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Allow full-width colon as namespace separator for consistency of page name texts
Open, MediumPublicFeature

Description

CJK speakers sometimes hesitate to localise namespaces. A big
reason is that it can create a strange configuration of
full-width (fw) characters [1] (which applies to most page titles
and some namespaces) and half-width (hw) characters (the
separator ':'). People rather prefer the sequence of 'XX:○○'
(hw-hw-hw-fw-fw) than '○○:○○' (fw-fw-hw-fw-fw) because the former one
has only one switch between hw and fw whereas the latter has two.
This kind of mixture of character sets can lead to displeasing
and unbalanced rendering of the text in pages and URLs containing
it, when each character set is assigned with a different font in
the user's environment (which is quite common).

This problem will be partially solved by having full-width aliases
instead of the original namespace separator.

For example, if ':' is an alias to ':', then

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/プロジェクト:コンピュータ

shall be redirected to

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/プロジェクト:コンピュータ

allowing a wiki to use the former one when the community prefers it.

(プロジェクト literally translates to 'Project' and コンピュータ translates to 'Computer')

I believe this option will motivate further localisation of namespaces
in CJK languages, if implemented.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfwidth_and_fullwidth_forms


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz34295

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 22 2014, 12:17 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz34295.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).
Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 12:24 PM

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/821353 would probably allow you do this with CSS. Care should be taken to support copying of the title with the original : so it can be used for linking.

@Esanders Thanks for the pointer. I believe the CSS solution would allow [[トーク:あ]] to be stylized as "トーク:あ" (or very similar to that). However, I would also want [[トーク:あ]] (in wikitext) to be an alias of or a redirect to [[トーク:あ]] and I don't think that's possible with CSS. Perhaps it was unclear with the description I wrote 10 years ago (!). I will try revising it later.