The introduction of ParserFunctions was reluctant, but look how it's taken off. Reluctance against programming-language-style extensions is many-fold, but primarily is this concern: Wikitext is not a programming language. It's a markup to simplify formatting in articles. So complicating it with parameters and arguments and functions is just wrong wrong wrong. I agree. The problem is, users of Wikitext *want* to program. But not in articles, in templates. It's simply true that the way templates are used is not entirely as they were originally intended. Originally they were very simple transclusion devices. Now they are complex ways of organising and structuring data in an easy and efficient way - the point being that users (without technical know-how) can include templates in their articles with simple code (e.g. {{template|a|b|c}} ) and receive a specially generated result tailored to the applicable article by the template code. This is obviously a massively useful way of allowing articles to have better information better presented, and allowing non-tech-savvy users (or even the tech-savvy ones) to very quickly and easily and intuitively insert complex formatting like a (dynamic) infobox into their articles. So the way I see this, it's only really in *templates* that the advanced, programming-like features are required, and the reason is that, simply due to evolution, templates are being used like subroutines or functions. And for good reason. That's a very very *very* useful thing for them to be able to do. Which is why they are all doing it. That kind of functionality makes MediaWiki an extremely powerful wiki engine - it's extendible from within. But if these "functions" are being written in Wikitext, that makes Wikitext more than just markup, which is confusing - so scrap them. And yet, software support for such "functions" is incredibly useful - so keep them! There's a solution here. How about we introduce another language ****that is only available in the Template namespace****, specifically for this function? Call it Wikisyntax. Wikisyntax is a pure (and simple) programming language, with no markup. Wikitext is a pure and simple markup language, with no code. Normal users (who can use Wikitext fairly easily) rarely ever look at the template namespace anyway. It's a simple fact that your average user of MediaWiki has no idea what a template is, and will never create or edit one until he or she is quite advanced and has got a strong understanding of the system. Thus it is not objectionable on usability grounds alone to expand the code for the template namespace. In fact, usability is a *reason* to support the idea of Wikisyntax: templates *are* being used like this because it's an extremely fruitful feature, so it would make things easier, but it would keep the complexity seperate and hidden away from normal markup and articles. Of course, users can still write templates with just Wikitext, but the Wikisyntax option is there. Crucial is the point that the Wikisyntax code is only parsed when written in the template namespace. This allows Wikitext to remain a pure markup for use in articles by normal users, without confusion. But the Template + Wikisyntax idea is, essentially, a way of allowing a wiki to have *custom subroutines* that **aid** those normal users in normal articles. No other Wiki engine has that kind of power. Would this idea be difficult to implement? I don't think so at all. Wikisyntax can be a seperate file, say, SyntaxParser.php, called only when necessary. Its contents can simply be (mildly altered, although not much) a copy-and-paste of the ParserFunctions extension that is already written, and any others we'd like to include, e.g. StringFunctions and VariablesExtension (discuss later). We *already have the code* (pretty much) for this new template language! I have made a page on Meta for this suggestion: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisyntax , please leave your comments either here or there. Thanks. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l