[Wikitext-l] Is wikitext an HTML shorthand language, or a real markup language?

[Steve Bennett]

I gather that when wikis were first invented, it was more or less
assumed that everyone knew some HTML and the wikitext syntax language
was simply a shorthand. However, is this still the case, or should it
be considered a markup language in its own right?

Here's a simple example to demonstrate the difference:

----
:one
:two

:three


:four
----

If you consider wikitext to be a markup/formatting/display language,
then you would expect there to be little or no gap between "one" and
"two", a much bigger gap between "two and "three", and twice as big
again between "three" and "four".

That's not what happens. Instead, it's converted to this:

<dl>
<dd>one</dd>
<dd>two</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dd>three</dd>
</dl>
<p><br /></p>
<dl>
<dd>four</dd>
</dl>

The significant thing is that the only difference between one/two and
two/three is that the latter is two separate "definition lists" rather
than two list items in the same list. The visual difference is minute.

So, to properly use the : operator, you need to know how the : is
converted into HTML, then how that HTML will render in most browsers.

Is this really what we want? Don't we generally want the wikitext to
render the way the user expects it to, rather than how HTML dictates
it should render? Should we consider going as far as to convert the
above into <span> tags with styles to indent a certain distance from
the left, rather than abusing the <dl> tag this way?

Opinions and comments please!

Steve