[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parsing

[Toby Bartels]

Jan Hidders wrote:

>Steve Callaway wrote:

>>nevertheless. HTML is //much// simpler.

>That is simply not true. One of the reasons that the WikiWiki mark-up was
>invented is exactly because HTML didn't work well and was seen as
>unecessarily difficult.

I don't see how you can establish this in any objective manner.
Even a survey would only shows that most people feel that one as simpler,
which is not at all the same thing as one's actually *being* simpler.
Myself, I think that <h6> is simpler than ======,
because it's simpler to read the "6" than to count the "="s.
But == is simpler than <h2>, because I don't have to count the "="s there.
We can do psychological testing to determine when simplicity switches,
but other people will switch it at slightly different times.
Best all around to allow both methods.

You know, this is like allowing both American and Commonwealth spellings.
I find it difficult to remember to write "analyze" or "spelt",
but it's easy as pie to learn to read them.
Similarly, if Steve has trouble writing ===, he can still read it,
and if you have trouble writing <h3>, then you can still read that too.
It's just that here the reading is occuring on the edit page
rather than in the text of the article directly.


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