On Thu, 8 May 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I wonder if we shouldn't contact the developers of other open source wiki software, and convene a by-email "mini summit meeting" about wiki syntax, and try to formalize a standard that they and we can all follow.
We've deviated, with good cause and good results, from the traditional CamelCase method, but there's a lot of syntax that wikis share, but lots of little idiosyncracies that should probably be ironed out.
The problem is, that when there would be a standard, those that have something different would have to change. Few will have a problem with adding some extra Wiki-syntax (like the \ for a linebreak someone else proposed in this thread), but when existing syntax has to be deprecated, it means that lots of pages have to be changed, possibly causing errors, users suddenly have to change their habits, etcetera. I think that many developers will have an "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" attitude to that.
To give an example of the 'little idiosyncracies' Jimmy is talking about: In Wikipedia, one links to another title than the text of the link with [[link|title]]. In Sensei's Library (the only other Wiki of this kind that I frequent) it is [title|link]. Very similar, using the same ideas, and yet totally non-compliant with each other.
Andre Engels