On 02/12/2012 12:34 PM, Pavel Tkachenko wrote:
On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 15:20:41 +0100, Mihaly Heder hedermisi@gmail.com
If wikitext is going to be replaced the new language should be designed on an abstract level first.
This is correct but if we're talking about a universal DOM that could represent all potential syntax and has space for extensions (nodes of the new type can be safely added in future) then new markup can be discussed in general terms before the DOM itself.
HTML DOM provides a lot of extension mechanisms, but that should not really be needed if all you want to do is to provide a different text-based user interface (syntax) to edit the same data.
If you would however like to change or extend the data model itself, then these extension mechanisms will become more important. I am quite optimistic that HTML DOM as a tree with attributes can support a wide range of new features. If you have an example of a useful data model extension that does not fit into HTML DOM, then I would be very interested in hearing about it.
Gabriel