On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:01:51PM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 13/11/2007, GerardM
<gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
Count me out when you say that "*we* define the correct rendering of
wikitext to be whatever the parser says it is". For some languages it just
does not work properly. Consequently, either you are right and it is not for
me to suggest that the parser does not is 100% or there is indeed room for
improvement.
Thanks,
GerardM
I never said it was a good definition, but it *is* the definition.
That's why we're talking about changing that definition.
My point was that saying "The parser isn't broken" isn't a good
argument because it is tautologous since the definition of a broken
parser is one that doesn't render text according to the definition of
how it should be rendered, and that definition in this case is simply
how the parser renders it. So, it is true, but irrelevant, that the
parser isn't broken, what's broken is the definition of wikitext.
(And yes, that paragraph is hard to understand - I struggle to
describe circular logic without ending up with a circular
description... Sorry.)
Your assertion is that it is not possible to declare that the parser is
broken because no formal standar exists to compare it against. That's
pretty much akin to something I said last night, and that's the major
reason people are positing EBNF: because it's a framework designed for
the purpose of building such external standards as grammars.
Cheers,
-- jra
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Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
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