On 9/25/09 3:39 PM, Roan Kattouw wrote:
2009/9/25 PlatonidesPlatonides@gmail.com:
Those descriptions will have to be edited by the same user base that edit all other pages. Even if they are power users, it's not easy to write correct XML on the wiki textarea. We would need to create an editor for the language being created so a template editor can be made.
Since the XML file describes the template, it need only be changed when the template is changed. Realistically, newbie editors don't edit templates; anyone skilled enough to edit templates can handle some simple XML.
I advocate for a simpler syntax for form definition (but we shouldn't on the way reinvent wikitext).
Exactly. XML is a decent choice here because it has a well-defined, pre-existing grammar with parsers already available, which means it's easy to parse and easy to learn (assuming you've got some shred of a technical background; see my earlier point about newbies not editing templates).
My preference is that we shouldn't actually expose the template definition markup at all during the normal course of events, even when changing a template.
The field metadata can be fairly straightforwardly displayed and edited through a nice web interface. XML as such is simply a conveniently well-defined structured data tree format which can be used both for storing the field metadata in the DB and exposing it to the template invocation editor interface (whether client-side JS or server-side PHP or a custom bot-based tool speaking to our API).
Of course if template creators *want* to dive into the raw field metadata definition as humans, we do love to expose such things to power power users for them to play with. :)
-- brion