On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie <cdhowie(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 12:59 PM, David Gerard
<dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah. Download the wikitext and do stuff with it.
Of course, this
> would presently require embedded PHP in the browser to implement the
> present parser ...
If there is a context-free grammar definition of the
MediaWiki syntax
somewhere, it can easily be used to generate parsers in basically any
existing language.
I said that in answer to Steve because he's the one working on the
latest shot at such a thing ;-)
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/ANTLR
The present situation is that wikitext syntax is *literally* defined
as "whatever the parser does." This is, of course, far less than ideal
for all sorts of reasons. There's been several attempts to remedy this
- because a properly-specified grammar will make all sorts of
interesting applications possible without having to either
reverse-engineer the present parser or just embed PHP - but all so far
have failed. Let's see how this one goes ...
- d.