Sumana,
the regular
; bla : blub
is actually not the issue. More problematic are for example:
;; bla :: blub
*; bla : blub
or even the simple
;; bla
Right now the behavior is quite inconsistent: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:GWicke/Definitionlists
The bug discussing this is https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6569
Treating '; bla : blub' as a tightly-bound special-case construct seems to me the simplest way to make this area more consistent while avoiding very ugly syntax. This would mean that
*; bla : blub
is treated as equivalent to *; bla *: blub
and ;; bla :: blub
is equivalent to ;; bla ;: :blub
What are your preferences on this? Is any of these cases commonly used today?
Gabriel