[Mediawiki-l] formatting wikitext inside extensions

[Frazer Irving]

Hi all, sorry if this is the wrong list for this type of question.

I'm playing around with writing my own extension, and I would like it  
to accept wikitext as input and return HTML (as well as some other  
stuff). For example

<extendy>
[[Click me and die]]
</extendy>

Would return an HTML link to the Click_me_and_die page on my wiki.

At the present I am messing around with the docs at

http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/doc/MediaWiki/Parser/Parser.html

and trying to do something like

$output = $parser->transformMsg($input, new ParserOptions())

which is not working, but there could be a illion reasons for that. I  
understand too little about php and mediawiki for me to be confident  
that I am on the right track.

  Basically I have three questions:

1. Is what I'm trying to do supported?
2. Am I looking in completely the wrong place for info of this kind?
3. What is the best source of documentation for simple usages of the  
internal API from within extensions.

Naturally I will welcome and comments or suggestions. FYI: I am a  
competent Perl hacker but PHP is a bit new for me.

Cheers

Frazer