[Wikipedia-l] Transitioning toward a clean wiki syntax.

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

>> How about this:
>> 
>> [http://www...] renders (a href="http://www...")[1](/a)
>> with autonumbering, [http://www...|text] renders (a
>> href="http://www...")text(/a) (the pipe can optionally
>> be a space), and [http://www...|] (note trailing pipe)
>> expands to [http://www...|www...] ?

> Why not just render
> http://www... as www... ? I've done that for my own wikis
> and it looks very nice, also for mailto:'s etc.

If we just keep adding and adding more wiki syntax on top of
the old, we'll end up with an incomprehensible mess and code
that's impossible to debug.  We're going to have to simplify
the markup before we extend it, and interpreting URLs outside
of brackets is the most egregious problem in my opinion--it's
an exception to the other forms of markup, it causes the
punctuation problem, and it causes real coding headaches (like
the bug of URLs with contained URLs, for example).

For a small, limited-purpose wiki, a limited feature set is fine
and it doesn't matter if the markup language--which doesn't need
to have a lot of features--is a bit awkward.  But we've outgrown
that.  We're going to need a real markup syntax, consistent,
predictable, documented, bug free, and with all the features
needed for a complete general-purpose encycopedia.

Far better we should go through the pain of adjustment that will
entail now, than later after we've got even more people to confuse.