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

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

> "We're going to need a real markup syntax, consistent, predictable,
> documented, bug free, and with all the features needed..."
>
> But we MUST NOT violate the sacred principle of Not Invented Here,
> which strictly forbids the use of the markup language that has real
> markup syntax, consistent, predictable, documented, bug free, and
> with all the features needed ... HTML.
>
> </sarcasm>

I thought I made it pretty clear that I had a lot of respect for
that viewpoint, and I don't intend to make up new sytaxes for
everything; indeed, I plan to eliminate a few of the current
extras we have, adopt CSS in its entirety unmodified for stylesheets,
and only use wiki syntax for those parts of HTML that are
simply broken or don't work for the wiki.  I'm sorry, but tables
are hopelessly complex for new users, as are tags with attributes,
HTML tags for style, and some other things.

Little things like "(br)" and "(i)" will remain wiki syntax (but
simplified: "(i onClick='deleteDatabase()')" will NOT be legal
wiki styntax!), and character entity refs with "&" will not change.

I think it's quite possible to make a wiki syntax that does
everything I mention above, and be simpler, smaller, and easier
to use for both experts and novices.  I really think it can be
done, but it will take some hard work and making a few hard
choices.