On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:58:42 +0100, Karl Eichwalder ke@gnu.franken.de wrote:

That's why XML editors exist. The sooner we switch to a standard markup language, the better. WP's markup is proprietary and very hackish.

WP's markup - or rather MediaWiki's - is a variant of the original WikiWikiWeb's, and was designed with ease of editting (by humans) at the very top of the agenda. There have been moves to create a standardised wiki markup - which would in no way resemble machine-friendly formats like XML, since the aim would still be human-friendliness - see, for example, http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiMarkupStandard But for now, yes, it's "proprietary" to the extent that it is not developed in co-ordination with any outside body.

As for "hackish", though, I'm not sure I agree: the *syntax* is perfectly good at doing what it does - which is to say, it allows people to describe the formatting they require of a piece of text. What's hackish is MediaWiki's *implementation* of that formatting - the parser which isn't a parser - being as it is based on a range of context-unaware text manipulations which continually interact in unexpected and undesired ways, violating users' assumptions about the syntax. The almost-developed flex/bison wiki-text parser (which outputs, being intended for computer use, XML) demonstrates that the syntax itself is amenable to far less hackish processing.

With a proper markup language it would not be necessary to change ''' -> '' -> " -> ''' -> « -> '' -> „ -> " all the time; you would simply write <obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> and you are done. Once and for all. That's only one example.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what that example refers to. Are you meaning that wiki syntax could magically morph to suit a different language, with different formatting conventions, so people could copy-and-paste from one wiki to another? Or are you just saying that the markup should be more *semantic* (I don't see anything less "proper" about marking up what things look like; this is the way people view data), and the example is some debate about what formatting to use in a particular case?

I think the key problem with semantic markup is that in order to have any advantage, it has to be both very rich and very standardised - e.g. you'd need to have a way of saying "this text is the name of a film", and people would need to know that this was "<movie>" and not "<film>" (or "<movietitle>" or "<filmtitle>", or any number of other possibilities). If you were to impose such a scheme on something like Wikipedia, you'd just create a tremendous learning curve.

Obviously, semantic *representation* is good, and in some cases (such as Wiktionary, or the oft-mooted "Wikipeople"/"Wikibiography"/"WikiFamilyTree" ideas) I have my doubts as to whether a wiki really is the best way to go, simply because editting a block of text that describes its own semantic status is rather daunting for most people. Hence, as you say, XML editors - and more specifically, hence sites like IMDb that have subject-specific structure hard-coded into the software and the interface (if you edit a listing in IMDb, you never *see* the underlying representation, and the structure is defined for you so you don't need to).

In 'de' they just invented an invisible "personendaten" box...

Again, you've lost me; for what purpose did they create this "box", in what sense is it "invisible", and how would XML/"a proper markup language" deal with the same issue?

Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com writes:

WP's markup - or rather MediaWiki's - is a variant of the original WikiWikiWeb's, and was designed with ease of editting (by humans) at the very top of the agenda.

As Perl ;)

As for "hackish", though, I'm not sure I agree: the *syntax* is perfectly good at doing what it does - which is to say, it allows people to describe the formatting they require of a piece of text.

Yes, and that's wrong. I don't care about the formatting, I'd like to markup contents properly. WP unfortunately wants us writers to care about formatting for certain devices (screen and print, not for audio).

...

With a proper markup language it would not be necessary to change ''' -> '' -> " -> ''' -> « -> '' -> „ -> " all the time; you would simply write <obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> and you are done. Once and for all. That's only one example.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what that example refers to.

Within a paragraph you often want to highlight some words or phrases. Some of these phrases are citations others are catch words. Some of us uses "quotations marks", others '''bolding''' and next one goes for „German UTF-8 quotations marks“. To avoid those problems, make use of descriptive markup (e.g. TEI XML):

<q>To be, or not to be</q>

Or for catch word, when you want to describe or list famous monument in Nuremberg:

The <obj>Nuremberg Castle</obj> is worth a visit. Some parts of it are from the medieval period. Some buildings are later additions. ... Main Churches are <obj>St. Sebald</obj>, <obj>St. Lorenz</obj> and the <obj>Lady's Chapel</obj>.

I think the key problem with semantic markup is that in order to have any advantage, it has to be both very rich and very standardised - e.g. you'd need to have a way of saying "this text is the name of a film", and people would need to know that this was "<movie>" and not "<film>" (or "<movietitle>" or "<filmtitle>", or any number of other possibilities). If you were to impose such a scheme on something like Wikipedia, you'd just create a tremendous learning curve.

Not necessarily. Most things are obvious. And those, who do not want to make use of it, can write as before...

...

In 'de' they just invented an invisible "personendaten" box...

Again, you've lost me; for what purpose did they create this "box", in what sense is it "invisible", and how would XML/"a proper markup language" deal with the same issue?

The so called WP markup is not enough. Many a lot symbols are already in use ' | {} [] * # = - : ; and the leading space and empty lines. Sure, all of them are easy to remember and combining and nesting them is no problem. Oops, I forgot to mention that <div>, <span> and some more are also allowed...

Here is an example for the "personendaten" box:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Felixm%C3%BCller

{{Personendaten| NAME=Felixmüller, Conrad |ALTERNATIVNAMEN= |KURZBESCHREIBUNG=bedeutender [[Maler]] des [[Expressionismus]] und der [[Neue Sachlichkeit|Neuen Sachlichkeit]] |GEBURTSDATUM=[[21. Mai]] [[1897]] |GEBURTSORT=[[Dresden]] |STERBEDATUM=[[24. März]] [[1977]] |STERBEORT=[[Berlin-Zehlendorf]] }}