Amir, Your idea doesn't sound that utopian or crazy to me but, IMO, it has its weak points.
First, it's a superstition that XML is the only standard way of representing information. The fact that even after its heavy lobbying by the-company-we-all-know-about languages like YAML still appear means that not all people are happy with XML. Similarly, textile/markdown//bb-codes/wikitext and a dozen of others including latex, *nix man pages, etc. are appearing even after HTML has been around for decades. What is a standard? This is a set of rules. Strict ABNF schemes. UML, if you please. Can you call Windows INI files "standard"? Yes, albeit they have just a few entities. And YAML? TeX? Yes. And PDF? EPS? Yes, and they're even unreadable by humans. Similarly, wiki markup can be standardized. Creole is meant to be a standard but it's limited; however, the direction is right and can be voted for. I am ready to personally standardize and unificate wiki markup if only to prove my point. Second, by dividing people into those who "can write texts using a visual editor" and those who "have to write texts using a storage format" you're making the same discrimination towards "geeks" that "geeks" are currently making towards "common folk" by providing nothing but a text field for writing articles. Let's put this plain: XML and mostly (X)HTML (SGML at a whole) are storage formats. This is why they have namespaces, DTD and other features. But they are generic and while this is an advantage (even binary data can be stored in some form there) when it comes in touch with humans things break or just don't move. This is because XML and friends are not problem-based solutions. While I have to agree that editing texts might be easier by some people using a rich editor I cannot agree that editing them in plain text form must be limited to storage formats. Have you tried hexediting an article? Having to perform codepage conversions (read, layout changes) in your mind at the same time. This is the same. Going further into this looks like speaking about personal taste for colors and forms so I will just summarize it up: let's leave everyone with their tool. We have three groups of "users": machines, who process the text - they're fine with XML or BAML all alike; users, who need a visual editor to "parse markup" as was said on the neighbor thread; and someone in between, "geeks", who are enough humans to dislike XML and enough technicians to despise WYSIWYG. This seems fair and not that big deal to implement because you'll get the first and last "markups" ready by definition to have a working parser (something to store trees in and something to input them using) and the middle (visual editor) will come in naturally given the other two. Signed, P. Tkachenko 2012/2/8 Amir E. Aharoni <[email protected]>: > Honestly, if i'm allowed to speak out my crazy optimistic utopian > dream, then: <crazy-optimistic-utopian-dream>i want the current-style > wiki markup to disappear completely. I'm referring to *, '''''', {{}}, > [[]] etc. It was very beneficial for the beginning, because it was for > the most part more intuitive to type than <ul><li></li></ul>, > <strong></strong> and <a href=""></a>, but for people who want > easiness, the Visual Editor is supposed to provide it and after that > most of them should never look back to the markup. > > For people who will want text-based markup, it should be mostly XHTML. > So, <section>, <poem>, <source>, and <nowiki> are kinda XHTML so they > can stay. *, '''''' and [[]] are not XHTML, and they can and should be > replaced by XHTML, althogh. And {{}} needs its own markup, but it > should be XHTML-like <template name="citation needed" />. > > So there. My idea of a bright wikifuture is less home-grown parsers > and more standards. It's easier for the developers and works > organically with the browsers. It's not necessarily easier for people > who want to write articles in plain text with markup, but hey, they > asked for it.</crazy-optimistic-utopian-dream> > > -- > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > “We're living in pieces, > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikitext-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitext-l
