Hi all,
I work for Ross Mayfield at Socialtext (and also created Kwiki). Ross asked me to comment on this thread.
I'm new to this list but i read through the thread. I would closely align with Eric's thoughts below and have a few things to add...
Jimmy,
I think a combined approach is the most promising:
- a single XML exchange format
This is the key. The key is to have a standard semantic model, and be able to roundtrip documents in any given syntax through that model.
And it really has nothing to do with XML per se. It just so happens that XML and XML/Schema (or DTD) is a well understood way to define such a model.
You need to have a model before you can seriously think about moving to a WYSIWYG option. The nice thing about plain text is that it is easy to see when the underlying semantics are going south and to refactor. With WYSIWYG the semantics of a document are very much hidden since the WYS part is just the resultant presentation. The WYG part can become a tangled mess. And that means you can't do anything interesting with the page except look at it in your browser.
But once you have a model and you can validate that a page in any syntax (including a WYSIWYG one) fits the standard semantic model (the one we should be defining here) then you are all set. The syntax side becomes nearly irrelevant, since you can flip between any of the compliant dialects without losing any information.
I can imagine a new wave of wikis that allow each user to chose the syntax that they edit documents in. And they can change to any other syntax at anytime. How the data is actually stored is not important.
- multiple wikitext standards based on families of existing wiki
syntaxes sharing the largest similarities.
For example, several wikis use a "UseMod-like" syntax, and it would not be very difficult to standardize within that group. It would be much more difficult to get, say, both PhpWiki and MediaWiki to use a shared syntax. The practical difficulties with switching an entire wiki engine to a new syntax should not be underestimated.
Right.
If any wiki implementors are going to budge in regards to migrating towards a standard syntax, there must be many choices at first. You'll be much more inclined to budge towards something that is close to what you already have.
Think about standarding the natural languages of the world. It will never happen. The best you could hope for is combining similar ones.
Once we have these group standards sorted out, we could try to merge them further.
Right. And if users can select their own interoperable dialect then maybe we'll just see folks migrating towards a best one rather than having it mandated to them by some powers that be...
Cheers, Brian