[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parsing

[tarquin]

Steve Callaway wrote:

>It occurs to me that there is going to be an awful lot of reworking if we
>ever do go to an XML format Wikipedia (and this definitely needs discussion
>at some point soon). I would have said that HTML is a more generally
>accepted standard and that Wiki formatting is a highly localised phenomenon.
>You can do a lot more with HTML format than you ever can with Wiki
>formatting.
>
Au contraire. The beauty of Wiki Markup is that is is independent of 
what is sent to the browser.
When XML finally (!) hits the road, all it will take is a few tweaks to 
the script so '' is converted to a different tag instead of <I>, and we 
can go on writing wiki markup as before.
If anything, XML is another reason for preferring wiki markup to HTML.
Another good reason, from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks, is:
 > It's an intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki page. 
It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal to the VideoAddicts 
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?VideoAddicts>. If it doesn't appeal, they don't 
participate, which leaves those of us who read and write to get on with 
rational discourse.