Well, I would be more in favor of having a built-in code highlighter instead of a WYSIWYG editor. I think it'd improve readability, especially with the new endnote syntax threatening to take over some articles. I was going to propose doing something like this for the Summer of Code, but I just couldn't think of an elegant way to implement it. Using TinyMCE for code would require converting HTML-encoded HTML/wikitext into HTML/wikitext, and a feature using Flash or Java probably wouldn't be that popular with users.
We have actually implemented this kind of WYSIWiki (What You See Is Wiki) editor as a Java applet called WikiWizard for the JSPWiki. We will also be presenting it at Wikimania if our proposal is accepted. I have already talked with Brion Vibber about integrating it into Wikipedia and we would be happy to do that, but we are now waiting for the Wikipedia wiki markup spec to be finalized. In the meantime, we are continuing to debug our software and add new features. One of its more interesting features is the ability to copy from Word and paste formatted directly into the applet and have your content automatically pasted in as wiki syntax.
You can see our project details at www.wikiwizard.net. I am currently working on the final steps to make it easy to install and run within JSPWiki as well as the ability to add other editors to JSPWiki. I have almost finished coding a feature to let users upload multiple files simultaneously (for intranet use). Feel free to contact me privately for more details about WikiWizard.
Best wishes, Chuck
On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 11:53:32PM +0200, Chuck Smith wrote:
We have actually implemented this kind of WYSIWiki (What You See Is Wiki) editor as a Java applet called WikiWizard for the JSPWiki. We will also be presenting it at Wikimania if our proposal is accepted. I have already talked with Brion Vibber about integrating it into Wikipedia and we would be happy to do that, but we are now waiting for the Wikipedia wiki markup spec to be finalized. In the meantime, we are continuing to debug our software and add new features. One of its more interesting features is the ability to copy from Word and paste formatted directly into the applet and have your content automatically pasted in as wiki syntax.
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but it would probably be good to keep in mind, too, that wiring the wikitext syntax into an editor like this puts binders on the extension of that syntax: it has to be done in two places.
That may not be the best thing.
Cheers, -- jra
On 5/23/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but it would probably be good to keep in mind, too, that wiring the wikitext syntax into an editor like this puts binders on the extension of that syntax: it has to be done in two places.
That may not be the best thing.
For pure extensions, it should be possible to have a simple fall-back: any unrecognised code is simply displayed. If some time from now the code ((foo)) has some new meaning, well, you'll still be able to edit it as normal - it just won't be WYSIWYGged. Should the reverse happen - [[Image:foo.jpg|notreallyanimage]] suddenly should be rendered as text - well, true.
Steve
On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 12:18:33AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/23/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but it would probably be good to keep in mind, too, that wiring the wikitext syntax into an editor like this puts binders on the extension of that syntax: it has to be done in two places.
That may not be the best thing.
For pure extensions, it should be possible to have a simple fall-back: any unrecognised code is simply displayed. If some time from now the code ((foo)) has some new meaning, well, you'll still be able to edit it as normal - it just won't be WYSIWYGged. Should the reverse happen
- [[Image:foo.jpg|notreallyanimage]] suddenly should be rendered as
text - well, true.
The latter is obvious, but the former may wll be more important, and was my actual point. "Let's not break the WYSIWYM editor" can be a more powerful force than you'd think. An explicit policy should probably be discussed in advance.
Cheers, -- jra
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