On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 2:57 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Brian wrote:
On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Trevor Parscal wrote:
* The topic is supposed to be on Template Editing which is, at least in the way it's being proposed, a little less of a stale topic - so where is all the energy on that front? We have an XML format to design and complex problems to sort out. Help is really needed. Let's all take a look at the link provided at the beginning of this thread http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_forms
- Trevor
I do think that sufficient energy has been directed at this topic. People have complained that xml is harder to edit that wikitext and that it is too complicated, among other things.
I think this is an important point.
XML is hard to edit. That's the reason wikitext was created, to "fix" the issues with the, even easier, html. Now, it is being proposed to add a XML processing on top of wikitext to describe templates.
<snip>
Unless expressly forbidden by the software implementation, I would assume that "helpful" Wikipedians would very quickly write template description templates to replace the XML and give it a "nice" wiki interface. So, in practice, the question of whether XML is hard to edit will probably be moot and reduced solely to the issue that templates are hard to edit.
-Robert Rohde