On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 5:54 PM, Chad
<innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Rob Lanphier
<robla(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
If, for
example, we can build some sort of per-revision indicator of
markup language (sort of similar to mime type) which would let us
support multiple parsers on the same wiki, then it would be possible
to build alternate parsers that people could try out on a per-article
basis (and more importantly, revert if it doesn't pan out). The
thousands of MediaWiki installs could try out different syntax
options, and maybe a clear winner would emerge.
Or you end up supporting 5 different parsers that people like
for slightly different reasons :)
Yup, that would definitely be a strong possibility without a
disciplined approach. However, done correctly, killing off fringe
parsers on a particular wiki would be fairly easy to do. Just because
the underlying wiki engine allows for 5 different parsers, doesn't
mean a particular wiki would need to allow the creation of new pages
or new revisions using any of the 5. If we build the tools that allow
admins some ability to constrain the choices, it doesn't have to get
too out of hand on a particular wiki.
If we were to go down this development path, we'd need to commit ahead
of time to be pretty stingy about what we bless as a "supported"
parser, and brutal about killing off support for outdated parsers.
Rob
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l