----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Gerard" <[email protected]>

> On 13 May 2011 08:42, Jay Ashworth <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > Repeat after me: "Not all Mediawikiae are Wikipedia; Wikipedia is
> > merely
> > *the most important* customer of the project, not the only one". No,
> > it would *not* be good to make the base package
> > page-title-case-folding.
> 
> While your first sentence is the case, this says nothing about these
> other users.
> 
> What is your actual basis for asserting that case-insensitivity is
> worse than case-sensitivity? What is your data? Where did your
> statement come from?

25 years experience in software design.

Assuming case-folding is acceptable is imposing your assumptions about
other people's use cases upon the software, and hence them.  Not doing so,
well, isn't.

> Every MediaWiki I've ever had cause to set up would have benefited
> spectacularly from case-insensitivity, for example.

And having it available as an option's a great idea.  But forcing it
*absolutely* rules out some potential use-cases, which is rarely a
good idea in software design; especially in the case of *tools* design,
which is what Mediawiki is: it's a tool as much as it's an application.

Ask someone who's tried to implement a parser that will deal with all
of Wikipedia's templates if you don't believe me.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       [email protected]
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274

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