2009/9/25 Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu>du>:
However powerful it is, I'm not sure we can really
rule out future
incompatibility as you suggest by simply stating that we can easily
forwardport. This feature is intended to hack a fix on top of the usability
issues inherent in templates. Every time we have a discussion about the
pitfalls of wikitext the center of this discussion is templates. Even
without parser functions they are turing complete - with them it is a
complete usability disaster. So it seems that when we finally get around to
developing a consensus about the changes we want in wikitext, there will be
widespread agreement that we need to change templates. But so far, without
any clear strategy on that front, we have no idea what those changes will
be.
It's important to separate template *calls* from template
*implementation*: only the latter involves ParserFunctions and all
that other ugliness. Even if and when we do completely redo the way
templates are *written* on the inside, the way they're *called* from
the outside would probably not change significantly, nor would the
concepts of parameters and types. This means redoing template syntax
does not require any changes to the XML format.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)