CamelCase: Difference between revisions

'''CamelCase''', originally known as '''WikiWords''', and grammatically known as 'medial capitals', is the archaic but historically highly important {{tag|Terms|term}} identifying the ability to create an internal link to another page on early [[WhatIsWiki|wiki sites]]; 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.  Ward has commented that instead of adding ten characters to make a link, he took away one.  [[John Abbe]] pointed out that you have to shift (on the keyboard) for each word capitalised.

The term 'CamelCase' is derived from the similarity of the humped appearance of the WikiWords link to that of the double-humped {{Wp|Bactrian camel}} (not to be confused with the single-humped Dromedary camel).

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, and grammatical 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.  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 ''{{Wp|de-facto}}'' standard of creating internal links to other pages within the same wiki.

It should be noticed from the lead paragraph that CamelCase links can <u>only</u> work on [[:Category:Wiki Language|written languages]] based on Roman text, which use upper- (capital) and lower-case letters.  Non-Roman texts, such as Arabian, Indian, and Asian texts (which do not use capital letters) would not be able to use CamelCase. Another problem with CamelCase, as displayed, is that it can cause inaccuracies, or even failures when using online translators to translate, say [[:Category:Wiki English|English]] texts using CamelCase into other languages, even those using Roman text.  Furthermore, for those wikis which ''can'' utilise 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]]).