TL;DR: A shorter syntax and built in automatic linking both probably will not work well. But an extension or other client side tool that automatically adds links in the editor would be great.
New Syntax
On the surface, it seems that it would be reasonable to make card linking easier by shortening the syntax. But in fact, we cannot have any shorter syntax without causing problems, either there or elsewhere. There are three relevant pieces of the current syntax, and I contend that they are all necessary.
The mtg
identifier
This site is not just a Magic the Gathering Q&A site. Those questions need to coexist with questions about other board and card games. Imagine that in the future some other TCG becomes popular enough that we want short links for its cards too. With the current syntax, we can just extend it naturally: [pok:cardname]
for Pokemon, or [ygo:cardname]
for Yu-Gi-Oh. But if the syntax for linking to the card doesn't contain the game name/abbreviation, then we'd have to come up with a new syntax for each. Even if that never happens, a syntax without the card name still precludes anyone else on the site using that to mean anything else. For example, if we used {cardname}
as the new syntax, then we'd be saying "Nobody else can surround any text in curly braces unless they want a MTG card link".
The []
delimiters
The code parsing a post needs some way to determine where a card name begins and ends. Two of your suggestions, like the current syntax, have delimiters that cannot appear in card names, which makes that problem very simple. The other indicates the end with a space, with words separated by capitalizing the first letter of each. But that can cause its own problems with some cards. m-AcolyteOfTheInferno
, for example, would probably be rendered incorrectly as Acolyte Of The Inferno, and if you forget to capitalize the linking words, it probably just won't work at all.
The :
separator
As long as we need the mtg
identifier, we need some separator so that we know that the game identifier is done and that we are in a card short link instead of a regular link.
Automatic card linking
It would be an even worse idea to add automatic card linking to the question editor. I mentioned above that MTG questions have to coexist with other board and card game questions; well, our editor is the same as every other site's editor. Adding that feature would require either adding it network-wide or branching the editor to add it just to this site.
User-side automatic card linking
There is another option. Someone could develop a Chrome Extension (for example) with a button that replaces card names with card links when writing or editing a post, so that you don't have to do it manually. This would be quite useful, and would not require anyone else to change anything.
magic-the-gathering
, automatically link all Magic: the Gathering cards. Likewise with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!.