Template:A/doc

-- Documentation for Template:A transcluded from Template:A/doc.

Use this template to link to an author's name, almost as easy as just typing the name itself.

Important! Because of the way MediaWiki parses URLs, your author name cannot have any spaces in it! So you can use, but not  !
 * The template now automatically converts spaces to underscores as needed.

An optional name parameter allows the link to be dispalyed with a different text than the author name. So, for example,  gives the link, while   gives the link:.

Usage
gives

while

gives

Special case
If the author's name contains any non-alphanumeric characters, such as ( or ) or, or ', (that is left-paren, right-paren, comma, or single quote) the normal use of the template will convert these to hex codes, which will not create the correct URL. For this special case, use the special parameter altName, and a version of the name with spaces converted to underscores. Other characters outside A-Z, a-z, and 0-9 may have the same issue. In at least some cases, comma or period seem to cause the same problem.

So if the author's canonical name is "Donald Macpherson (Novelist)", then

gives

(Note that the link has underscores visible)

and

gives

(Note that the link now has spaces instead of underscores)

and

gives

(Note that the link is clean and short, but you have to put more work into the template to get it.)

The following is an example using the template where an artist name contains an e-acute ("é").
 * " " gives "" and will correctly link to her bibliography.

This special parameter may also be specified as "altname=" with a lowercase "n".