On 2/21/08, David Gerard <dgerard@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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