On 14/08/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, It is "nice" to have things both ways. However you have to realise that one reason why the parser is ugly is because of all the provisions to make life easy for people who do not code properly their wikisyntax. When the code is generated, there is no excuse for these "abominations" and much saner text can be generated.
Yes, yes, I know. Users don't embrace concepts such as matching tag pairs and making stuff clean, else we could let them use an XHTML subset. C'est la vie.
However, I think it's more correct to state that a lot of parser ugliness comes from bolting on behaviour and hacking stuff in at a fast clip, to provide extras. A lot of the behaviour people depend upon is due to bugs in the parser, which are now considered de facto, but which shouldn't be happening.
There is also the long standing wish by many to make the wikisyntax universal as in software independent. When the wikisyntax is hidden from view, this is possible. An other thing is, it will allow us to fix problems like the '' problem with the Neapolitan language. As it is, the wikisyntax is ugly, it does not work properly in all circumstances and consequently the arguments to do away with direct editing of the MediaWiki syntax are quite powerful.
Indeed. There's also a long standing wish by many for world peace, worldwide nuclear disarmament, an end to global poverty and fair trade for everyone. But unfortunately, those things can't practically be done in a single sweeping step.
I don't agree that hiding wiki markup is the productive step. As has been pointed out often on this list, power users and people who are comfortable with it are more productive with markup. Your solution is "let's break the syntax and hide the mess behind a graphical user interface", which I don't agree with.
Do that, and I won't edit. Do that, and people using older browsers (long live lynx) and screen readers, or not embracing "newfangled" script technologies, etc. can't. So hiding wiki markup and locking it out of sight is not an option, and it should not be. If Joe User wants to view his markup, he should be allowed to. WYSIWYG is *not* a quick fix for the parser.
Rob Church