On 12/12/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
Is the new grammar going to allow hard coded HTML such as <div class="someClass">whatever</div>?
The "new grammar" is, in theory, merely a codification of the "old grammar". So, yes. Any deviations from what is currently allowed are kept to a minimum, and usually only occur in unused syntax.
If so, then wikitext is bound to remain semantically just HTML shorthand, right? Since the only valid output mechanism is HTML.
Hmmm. That's true, but it would be easy to excise the raw HTML aspect if we wanted to get away from it being bound to HTML. Also, since the "hard coded HTML" acceptable is well defined, it would theoretically be possible for a parser to actually interpret that HTML and do something else with it. Like converting <b>bold</b> to an actual interpretation of bold.
Or, is the new grammar going to take HTML tags as input and turn them into part of the abstract syntax tree? I can't see how that would be
I think it's best if the AST is closely bound to the original code, warts and all. That means we can cache the tree, for example. In my current grammar, ''' converts to a B node in the AST, while <b> will convert to something else, like HTML_TAG or something.
avoided since the apostrophes in the following should be literal apostrophies:
<span>'''Something </span>'''
"Should"? Currently it renders as bold.
Steve