[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 8:51 PM, stevertigo<stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Contenteditable - nice. "Good WYSIWIG?" Gmail?  Lots of AJAX isn't
> really a good thing, is it?

Gmail does not use AJAX for its WYSIWYG editor, as far as I know.  And
yes, its WYSIWYG editor works fine (although I normally type mail in
plain text).

> Parseability requires context. Context requires metadata. In our case
> "metadata," for lots and lots of information, would mean something
> like semantic web? Metadata in current wikitext jargon means "stuff
> stuck somewhere at the bottom."

What are you talking about?  Given some wikitext, you need to be able
to convert it to HTML, that's all, and convert changes the user makes
back to wikitext.  "Context" and "metadata" have nothing to do with
it.  The problem is wikisyntax is far too complicated to process
effectively and correctly in JavaScript, or in any implementation
other than Parser.php, without an inordinate amount of effort.  If we
used HTML, then we have instant native support in JavaScript for all
browsers.