On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 13:07 +0000, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
I'm sure others have alot of nice ideas on how to
change the syntax to
be more consistent and/or easier to parse, which of course brings us
to the next problem:
3. We can't (easily) change it
It sucks but we really can't, in would instantly render gigabytes of
current wikitext incompatable with the parser, there are basically two
solutions to this problem: continue supporting two syntaxes for some
time which puts a big limit on what kind of changes can be made or
automatically convert them with some kind of bot bot.
I don't realy see that as a big problem at all. If we change the
syntax, yes, we'll have to lock the databases, making everything
read-only while an update process goes through all those gigabytes.
But we really can do that overnight, only inconveniencing users a
little.
A slightly bigger problem is bots that expect the old syntax.
We'll have to give plenty of warning and make sure they're turned
off or updated prior to the switch.
--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>