What does autolink do?

[Hilary]

Simple dumb question: what does autolink actually do, and when does it do it? I imagine something that would automatically link text to Wiki pages, but what makes this happen?

Also, in the Vault here I've seen links with previews of the article showing up on mouseover. Very neat. How do you make that happen?

(Hopefully any explanations you write for me will come in handy for your documentation later )

Update: ah yes - exactly like what happens when I write 'the Vault'. It's linked automatically, and there's a preview on mouseover. How do you do that?

[pegasus]

Well, the whole reason for it being "auto" is that you don't have to do it. Whenever something is parsed, the parser compares the text with one of two lists: the list of articles in the current namespace (only applies if it is a wiki namespace) or the list of articles in the default namespace.

The autolinking system then inserts autolinks at every point a text segment matches an article title. In the case where more than one overlaps, the parser will opt for the title that takes up more characters.

When an autolink occurs, it is passed on to the BB-Code parser and interpreted like a standard Wiki Linking Code from the namespace of the list mentioned earlier. When a user hovers over an autolink, there is a preview to the linked article.

Autolinking can be stopped by using [noparse] on your text, or by disabling the feature completely in the AdminCP. The autolinker will also not interrupt other links, actual BB-Code tags, or code blocks.

As of 2.0.0 final, it will be possible to disable only the preview feature. Also in 2.0.0, the previews are applied to all wiki links and not just autolinks (which is what you have seen in our wiki).

[Hilary]

Yes, I suppose what I meant was how do you activate it/ start it working. The idea is that when I have an article called 'Hexagram 10' and use the phrase 'Hexagram 10' in another Wiki article, it should be automatically linked to the article of that name, right? That isn't happening. I need to tag it manually to creat the link.

Edit. Blush. Forget it. Just found the 'enable autolinks' option.

Will that apply across all forums? If so, can it be made selective?

[Hilary]

Turning autolink off again now - see http://www.vaultwiki.org/issues/106/

[vimto]

Regarding the Autolinks, is it possible to reduce the amount of text it displays when you move your mouse over a link?

At the moment it is displaying hundreds of characters instead of about 30-40 what I want.

[pegasus]

It displays up to the first paragraph break.

[vimto]

hmm, not quite working for me,

Take a look here:
http://www.bluedragons.co.uk/forums/...6845#post16845

there is a link titled Macro Numbers which has plenty of line breaks/paragraphs within it, yet it still displays the entire article...am I missing something here? From my experience a paragraph is a block of text with a clear line between the next block of text, which this article has plenty of.......

One other weird thing that happened earlier, I edited the article to make sure that there were clear line breaks, then went to the admin panel and rebuilt the post cache just incase the autolink hadn't been updated, went back to the post and the autolink was gone....I had to re-edit the post and save it to get the autolink back again, is this the right behaviour?
I haven't checked any of my other posts to see if the autolinks are still there yet, I'm hoping they are.....

[pegasus]

vimto, it looks like both of these are bugs. I have posted them separately in the tracker. Thanks.

http://www.vaultwiki.org/issues/160/
http://www.vaultwiki.org/issues/161/