I agree with all of you. A WYSIWYG editor can not replace Wikitext. In some
cases, wikitext is a programing language like Java and NetBeans can't
program Java for Java programmers.
However, there 2 aspects of using MediaWiki: daily use (users may be novice,
know little of Wikitext, edit simple pages) and template writing
(experienced users write complicated code in templates for others to use).
With the first one, WYSIWYG is a wonderful feature, with the second one,
it's clumsy. So, a WYSIWYG editor should only cover some features of
wikitext like: simple page representation, reference, template inclusion,
extension call, page preview, categories, inter-wiki and leave others like:
parser functions, magic variables, noinclude, includeonly, parameters...
Through this mailing-list, I see that we are struggling with Wikitext, which
is a time-consuming work. What I suggest is, instead of wasting more time,
we can change to XML, which is clearer, easy to parse, easy to understand
and easy to extend.
2008/2/19, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>:
On 18/02/2008, Daniel Kinzler <daniel(a)brightbyte.de> wrote:
There is
the obvious issue with backwards compatibility there,
although that can be overcome with work. The other major issue is that
no WYSIWYG system is likely to be as powerful as wikitext, or as quick
and easy to use (for experienced users). WYSIWYG is certainly much
easier for new users, but once you are familiar with wikitext, it is
generally better.
Actually, I don't think these are even the worst problem. The worst
problem
is
that the wysiwyg editor would have to cover the
full range of what
wikitext can
do now
That's what I mean by "no WYSIWYG system is likely to be as powerful
as wikitext".
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