Add autolinking to PEPs

[TheTripleV (Vasista Vovveti)]

I’d like to request autolinking to PEPs in posts be added to this Discourse.

I clicked on A fast, free threading Python and would have loved a PEP link instead of having to google it.

It seems straightforward based on the limited research I did in

[META] Consider: Consolidate all Typing PEPs into a separate numbering system

I think using a Discourse theme component (Linkify words in post - theme-component - Discourse Meta) with a linked word entry /pep(?: |-)?([0-9]+)/i, https://peps.python.org/pep-$1 would work. For example, It should match PEP 434, pep 457, PEP-558, pep596

[petersuter]

Discourse has a built in feature called Watched Words in the Admin menu under Customize → Watched Words

[Watched Words Reference Guide - admins - Discourse Meta]

As of Discourse v1.9, you can setup Watched Words
Replaces words in posts with links.
[Using Regex with Watched Words - admins - Discourse Meta]
you must first turn on the watched words regular expressions site setting.

Could an admin set this up?

If it doesn’t work could the [Linkify Words - theme-component - Discourse Meta] be added with e.g.
/PEP ([0-9]+)/, https://peps.python.org/pep-0$1?

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

@petersuter

If it doesn’t work could the [Linkify Words - theme-component - Discourse Meta] be added with e.g.
/PEP ([0-9]+)/, https://peps.python.org/pep-0$1?

Minor nit - you don’t need the 0 in 0$1. I was going to say that it “doesn’t work”, for example for “PEP 8” and you needed to explicitly 0-pad to 4 digits, but it appears that there are now redirects from the forms without 0-padding to the canonical URL. I don’t know when that was added (it certainly wasn’t announced anywhere that I saw!) but it’s a very welcome addition!

[hugovk (Hugo van Kemenade)]

The short links like https://peps.python.org/8 are documented here: PEPS > Canonical links.

The redirects were added in python/peps#2420 in April 2022.

[CAM-Gerlach]

In a funny coincidence, Hugo documented the shortlinks there in direct response to none other than you yourself previously pointing out they were undocumented the last time Hugo let you know about them

[META] Consider: Consolidate all Typing PEPs into a separate numbering system

TIL I’ve had a messy Javascript bookmarklet for years that zero-padded a number and constructed the canonical URL. And now it turns out there’s a shortcut URL that does that for me… Thanks, whoever added that! (It would be nice if usability features like this were publicised better, or at least documented somewhere. But I don’t want to be ungrateful - it’s quite possible that neat features like this wouldn’t exist at all if whoever added them had needed to mess around …

[TheTripleV (Vasista Vovveti)]

@petersuter

PEP ([0-9]+)

I’d rather have the regex match more (case insensitive and optional space / hyphen from my initial post). Having a couple people’s typing styles fall through the cracks would be annoying as a reader.

[CAM-Gerlach]

Perhaps, but the risk here is an increased chance of edge cases (though adding \b at the beginning and end of the pattern would probably filter out most of them), as well as implicitly canonicalizing and encouraging a variety of non-canonical, esoteric and hard to read spellings other than the clear, correct and consistent PEP N. But perhaps I’m being too much of a stickler here.