On 2/21/08, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1. Wikitext is literally defined as
"whatever the present software
does." This is bad.
- unless whatever the present software does is wrong.
2. There have been several attempts to write a
grammar. The latest one
is looking promising for completeness (though ANTLR is slow and
buggy).
- If I said that, I think I was wrong. ANTLRworks is slow and buggy. I
think ANTLR itself is probably ok, particularly once the grammar
itself is stabilised. It would be good to have something to benchmark
against though - does mediawiki report how long it takes to *parse* a
page?
3. A replacement grammar can be used for
third-party implementations
(WYSIWYG, XML, etc) with perfect fidelity.
Right.
4. Any replacement grammar will only replace the
present
implementation if it (a) covers present behaviour sufficiently (b) is
fast enough.
Grammars don't replace parsers. Parsers replace parsers. There's a big
gap between what I've done so far (write a grammar) and what is needed
(write a parser and XHTML generator).
Current status of ANTLR-based parser: somewhere
between promising
vapourware and unreleased early alpha.
If you mean "parser" then definitely vapourware. If you mean
"grammar"
then, yes, early alpha.
Steve
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If you're about to complete Wikitext grammar, so I have nothing to say any
more. I just worried that we use too much of time in completing it. However
I'll still build my own implementation of MW use XML. Hope people will enjoy
it.