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Re: [Wikitech-l] Redirect Pages:...

MediaWiki 1.4.4 released

Lars Aronsson

4 May 2005 4 May '05

1:09 a.m.

Is the wiki syntax going anywhere? Did somebody start work to standardize it? Is anybody rethinking the difference between [[x]], [[x:y]], [[:x:y]], [[x|y]], [x:y], [x y], {{x|y}}, {{x|y=z}}, {{x|y=[[z]]}}, and [[x|{{y}}]]? If we started over today, with today's experience but without today's legacy, would we make it similar or different? Would [[image:x]] be implemented as {{image|x}} instead? Would [http://url/ text] be replaced by [[http://url/ | text]]? Would that make "http:" and "isbn:" parallels to "image:" and "category:"? What about making a scripting language for template definitions, so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y"; And what about <math></math>? If I got this part of history right, the [[x]] syntax was introduced into the UseMod wiki software by Clifford Adams on request from the Wikipedia community early in 2001. Before that all wikis used CamelCase to make links, and that option was still available in Wikipedia for most of 2001. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Brion Vibber

4 May 4 May

1:56 a.m.

Lars Aronsson wrote:

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Is the wiki syntax going anywhere? Did somebody start work to standardize it?

There was a wiki markup standardization mailing list that started up a while back, then died out. (At least I haven't gotten any mail from it in months.) Last I remember, somebody made a big spreadsheet summarizing the basic markup in various different wikis.

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Is anybody rethinking the difference between [[x]], [[x:y]], [[:x:y]], [[x|y]], [x:y], [x y], {{x|y}}, {{x|y=z}}, {{x|y=[[z]]}}, and [[x|{{y}}]]? If we started over today, with today's experience but without today's legacy, would we make it similar or different? Would [[image:x]] be implemented as {{image|x}} instead?

I'm not sure, but I think I was the idiot who suggested the [[Image:x]] syntax. It wouldn't have been so bad if we'd used [[File:x]] for the file description page, a change we might yet make but haven't got around to yet. Making it more transclusion-looking instead of link-looking might be logical in a holistic way.

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Would [http://url/ text] be replaced by [[http://url/ | text]]? Would that make "http:" and "isbn:" parallels to "image:" and "category:"?

I'd have preferred this for consistency, but we just inherited UseMod's syntax here and stuck with it.

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What about making a scripting language for template definitions, so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";

I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

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And what about <math></math>?

/me runs away screaming :)

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If I got this part of history right, the [[x]] syntax was introduced into the UseMod wiki software by Clifford Adams on request from the Wikipedia community early in 2001. Before that all wikis used CamelCase to make links, and that option was still available in Wikipedia for most of 2001.

According to legend, there were other wikis at that time allowing some form of free links, though UseMod may not have until then. I wasn't there at the time so can't really say. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Lars Aronsson

2:42 a.m.

Brion Vibber wrote:

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And what about <math></math>?

/me runs away screaming :)

My users want to introduce <math> for the proofreading of scanned books such as http://runeberg.org/tektid/1933m/0103.html at Project Runeberg. Should we copy Wikipedia's current syntax or should we "do it right" instead? And what would that be? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/

Erik Moeller

8:53 a.m.

Lars Aronsson:

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Brion Vibber wrote:

And what about <math></math>?

/me runs away screaming :)

I would contend that for extensions that call external programs to parse some input and convert it into something else, an XML-like syntax is the way to go. This was also the result of the discussions and vote we've had about this one year ago: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extension_Syntax http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extension_Syntax/Voting Wikitext is meant to replace complex or unnecessary HTML. When you start making up funny symbols for every possible extension there could ever be, you're replacing an intuitive, descriptive solution with a complicated one. All best, Erik

Lee Daniel Crocker

3:50 a.m.

On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 18:56 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:

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Lars Aronsson wrote: > Is the wiki syntax going anywhere? Did somebody start work to > standardize it?

I'm still working on it in back-burner mode, but it's a complex problem. I'll post something about the semantic model I've worked up soon for comment.

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Actually, you can blame that one on me. You may have indeed suggested it, but I implemented it without knowing about such recommendations. There were later suggestions to change it, but I didn't jump on board with them right away, as I didn't then see it as a big problem. Now that the syntax has grown beyond recognition, it's a bigger issue.

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Making it more transclusion-looking instead of link-looking might be logical in a holistic way.

Agreed.

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> Would [http://url/ text] be replaced by [[http://url/ | text]]? > Would that make "http:" and "isbn:" parallels to "image:" and > "category:"?

I'd like to eliminate single-bracket links entirely. There's no need for a separate syntax, since the "http:" (or "ftp:", etc.) uniquely identifies a link as being external.

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> What about making a scripting language for template definitions, > so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost > like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";

Ug.

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I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

Yep. And I'm wary of arbitrary transclusions. Mybe limiting them to template-space only would be a good idea as well.

...

> And what about <math></math>?

I'd also like to eliminate all <tag>-type markup. With math, there's the natural alternative of "$$ stuff $$", just like the original TeX. -- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>

Jeremy Dunck

4:22 a.m.

On 5/3/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> wrote:

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On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 18:56 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:

Lars Aronsson wrote: > Is the wiki syntax going anywhere? Did somebody start work to > standardize it?

I'm still working on it in back-burner mode, but it's a complex problem. I'll post something about the semantic model I've worked up soon for comment.

Is the goal really to get all wikis to use the same markup? Perhaps a more obtainable goal would be to get all wikis to import from and export to some lingua franca?

Lee Daniel Crocker

6:37 a.m.

On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 23:22 -0500, Jeremy Dunck wrote:

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On 5/3/05, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> wrote:

I'm still working on it in back-burner mode, but it's a complex problem. I'll post something about the semantic model I've worked up soon for comment.

Is the goal really to get all wikis to use the same markup?

Speaking only for myself, I have no such goal. I only care about Wikipedia and the more general goal of getting its information into the future in the most useful forms. The current trend toward feature creep in the software and the lack of standardization are dangerous threats to that. -- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>

James D. Forrester

10:21 a.m.

On Wednesday, 4th May, 2005, at 04:50, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> wrote:

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On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 18:56 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:

Lars Aronsson wrote: Making it more transclusion-looking instead of link-looking might be logical in a holistic way.

Agreed.

So s/[[Image:*]]/{{Image:$1}}/g ? Perhaps {{File:*}} or {{Media:*}} instead, with [[File:*]] being a direct link? Transclusion of pages and of media files would then be identical, which makes it easier to grok them... [Snip]

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I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

Yep. And I'm wary of arbitrary transclusions. Mybe limiting them to template-space only would be a good idea as well.

The thing is, non-template-space transclusions are being used a lot for "good" reasons (quite apart from anything else, reducing the number of times you conflict or over-write yourself when you edit several sections on the same page in quick succession) on pages like VfD where lots of people discuss pages, images, people, etc.

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> And what about <math></math>?

I'd also like to eliminate all <tag>-type markup. With math, there's the natural alternative of "$$ stuff $$", just like the original TeX.

Seems sensible. Though how are we going to do articles with phrases like "eArN $$!$$$$%%!&^! sENd all money now!"? (Yes yes, I know, <nowiki>.) ;-) More seriously, I imagine the string "$$" occurs in a (possibly trivially small) number of places. Also, if we're going to have TeX inlines, can we have TeX display formulae? That would be quite useful, actually, in quite a few places. Yours, -- James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] Mail: james(a)jdforrester.org | jon(a)eh.org | csvla(a)dcs.warwick.ac.uk IM : (MSN) jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com

Christof Damian

11:35 a.m.

On Wed, 04 May 2005, James D. Forrester wrote:

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{{Image:*}} has a meaning already, it includes the description text of the image. I would prefer if {{XXX}} would always include the contents of a page XXX, no matter if it is a Image+description, a Category-page or a plain wiki page. Currently it just works with plain pages and just includes the description otherwise. christof -- Christof Damian christof(a)damian.net

Phil Boswell

3:10 p.m.

"James D. Forrester" <james(a)jdforrester.org> wrote in message news:200505041021.j44ALtFD024191@mail-relay-2.csv.warwick.ac.uk...

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On Wednesday, 4th May, 2005, at 04:50, Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> wrote:

Yep. And I'm wary of arbitrary transclusions. Mybe limiting them to template-space only would be a good idea as well.

Maybe some harder rules about which namespaces you could transclude into and from whence might be helpful. So you could do {{:}} --> {{:}} and {{wp:}} --> {{wp:}} but not {{wp:}} -->{{user:}} for example. Do we have any statistics as to the most common arrangement of source/sink namespaces? -- Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

Tels

7:31 a.m.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Moin, On Wednesday 04 May 2005 03:56, Brion Vibber wrote:

...

Lars Aronsson wrote: > Is the wiki syntax going anywhere? Did somebody start work to > standardize it?

[snipabit]

...

What about making a scripting language for template definitions, so you can have conditions, loops and database fetches, almost like PHP? {{x|y=x}} ::= if ($y) then "see also: $y";

I'm really leery of complex templating -- especially anything allowing loops, that's a merry jaunt on the road to Denial of Service land.

But I would love to have at least default parameters: With the following template: {{{txt}}} you always have to specify color and text, e.g. this doesn't work: {{color|txt=blue monday}} Something like: {{{txt}}} ? Simple expressions (like {{{size+4}}}) would also be good, for things like: {{{txt}}} It doesn't need to be a full-fetched scripting language, which would only open a whole lot of can of Überworms. Best wishes, Tels - -- Signed on Wed May 4 09:28:00 2005 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email. "Yeah, baby, yeah!"

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Angela

8:03 a.m.

On 5/4/05, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:

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Is the wiki syntax going anywhere? Did somebody start work to standardize it?

Jimmy posted about this last month. See the thread which starts at <http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-March/028452.html> where he says Ross Mayfield of Socialtext (<http://www.socialtext.net/mayfield/index.cgi?action=refcard>) is also interested in a syntax standardization effort. A comparison of syntax is at <http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:compare>. The WikiMarkupStandard WorkingGroup mailing list is at <http://www.freelists.org/list/wiki>. There were a few posts in March, but the list is basically inactive. A RFC from TikiWiki is at <http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=RFCWiki>. Finally, MeatBallWiki has a page on this at <http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiMarkupStandard>. Angela.

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participants (10)

Angela
Brion Vibber
Christof Damian
Erik Moeller
James D. Forrester
Jeremy Dunck
Lars Aronsson
Lee Daniel Crocker
Phil Boswell
Tels