'Colon' denotes point of view in ordinary English usage, as in dialogue. All chat developers know this. mediawiki knows this. But somehow the period is going to be overloaded yet again to create namespaces ? When the primary use of namespaces is to differentiate a POV, i.e. that of the service, or that of an individual user, or another meta-perspective, from the main namespace?
Colons in URLs certainly tell the browser which protocol it's going to speak. Likewise, the rules of handling content will vary drastically based on which namespace it's in. There's a natural convergence between the use of colons in URLs and the use of colons in English, which mediawiki respects. Creole should too.
-- Anonymous, 2007-02-05
We are extremely happy about your interest in Creole, but could you please try to put your comments in the places where you think they belong? It's extremely hard to understand them when they appear out of context.
In particular, I don't understand what are you so agitated about? Creole doesn't use colon for markup anywhere in it, and it doesn't specify anything about namespaces -- in fact, we decided to leave "names" out of Creole spec because of InternationalizationConcerns.
Besides, English is not the only valid language out there. -- RadomirDopieralski, 2007-02-05
{on putting comments where they belong}
Ah, sorry, I AM putting them in the places where I think they belong. Use of the colon appears on the page "colon" for instance. I think you mean "put comments in the places where YOU think they belong", which I can't do without telepathy. -- Anonymous, 2007-02-05
{on using colon}
Perhaps I assume that it would be using the JSPwiki convention as this wiki does.
However, I don't see how you can avoid giving namespaces some special status, as mediawiki has, if only to know when to create user_talk:X and not Talk:user:X. -- Anonymous, 2007-02-05
{on English not being the only language}
Obviously not, but mediawiki/Wikipedia is supporting dozens more languages than almost any other wiki, and they seem to be using the colon in the way I suggest without problems. So I submit this is evidence that this usage is acceptable to other languages if not ideal. -- Anonymous, 2007-02-05
Yet again, please don't edit my answers. Thank you in advance.
I'm sure you can easily integrate with all of us using this wiki if you only go into trouble of actually reading a little of its content before posting. Then you can easily put your comments just besides the almost identical comments of people who talked about it earlier. Making a mess won't help anybody.
As for special status of namespaces or the syntax used for denote it -- we don't care. It's up to the wiki engine adopting Creole to decide. Most wikis don't even have namespaces at all. Most wikis already use the colon notation for inter-wiki links, according to the standard Meatball:InterWiki
. We are not going to force any page-naming conventions or namespace handling philosophy on the wiki engines. This is just out of the scope of Creole.
As for colon in other languages -- Chinese, for example, doesn't even have such a character, at least in the form we know it. There are arabic and hebrew scripts with very specific typography, and there are some even more exotic ones -- all in use in wikis. A page about use of colon in one language and one culture is hardly helpful, not to mention leaving an unpleasant aftertaste -- especially in connection with the name "Creole".
-- RadomirDopieralski, 2007-02-05