[Wikipedia-l] What a wiki table syntax needs to do to work with current table layouts

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

> Here goes:
> [br=1,cs=0,al=r,cp=2||
> [al=c,bc=pink|                         ''Owls'''                   
|]
> [al=c| Northern spotted owl |]
> [al=c,bc=pink| '''[[Scientific classification]]''' |]
> [|
> [al=c||
> [| [[Kingdom (biology)|Kingdom]]: || [[Animalia]] |]
> [| [[Phylum]]: || [[Chordata]] |]

...

> [| a simple table || with two columns |]
> [| and two        || rows             |]


The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that CSS is the way
to go.  It's not even a browser issue, really: browsers that can't
handle CSS probably can't handle the things it's being used for 
anyway,
and by definition they lose no content, only style, so I think that's 
fine.
Your table syntax is nice if we really need nested tables, so adding 
my
style syntax (which requires relaxing the "start of line" requirement 
a
bit to skip over style tags that precede elements), we get:

{species}
{pink}[| '''Owls''' |]
{cent}[| Northern spotted owl |]
{pink}[| '''[[Scientific classification]]''' |]
[|
[| [[Kingdom (biology}|Kingdom]]:   ||  [[Animalia]]   |]
[[ [[Phylum]]:                      ||  [[Chordata]]   |]

...

|]

And hopefully, the stylesheet that defines {species}, {pink} and 
{cent}
can be re-used by all the articles on different species, and different
specialized stylesheets can be produced for things like elements if
needed.  And exactly the same syntax is used for images, lists, 
headers,
and everything else.

{right}[[image:spottedowl.jpg]]

{nobullets}* Item
* Item
* {red Item}

{smaller}== Major heading ==

{roman}# Item
# Item

{quote
Long excerpt from book, indented and italicized...
}

...etc...

Of course, weaning wiki away from HTML will require a gentle 
transition.