SL Conventions / CamelCase Discussion

This is part of the SL Conventions / Discussion.

Also, I see that people take great efforts to add spaces to link-names like "ArnoHollosi" -> "Arno Hollosi". I don't think this is necessary. Actually, I find it especially irritating in cases like Recent Changes or Find Page. Camel-case syntax is an useful tool in wiki. I can't think of a reason why not to use it?

SAS: I would like to see support for CamelCase links removed altogether. They are a hangover from early primitive wikis, and just encourage people to WriteUsingUnnaturalCapitalization.

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Hu ... It think programmers and computer techies like CamelCase, but the reason it did not evolve naturally in the wider world of writing is that is less readable by readers. When I write, I try to make the text as easily understood by the reader as possible so I am happy to take the extra time to use brackets and spaces, but realistically, CamelCase can be deciphered with OnlyALittleExtraEffort by readers, but juSthOwmuCheXtraefforTISREquirEd?

Charles I agree with SAS about capitals. On the main question, I hope any conventions are seen in the right way. Not, naturally, to constrain people who won't or can't be constrained - contributors here are all welcome, according to what they have to say. There can really only be at most one recognised house style (per area, perhaps). Conventions can help in understanding what that would mean.

unkx80: I don't see anything really wrong with the CamelCase link mechanism, except that it is quite irritating when I want to type words like JagoClient and I have to specifically put a exclaimation mark to prevent it from becoming a link. I admit that I am kind of a formatting freak sometimes, so I also tend to change links created by unnatural capitalization to those created with square brackets and separated by spaces. But seriously, I think Arno and Morten have done a great job creating and maintaining this Wiki, so I personally do not think that we should burden them further with such trivial things that require a lot of work with minimal difference in results. Perhaps we should just adapt to the rules and type accordingly. =)

Sebastian: I agree that it may not be worth burdening Arno and Morten, although I would prefer it it were not necessary to enter the "!" in words with mixed case.

BTW, are you guys sure that "camel case" is the right term? So far, I've only seen it to mean something with a lower case letter at the beginning - like "ccCcccCccc". The name I know for something like "CccCcccCccc" is "Pascal case".

Deebster: Yes, you're right Sebastian (the jargon file agrees too). A quick browse seems to show that all wikis refer to ThisTypeOfThing as camel case - I guess the first wiki did and it stuck.
Still, we know what we mean.

Arno (adding more noise to the discussion): I know of the terms "upper camel case" and "lower camel case". Never heard of "Pascal case" before :o)

To me it's neither here nor there with CamelCase. I understand it as probably being from when a lot of browsers, etc, couldn't tell spaces (such as web pages needing underlines i.e. hikaru_no_go.html).--TimBrent