[Foundation-l] EBNF of Wikitext

[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

Virgil Ierubino wrote:
[fixed URL]
> I'm working on writing out an EBNF description of Wikitext at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_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.
> 

If you can find an EBNF description of HTML, it would be a good place to
start; in my experience, MediaWiki's Wikitext syntax is (mostly)
directly translatable to HTML (eg. links turn into anchors, bullets turn
into list items).

> 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?
> 

It /might/ be useful if you wanted to import/export between different
wiki engines that use different syntax - IIRC the MediaWiki syntax is
(fairly) similar to that of UseModWiki (Phase 1), but vastly different
to that of eg. DocuWiki. However, I wouldn't rate it very high on the
priority list.

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