[Foundation-l] EBNF of Wikitext

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
What the f* is an EBNF .. It does not help that you URL is wrong. Being 
clever (ahum) I found Extended Backus–Naur form.. A question, do you 
really think that an average Wiki editor will NOT get hopelessly 
confused and get it hopelessly wrong as well?

Personally I find it horribly ugly as well

Thanks,
GerardM

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax


Virgil Ierubino schreef:
> I'm working on writing out an EBNF description of Wikitext at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wikiWikitext_Metasyntax , which I hear is much
> needed, but have encountered a snag. I don't think EBNF has the power to
> describe Wikitext. If anyone here can work out how EBNF can describe
> Wikitext's system for bullet points, I'd like to see it. The problem is that
> bullet points can build on each other, except each new level has to retain
> the markup from the old level, plus a new symbol. e.g. **#* then **#* * then
> **#** * then **#*** # etc.
>
> On the topic of "things that need to be done" if writing an EBNF of Wikitext
> isn't going to be beneficial for MediaWiki's longstanding success, I'll not
> bother, but is there anything that needs to be done like this to create a
> standard?
>
> Please forward to any other mailing lists in which this might be
> appropriate. Thanks!