On 11/13/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with that. All wikitext is "shorthand" for something which could otherwise be represented in HTML. Pre-save transforms should be limited.
That's not the "shorthand" sense I mean. Think about any of the language features, whether it's italics, lists, links, __TOC__, parser functions, <gallery>, tables, whatever. They all work on the basis that someone deliberately typed some weird punctuation to tell the parser to treat the text differently.
ISBN is different: the parser deliberately tries to detect text that the user typed naturally ("ISBN 123456789" being the normal, unmarked formatting used in the real world) and treat it specially. It's not a real grammatical feature, it's a deliberate effort to achieve markup with no effort.
The only other feature I can think of that works that way is bare urls: http://foo.com
Anyway, it's not a major issue. There are bigger fish to fry.
Steve