Hi Joey,

What do you think about CSS classes for links to display link with icon?
You probably know that there are wikis with that feature, for example
Moin Moin.

Here is a piece of `common.css` file grabbed from <http://wiki.openwrt.org>
site which is powered by Moin Moin wiki:

    a.www:before {content: url(../img/moin-www.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.http:before {content: url(../img/moin-www.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.https:before {content: url(../img/moin-www.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.file:before {content: url(../img/moin-ftp.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.ftp:before {content: url(../img/moin-ftp.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.nntp:before {content: url(../img/moin-news.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.news:before {content: url(../img/moin-news.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.telnet:before {content: url(../img/moin-telnet.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.irc:before {content: url(../img/moin-telnet.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.mailto:before {content: url(../img/moin-email.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.attachment:before {content: url(../img/moin-attach.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.badinterwiki:before {content: url(../img/moin-inter.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}
    a.interwiki:before {content: url(../img/moin-inter.png); margin: 0 0.2em;}

You can see that they use a lot of CSS classes for links, but only one CSS class
for external links is enough for me :) Please look at my example:

    \[[Foo]]                    -> <a href="http://www.mywiki.org/foo.html">Foo</a>
    \[[Bar|foo/bar]]            -> <a href="http://www.mywiki.org/foo/bar.html">Bar</a>
    <http://www.gnu.org/>      -> <a class="external" href="http://www.gnu.org/">http://www.gnu.org/</a>
    [GNU](http://www.gnu.org/) -> <a class="external" href="http://www.gnu.org/">GNU</a>
    [RMS](mailto:rms@gnu.org)  -> <a href="mailto:rms@gnu.org">RMS</a>

My best regards,

--[[Paweł|ptecza]]

> If you did not already know, you can achieve similar results using CSS3
> selectors.  Eg: `a[href="http://www.foobar.com/"] { foobar: css }` or
> `a[title~="Mail"] {text-decoration: none; }`.  See
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/CR-css3-selectors-20011113/> for a complete list.

>> Hi Charles,
>>
>> Thanks for the hint! I don't know CSS3 yet :) What modern and popular
>> WWW browsers do support it now?
>>
>>> Safari supports it. Firefoz&Co support most of it. IE6 did not, but IE7
>>> supports a fair part of CSS3, ans is said to support selectors.
>>>
>>> Example on how to use selectors here: http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2002/08/30/external
>>>
>>> I also think this should be in an external plugin, not in ikiwiki.
>>>

I find CSS3 support still spotty...  Here are some notes on how to do this in IkiWiki with jQuery: <http://iki.u32.net/setup/External_Links> --[[sabr]]

> If you need to achieve this in IkiWiki itself, I imagine you could create a
> plugin which runs in the `format` phase of rendering and search/replaces
> specific link patterns.  This should be a fairly simple exercise in regular
> expressions.
>
> --CharlesMauch

>> I've never written plugin for ikiwiki, but I can try if it's simple job :)
>>
>> --[[Paweł|ptecza]]

> I wouldn't mind adding a _single_ css class to ikiwiki links, but it
> would have to be a class added to all internal, not all external, links.
> Reason is that there are many ways for external links to get into an
> ikiwiki page, including being entered as raw html. The only time ikiwiki
> controls a link is when an internal link is added using a WikiLink.
>
> (Note that tags get their own special
> [[rel_attribute|rel_attribute_for_links]] now that CSS can use.)
> 
> --[[Joey]]

>> I had a little look at this, last weekend. I added a class definition to
>> the `htmllink` call in `linkify` in `link.pm`. It works pretty well, but
>> I'd also need to adjust other `htmllink` calls (map, inline, etc.). I found
>> other methods (CSS3 selectors, etc.) to be unreliable.
>> 
>> Would you potentially accept a patch that added `class="internal"` to
>> various `htmllink` calls in ikiwiki?
>> 
>> How configurable do you think this behaviour should be? I'm considering a
>> config switch to enable or disable this behaviour, or possibly a
>> configurable list of class names to append for internal links (defaulting
>> to an empty list for backwards compatibility)>
>> 
>> As an alternative to patching the uses of `htmllink`, what do you think
>> about patching `htmllink` itself? Are there circumstances where it might be
>> used to generate a non-internal link? -- [[Jon]]

>>> I think that the minimum configurability to get something that
>>> can be used by CSS to style the links however the end user wants
>>> is the best thing to shoot for. Ideally, no configurability. And
>>> a tip or something documenting how to use the classes in your CSS
>>> to style links so that eg, external links have a warning icon.
>>> 
>>> `htmllink` can never be used to generate an external link. So,
>>> patching it seems the best approach. --[[Joey]] 

>>>> I had a quick look to this issue. Internal links are generated at
>>>> 11 places in the Perl code and would need to be patched (this
>>>> number could be lowered a bit if a htmllink-like function existed
>>>> for CGI urls; such a function would use `cgiurl`, and be used in
>>>> most places where `cgiurl` is currently called by plugins).
>>>> 
>>>> Also, more than 30 `<a>` links appear in templates, most of those
>>>> being internal links.
>>>> 
>>>> Sure, patching those few dozen places is trivial. On the other
>>>> hand, I'm wondering how doable it would be to make sure, on the
>>>> long run, any generated internal link has the right CSS class
>>>> applied. One would need to write tests running against the code
>>>> with all plugins enabled, all templates put to work, in order to
>>>> ensure consistency is maintained. --[[intrigeri]]

-----
If you're going to be patching htmllink anyway, might I suggest something more flexible, like being able to configure the link format?
(Yes, PmWiki allows this, that's where I got the idea)
That is, rather than having "&lt;a href=". blah . blah ...
one could use a sprintf with a default format which could be configured in the setup file.

For example:

    $format = ($config{createlink_format}
               ? $config{createlink_format}
               : '<span class=\"createlink\"><a href="%s" rel="nofollow">?</a>%s</span>');
    return sprintf($format,
        cgiurl(do => "create", page => lc($link), from => $lpage),
        $linktext);

I admit, I've been wanting something like this for a long time, because I dislike the existing createlink format...

--[[KathrynAndersen]]
