-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dmitriy Sintsov Sent: 25 September 2009 07:01 To: Wikimedia developers Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Proposal for editing template calls within pages
- Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com [Thu, 24 Sep 2009
15:40:46 -0400]:
Templates and refs are by far the worst offenders, for
sticking tons
of content in the page that doesn't have any obvious
relationship to
the actual content. Getting rid of them would be a huge
step forward.
But stuff like '''bold''' and ==headings== are also a real
problem.
What's complex in '''bold''' and ==headings== ? Here when we've installed the wiki for local "historical records" at the local Russian university the humanitarians got to understand such things really quickly. The Ms or PhD in History cannot be that much stupid.. To me it looks like you are overstating the complexity of the wikitext. But yes, they are calling technical staff for complex cases, but it happens _rarely_. Historical records are mostly just plain text with links and occasional pictures.
The problem is the ambiguity with italics, (''italics''). So the current parser doesn't really make its final decision on what should be bold or what should be italic until it hits a newline. If there are an even number of both bold and italics then it assumes it interpreted the line correctly.
However if there is an uneven number of bold & italic, it starts searching for where it could have misinterpreted something.
I think this is part of what makes wikitext undescribable in a formal grammar.
Jared