Thomas Dalton wrote:
even if power users don't use the new interface they still need to be able to use the old one to edit the same articles. If the wikitext created by the visual editor is unnecessarily complicated and unreadable (like the html produced by ms frontpage, for instance) then there is problem. Similarly, the visual editor needs to be able to parse even quite strangely written wikitext.
You are absolutely right. I was just saying something additional: that if VisualEditor isn't targeting power users, then the dev team shouldn't build a powerful editing UI for templates. Instead they should worry about preserving an article's template transclusions from damage by non-aware users.
To add to your words: the visual editor should be able to:
- Parse, render, and write 100% of wikitext. - Produce minimal, correct wikitext for new edits. - Exactly preserve any other (unchanged) wikitext that it loads & saves; otherwise version diffs will show changes that the author didn't explicitly make. (Prime offender: the ASP.NET editor in Visual Studio.NET, which used to completely rewrite its contents.)
DanB