how can I create a link to an image which is part of the wiki, without having it inserted in my page?

I tought this:

[[look at this|img/lolcat.png]] 

would work, but it doesn't.

Any hints? --jerojasro

Well, currently the syntax above will display the image inline with the specified link text used as an alt attribute. Although that does not seem to be documented anywhere.

A few places that use that (found with git grep '\[\[' | egrep 'png|gif|jpeg|jpg' |grep \|):

• logo uses it to provide useful alt texts for the logos. (This could easily be changed to use img though.)
• The change.tmpl template uses it to display the with a very useful "diff" alt text. Using img here would mean that the recentchanges plugin would depend upon the img plugin.

I do like your suggestion, it makes more sense than the current behavior. I'm not sure the transition pain to get from here to there is worth it, though.

More broadly, if I were writing ikiwiki now, I might choose to leave out the auto-inlining of images altogether. In practice, it has added a certian level of complexity to ikiwiki, with numerous plugins needing to specify noimageinline to avoid accidentially inlining an image. And there has not been a lot of payoff from having the auto-inlining feature implicitly available most places. And the img directive allows much needed control over display, so it would be better for users to not have to worry about its lesser cousin. But the transition from here to there would be another order of pain.

Anyway, the cheap and simple answer to your question is to use html or markdown instead of a wikilink. Ie, [look at this](img/lolcat.jpg). --Joey

thanks a lot, that's a quite straightforward solution. I actually wrote a broken plugin to do that, and now I can ditch it --jerojasro

The plugin approach is not a bad idea if you want either the ability to:

• Have things that are wikilink-aware (like brokenlinks treat your link to the image as a wikilink.
• Use standard wikilink path stuff (and not have to worry about a relative html link breaking if the page it's on is inlined, for example).

I can help you bang that plugin into shape if need be. --Joey

both my plugin and your suggestion yield broken html links when inlining the page (although probably that's what is expected from your suggestion ([]()))

I thought using the bestlink function would take care of that, but alas, it doesn't. Get the "plugin" here, see the broken links generated here and the source file for that page here --jerojasro

Use this --Joey

return htmllink($params{page}, $params{destpage}, $params{"img"},
    linktext => $params{text},
    noimageinline => 1);

patch: I've updated this plugin for the current ikiwiki. --wtk