Is the new grammar going to allow hard coded HTML such as <div class="someClass">whatever</div>?
If so, then wikitext is bound to remain semantically just HTML shorthand, right? Since the only valid output mechanism is HTML.
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 avoided since the apostrophes in the following should be literal apostrophies:
<span>'''Something </span>'''
-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)
On Dec 11, 2007 4:15 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Ok, you're saying it is an HTML shorthand, but that would change with a proper grammar? Well, I'm putting together a proper grammar, so how should it change? It probably shouldn't change at all for the moment, so we can meet our goal of having a drop in parser that's as close as possible to the current one.
It's just a matter of semantics. At the moment, wikitext is defined in terms of HTML, when you finish your grammar, we can define it in terms of what it should look like instead. A language defined in terms of HTML is just a shorthand for HTML, a language defined in its own terms is a language in its own right.
I'm finding a constant struggle between the goal of matching the current behaviour, and the knowledge that some of the current behaviour happens purely by chance, and no one really designed it.
Yeah... I can see how that would be a struggle. I don't think there's much we can do about it, though...
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