See [[EscapeCharacterProposal]] for the discussion that led up to the current 1.0 specification.

Notes on the current specification:

The current example output for {{{~http://www.foo.com/~bar}}} shows that {{{~bar}}} is not part of the URL. This is unfortunate. How can we fix this on JSPwiki?
-- AlexSchroeder

What happens in this situation: {{{~http://foo ~http://bar}}}? My guess: Unintentionally the output will be: http:<em>foo http:</em>bar! This is unfortunate. How do you work around it? Oddmuse has a special workaround for this situation that is incompatible with the specification.
-- AlexSchroeder