-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Dmitriy Sintsov
Sent: 25 September 2009 07:01
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal for editing template calls
within pages
* Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> [Thu, 24 Sep 2009
15:40:46 -0400]:
Templates and refs are by far the worst
offenders, for
sticking tons
of content in the page that doesn't have any
obvious
relationship to
the actual content. Getting rid of them would be
a huge
step forward.
> But stuff like '''bold''' and ==headings== are also a real
problem.
What's complex in
'''bold''' and ==headings== ? Here when
we've installed the wiki for local "historical records" at
the local Russian university the humanitarians got to
understand such things really quickly. The Ms or PhD in
History cannot be that much stupid.. To me it looks like you
are overstating the complexity of the wikitext. But yes, they
are calling technical staff for complex cases, but it happens
_rarely_. Historical records are mostly just plain text with
links and occasional pictures.
The problem is the ambiguity with italics, (''italics''). So the
current parser doesn't really make its final decision on what should
be bold or what should be italic until it hits a newline. If there are
an even number of both bold and italics then it assumes it interpreted
the line correctly.
However if there is an uneven number of bold & italic, it starts
searching for where it could have misinterpreted something.
I think this is part of what makes wikitext undescribable in a formal
grammar.
Jared