Re: [Wikitech-l] WikiCreole 1.0 - a common wiki markup

First of all, I want to mention that we have gone out of our way to accommodate Mediawiki as much as possible in the making of Creole. Often when we were at an impasse, we would just accept the MediaWiki syntax (like for headings). It should also be noted that much of our syntax coincided with Daniel Lee Crocker's reform proposal (unfortunately no longer available online) for Mediawiki syntax. I'm quoting from our ACM paper for WikiSym 2007: 2.1 Wiki Standardization Attempts 2.1.1 Mediawiki syntax reform draft Seeing the difficulty and confusion of MediaWiki syntax, on 2005-Jun-10, Daniel Lee Crocker proposed a reform. This syntax has many elements in common with Creole: headings, bold, italics and line breaks. It is worth noting here that Crocker wanted to change the "semantic" double and triple quote system of emphasis from Wikipedia to the presentational double asterisk and double slash syntax [6]. [6] Crocker, Daniel Lee. New syntax proposal. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-June/017806.html - From reading the previous day's messages, I see there are some misconceptions about WikiCreole. It is correct that WikiCreole was not designed for EBNF, but rather it was optimized to be as easy to learn and use as possible for the user. A wiki parser only needs to be written once, but people need to use it everyday. However, there was once an attempt to write a grammar for Creole: http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Grammar and there is currently a research paper in submission (not by our institute) to WikiSym in regards to a formal grammar for Creole. From what I understand, there are no conflicts between MediaWiki and WikiCreole. The idea was that Mediawiki would have a separate "Easy Edit" button (http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/EditCreoleMode), so that new users would not have to deal with seeings things like interlanguage links, templates and tables that often scare away first-time non-techie users. However, I think there could be a motion for a Mixed Mode editing (http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/MixedMode) where users could use Creole at the same time as Wikipedia markup. Also note that Brion Vibber participated in the WikiCreole workshop in Denmark and we have informed him of our decisions as well as asking for his input along each step of the spec creation. When we introduced the image syntax {{image.jpg}}, we asked him if that would be a problem for MediaWiki and he said that MediaWiki would most likely implement Creole in Easy Edit Mode, so that would not be an issue. I know this would be asking a lot, but I think a good way to go about this would be little steps. For example, first changing the italics syntax from '' to // and then seeing how that goes. I'm not sure if this would be the right way to go, but it would be an interesting way to incrementally move over to Creole and leave the complicated parts of Mediawiki as they are. There are also two ACM papers currently in the publication process for WikiSym 2007 which I could try to provide to private individuals who are interested in learning more about Wiki Creole. One is from our institute which documents the hows and whys of Creole while another not from our institute describes a possible grammar for Creole. Please send me email privately if you wish to receive these papers. In any case, we are happy to work with you and however you decide to implement Creole is up to you. Best wishes, Chuck _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l