[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parsing

[Toby Bartels]

Jan Hidders wrote for the most part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>The question isn't how easy "'''" is to learn.
>>The question is how easy "<b>" is to learn.
>>The answer to that is, it's pretty darned easy;
>>therefore, since people will try it, it should be allowed.

>Just for clarity, I wasn't arguing that simple HTML like <b> is more
>difficult than ''', but just reacting to the suggestion of the reverse.

I do disagree with you there, thinking that ''' is more difficult,
although *only* because more newbies will know <b> to begin with --
they are inherently of pretty much the same complexity
(I see two minor arguments each for relative simplicity).
This is minor, and the difference will probably only lessen with time.

My major disagreement with you in these matters
is your desire to find a nonHTML wiki markup for
every one of the HTML tags that's reasonable to implement,
and your ultimate goal to discontinue HTML support at all.
I argue that the HTML tag itself is the best wiki markup for most of these.
It's just a few situations where we have something better,
or where the HTML is so complicated that we *need* something better.
Then I'm with you; I just wish that this weren't an antiHTML crusade.

>It's
>when people start using <DIV> and complex <TABLE>s and <VAR> and <STRONG>
>when things start becoming harder to understand and edit for the average
>user. Other than that there are also technical reasons such as the
>simplicity of the parser and the control that we would have over the HTML
>that we send to the browsers of the reader.

Well, Lee has just informed me that <strong> and <em> are taken care of;
it was only Phase II that rendered ''' and '' suboptimally as <b> and <i>.
We're discussing <var> on your user subpage, and people are working on <table>.
<div>, even when used on regular web pages, is almost never appropriate,
and I could see disallowing it (but maybe someone else knows why we need it).
So I think that we're closer to agreement than it appears at first;
I don't object to the practical results that you're likely to achieve,
only to the fundamental philosophy that underlies your efforts ^_^.


-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>