Pedro Fayolle wrote:
Not getting 404s is quite a problem with my project - I've mentioned before, I'm trying to write a mediawiki presentation layer client-side reimplementation, as an experiment into very low spec web servers. I'm giving a presentation on Monday and will probably post a link to my work shortly after.
Sounds a lot like an idea I had and was planning to implement in some time. So is it pure JS with XMLHTTPRequest that you're using for this presentation layer? I have a somehow working MediaWiki-to-HTML converter written in JS which I'm using for client-side previews in edit pages. Have you implemented something like this as well? If you think it could be useful for your project please let me know. I'm very intrigued about your work.
I think it is better demonstrated than explained, so I'll do my best to get a work in progress up for a few hours later today.
Basically, it's a wikitext to XML recursive decent (almost proper) parser and XML to XHTML converter. From the XML I'm generating a DOM identical to the usual mediawiki one and using the existing stylesheets, so it mostly looks the same as the PHP interface.
It doesn't just use XMLHTTP, each page has it's own URL, so the address bar changes and everything is bookmarkable. But the browser only receives a stub, and builds the page itself. The page is built bit-by-bit so the user can start reading the first part while the rest is being built.
Editing has real-time previews, although I'm still ironing out a few bugs there. Previews are done without any HTTP requests etc.