiki></code>. This became colloquially known as a '[[wikilink]]', and has now been accepted by all subsequent [[:Category:Wiki engine|wiki engines]] as the <i>{{Wp|de-facto}}</i> standard of creating internal links to other pages within the same wiki. | |||
Likewise, [[WikiIndex]] (which also runs on MediaWiki) does<u>not</u> (and cannot) use CamelCase to <u>create links</u>. There is, however, some sentiment (and {{tag|Wiki concept|practice}}) that CamelCase <i>shoud</i> be used here on WikiIndex for something contain two or more words when creating [[Special:Categories|categories]] (such as [[:category: LoginToEdit]]) and / or [[Special:Templates|templates]] (examples include {{Template|CategoryBrowserHeader}}, {{Template|DeadEL}}, {{Template|SeeWp}}, {{Template|UserLanguageCategory}}, and {{Template|WikiWithPagesBetween}}). Unfortunately, in some cases, neither {{tag|wiki idea|convention}} is consistently followed, even among sub-categories of the same category! It may be observed here on WikiIndex that our [[Founder|founding]] fathers still have an unrelenting favour for the use of CamelCase; whilst to some of the newer, younger WikiIndex folk, CamelCase might seem like a foreign language! | |||
==Problems with CamelCase== | |||
It shoud be noticed from the lead paragraph that CamelCase links can <u>only</u> work on {{Wp|List of writing systems|written}} [[:Category:Wiki language|languages]] derived from {{Wp|Alphabet}}-based scripts, such as {{Wp|Latin script|Latin}} or {{Wp|Roman type|Roman text}}, which use upper- (capital) and lower-case letters. For non-Latin/Roman scripts; such as {{Wp|Abjad}}-based {{Wp|Arabic script|Arabic}}, or {{Wp|Logogram#Logographic systems|logogram / logographic}}-based scripts such as {{Wp|Chinese family of scripts|Chinese}} scripts (none of which use capital letters) – these are not be able to use CamelCase. | |||
Another problem with CamelCase, as displayed, is that it can cause inaccuracies, or even failures when using online machine translators to translate, say [[:Category:Wiki English|English]] texts using CamelCase into other languages, even those using Roman-based script. Furthermore, for those wikis which ''can'' utilize CamelCase links, the feature will create inadvertent links with phrases that have internal capital letters, such as Paul McCartney (turning his surname into an unwanted [[wikilink]]). | |||
==Notes== | |||
<References/> | |||
==External links== | |||
*[[Wiki:CamelCase|CamelCase]] — at [[WikiWikiWeb]] | |||
*[[MeatBall:CamelCase|CamelCase]] — at [[Meatball Wiki]] | |||
*[[Archive.org:20150711091905/http://www.WikiMatrix.org/wiki/feature:camelcase|CamelCase]] — on [[WikiMatrix]], via [[Archive.org]] | |||
*{{Wp|CamelCase}} — at the [[English Wikipedia]] | |||
*[[Everything2:CamelCase|CamelCase]] — at Everything2.com, a personal commentary by StrawberryFrog and others on the history and implementation of CamelCase | |||
[[Category:Glossary]] | [[Category:Glossary]] | ||