On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 08:47:45AM +0200, GerardM wrote:
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.
I don't think that's all that big an impact, myself. I think it's mostly because the grammar is not formally defined, and therefore, parsing pinch points crept in.
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.
Well, I don't necessarily think that it's a good idea to overload the task of cleaning up wikitext syntax with the burden of supporting spiffier editing.
I tend to think that the one will automatically make the other easier, with only perhaps the barest thought in the minds of the syntax cleaning folks that that's an issue -- which hopefully they already have.
Cheers, -- jra