Hello Conrad,
- Implement an AMS-TeX validator
How different would this be from the current validator?
It should be exactly the same, except written in Python.
- Repackage the entire Math thing as an extension
I might do this if I have time left at the end. I'm sure the project will change over the summer.
This would be very amazing.
Maybe this should be my project, then.
Python doesn't have parsing just locked right down the way C does with flex/bison, but there are some good options, I have the most experience with it, and I think I'd be able to complete the port faster in Python than in either of the other languages. I was tempted at first to port to PHP, to conform with the rest of Mediawiki, but there don't seem to be any good parsing packages for PHP. (Please tell me if that's wrong.)
A good PHP parser library would be exceptionally useful for MediaWiki (and many extensions), at the moment we have loads of methods that do regex "parsing", so if you felt like writing one... :D.
Actually...
I've never used PHP for real programming, but how difficult would it be to write a really simple, stupid first pass at a DFA parser? I suspect I'd need much more than three months to make it useful, but would it be possible to implement some coherent subset of the features? E.g., building the LR0 automaton, at least?
I'd appreciate any advice or criticism. Since my only previous experience has been using Wikipedia and setting up a test Mediawiki instance for my ACM chapter, I'm only just now learning my way around the code base and it's not always evident why things were done as they are. Does this look like a reasonable and worthwhile project?
Step 5. has been a "we really should do this" for a while, the shipping of OCaml code which many users won't be able to use is very messy. I am less convinced of the utility of a Python port, OCaml is a great language for implementing this, and I fear a lot of your time would be wasted trying to make the Python similarly nice. As you note, MediaWiki is not written in Python, doing this in PHP would be a larger step in the right direction, though without such nice frameworks, maybe less nice to do.
I suggested a Python port because http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2010#MediaWiki_core lists it as a potential project idea. I was under the impression that people around here did not want to leave texvc in OCaml. Is this wrong?
Yours, Damon Wang