On 2/20/08, Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de wrote:
LOT harder (especially wrt extensions) than getting the wikitext parser done. IMHO it's like this: getting 90% is easy with both, a formal grammar, and a wysiwyg editor (based on XML or whatever). Getting the last 10% into the prmal gramamer is HARD. Getting the last 10% right in a visual editor is pretty much impossible, even if you don't need "template designed" ability - the features used in "normal" articles are bad enough.
What's hard about the grammar exactly? It's been pretty slow, mostly because of difficulties with ANTLR, but I don't think there are any more major difficulties in the wikitext grammar exactly. Most of the issues I've raised on this list seem like they're big ("zomg is that asterisk a list or a literal!") but they're ambiguous in precious few actual real examples.
Time to take this grammar and do something with it.
Steve