[cgi-wiki-dev] Creating URLs

[Tom Insam]

I need a canonical, wiki-wide way of turning a node name into an URL. 
Right now, in CGI::Wiki::Kwiki, the formatter does it one way, the 
'list all pages' page does it another way, and the 'converting back 
from passed url to node name' code lives in yet a third place. This is 
totally crazy.

The formatter modules all need a way of turning a node name into an url 
for embedding in <a> tags. The wiki code itself will need to turn node 
names into urls for linking from various other places. I'd like my Node 
object to know what their own urls are. And preferably I'd like the 
code that turns a name into an url to live in the same source file as 
the code that takes a passed CGI request parameter and turns it into a 
node name. Thus it seems to make sense to put this code into 
CGI/Wiki.pm itself.

This will, alas, entail great change on the part of the formatters. 
Specifically, we'll have to no longer pass node-prefix, etc, to the 
formatters, but instead have them call back to CGI::Wiki when they need 
a link for a node. Is this going to be possible? The alternative is to 
have the formatters provide a 'linkify this node name' method, which is 
much less elegant, but much simpler.

Both methods will require new releases of all formatter modules. I 
prefer the first one, naturally, because it's more elegant, but it will 
break existing code, whereas merely adding a method will let legacy 
stuff keep going. Do people have opinions, thoughts, etc?

tom