[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parsing

[Daniel Mayer]

On Monday 29 July 2002 01:58 am, you wrote:
> I would not hesitate here. If you have two notations for the same thing
> people who want to write have to know them both because they are going to
> encounter them and therefore have to know what they mean and if they are
> the same or not. Having one notation is simpler for everybody.
>
> -- Jan Hidders

I agree -- we should eventually move away from duplication and just have wiki 
markup in cases where we now have both that do the /exact/ same thing 
(although I don't change <b> to ''' whenever I see them like some people do). 
I would also like to see an ultra easy and human readable and intuitive wiki 
table markup enacted for Wikipedia (maybe the software can automatically 
convert HTML to exact wiki equivalents when a page is saved... Then new 
contributors with an HTML background can start off running.). . 

The trouble with raw HTML is that human eye skips over HTML tags since they 
add visual complexity and confussion to text. I have less sympathy for HTML 
hackers who have to learn a simple new markup than for the non-HTML coding 
majority of contributors who are intimidated by HTML and are unable to 
effectively read heavily HTML tagged text (myself included -- even though I 
am responsible for a number of HTML tables in wikipedia).

Wiki is dead easy to learn -- HTML coders of all people will quickly adapt. 
But all this is really not nearly as important as clearing the bug list.

Here is a link to the wiki table feature request:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=584459&group_id=34373&atid=411195

--mav