I couldn't agree more - I've always felt that wiki markup should resemble well organised (and maybe slightly quirky) .txt "nomarkup" formatting.
Exactly. That was the line of thought I used while organizing my ideas. In emails, I'll often employ forward slashes to /emphasize/ a word or /two/. Or if I really need to create good emphasis, I'll !yell! or *accent* the word. In the plaintext world, the three tend to be more equal than <b> and <i>, though. My original thought was, "Why can't wikies just use these normal conventions?" After a bit more investigation, I convinced myself that while it's a good idea to base the syntax on these conventions, it'd be too confusing for the software if you didn't provide something more. You'd definately need something about the syntax that says, "Look at me, I'm a wiki markup."
For example, say we wanted to use /slashes/ for italics. How would the following line be rendered:
"In UNIX-style operating systems, services' configuration files are located in /etc/. The X Window System's configuration files, for example, are in /etc/X11/."
How exactly is the software gonna know when /[word-boundary]...[word-boundary]/ is to be italicized text, or a UNIX-style path, or anything else where forward slashes are normally employed and aren't meant to italicize? It'd be possible to work up some logic so the software /could/ distinguish between paths and something that's to be italicized... But what if you wanted to employ italics like this:
"/anti/dis/establishment/arianistically"
You might mean for it to render:
"<i>anti</i>dis<i>establishment</i>arianistically"
But how does the software know if it's a path or not? Plus, it looks really confusing to the human eye. At a quick glance, one might easily assume that 'dis' was supposed to be italicized as well. Even the double forward slash (//) syntax I orginally proposed is confusing in this way:
"//anti//dis//establishment//arianistically"
Much better is:
"[/anti/]dis[/establishment/]arianistically"
I started work on this because I'm doing a lot of development on a
second
generation community-developed/organized open publishing content
management
system for Independent Media Centers. [...]
I'll be VERY interested to see this...
Yeah, me too! *grin* It's still in the early stages. Some of the other second generation projects are much further along, but they're also much less ambitious. I'm hopefully gettin' a 5 PM to 5 AM night job where I'll have a lot of free time to develop. If that's the case, a usable pre-release should be out sooner than later. Right now I'm working a lot of the conceptual stuff, the framework, the integration of components, etc. You have to create a consistent theory before you can create a consistent product. <g>
As part of my plans for this, I've been designing my own "nomarkup" wiki-style markup for it's use. Currently I've only really got the basic wiki markup stuff done, and nothing for more advanced handling of CMS and multimedia handling.
I knew I wasn't the only one thinkin' about this stuff. *smile*
Nevertheless, I think we share similar goals.
Absolutely. That's why I think we should all put our heads to together to create a consistent standard for us all. Something so we won't have to learn 23 dialects of wiki syntax just to contribute to our favorite websites.
So, I invite you to look over my markup ramblings on my own wiki: http://www.nut.house.cx/cgi-bin/nemwiki.pl?NEWS/TextFormatting
I'm sure your ideas are invaluable. And I'm sure I'll be incorporating your best ideas into Wikitax.
Peace outside,
Derek
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On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 11:20:17PM -0600, Derek Moore did utter:
For example, say we wanted to use /slashes/ for italics. How would the following line be rendered:
"In UNIX-style operating systems, services' configuration files are located in /etc/. The X Window System's configuration files, for example, are in /etc/X11/."
How exactly is the software gonna know when /[word-boundary]...[word-boundary]/ is to be italicized text, or a UNIX-style path, or anything else where forward slashes are normally employed and aren't meant to italicize? It'd be possible to work up some logic so the software /could/ distinguish between paths and something that's to be italicized... But what if you wanted to employ italics like this:
"/anti/dis/establishment/arianistically"
In my NEWS markup notes, you'll see that while I set the "/" to be the italic control character, a single "/" is not the delimiter for starting and stopping italic. Rather, a startline, whitespace or punctuation, followed by "/" and then followed by a non-punctuation character - will trigger the start of italic. Reverse for end-of-italic delimiter. (might need some tweaking for usage - especially with regards to punctuation).
You might mean for it to render:
"<i>anti</i>dis<i>establishment</i>arianistically"
My system would currently have rendered it as "/anti/dis/establishment/arianistically" exactly ;)
Sure, this means in-word italicing (and bold, etc) isn't possible - but I think given the 10/90 rule (10 percent of features will satisfy 90% of needs), this is a reasonable tradeoff. I'd maybe suggest allowing pure HTML for any remaining cases?
Regarding file paths which could be italicised? I think throwing a simple no-wiki syntax around it would be the best way to keep a path clean of wiki markup :)
Much better is:
"[/anti/]dis[/establishment/]arianistically"
I think you're in danger of reinventing a html1.0 shaped wheel, however, and losing the simplicity of .txt "nomarkup". I'd rather lose a feature (or only provide it as html - eg, for italicing parts of words) than overly complicate the markup. The thought-experiment I use is "could I send this raw code to a non-geek friend, and be confident that they'd not find the markup confusing, but rather, find it obvious?"
pre-release should be out sooner than later. Right now I'm working a lot of the conceptual stuff, the framework, the integration of components, etc. You have to create a consistent theory before you can create a consistent product. <g>
Indeed - which is why I've been theorising my NEWS markup already. You're further along than I am though. (and when it comes to product development of my ideas, I'm astoundingly lax :/
I'm sure your ideas are invaluable. And I'm sure I'll be incorporating your best ideas into Wikitax.
And similarly I'll likely nab wikitax ideas for NEWS. Ultimately, I hope we find a single compromise between read/learn/use-ability and features/complexity needed to power what we want :)
.../Nemo
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