On 06/07/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I don't understand. Why did you do this? What purpose does it serve? What significant improvements does WikiCreole have over MediaWiki syntax?
I presume that it is hoped that one day WikiCreole became a standard. If so, that would allow people to convert material between different wiki engines with ease. At the moment I gather it's pretty ad-hoc and painful to convert between different engines.
In the field of spoken languages, people have tried creating a language to make communication between people using different languages easier (Esperanto being the best known). None of them have taken off, because it involves everyone learning a new language, and there is no point everyone doing that. When people who speak different languages wish to communicate, they speak English, since it is the most used language. English is not as easy to learn as Esperanto, but people have a much greater incentive to do so since there are actually people that speak it.
Wiki syntaxes are no different.
Of course a machine language is completely different to a human language (constructed or natural). A small example: - in human language we can invent new words and expressions at will and if they "catch on" they will be widely understood. in a machine language new expressions can only be designed in (top down).
Just because human language can't be standardised doesn't imply that machine languages can't.
regards Brianna user:pfctdayelise