Hi, Jim and Jay. Thanks for your reply.

> Considering how much time and creative energy has been spent
> on trying to create the one-true-parser, I wonder whether it would
> be easier to simply port the existing Parser to other languages
> directly (regular expressions and all).  I bet it would be.

I had ported part of the existing parser into Java years ago.
I still remembered the hard time, it is hard to understand the existing code,
and the result regexp-based parser is buggy.

I think at least two things are needed:

* an abstract description of what the parser do. the rules should be clear.
and it should be independent with the language implemented.
maybe regexp based, or context-free grammar plus something more,
or something totally different.

* a test suit. I know we already have one in svn.
and this test suit is independent with the programming language.
that is a good start.

On the other hand, I see other endeavor to standardize wiki markup outside the WikiMedia community.
I mean wikiCreole in WikiSym2006 and WikiModel from sourceforge.
After taking a quick look, I just want to know what make wikiCreole different?
Is it an endeavor to standardize wiki markup, or it is simply just another wiki markup?


On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:40 AM, Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 07:37:15PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> The other use case is a 100% (once the really stupidly unnecessary
> emergent effects are ignored) provably correct reimplementation in
> another language, e.g. an optional C-based parser, a Java parser,
> etc., etc.

If a parser could be created that was close enough to 100% that Brion
and Tim were happy with it... in C... I suspect it might go on line
pretty quickly.

Speed's an issue when you serve as many pages as we do...

Cheers,
-- jr 'where, by "we", I mean...' a
--
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra@baylink.com
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