[Wikitext-l] New parser ponderings

[Magnus Manske]

Inspired by Brion's slides (couldn't make it to Haifa myself), some
random questions and musings:

- Is there a definition / "complete" example of the JSON output of the
new parser somewhere? I didn't see it on the parser pages...

- Will there be multiple "resolutions" of parsing? One would be
template name and key-value-pair parameters, another would be the
template replaced with the corresponding wikitext, another one the
template replaced with the corresponding wikitext parsed into JSON.
Either all-in-one large JSON object, or one of those "on demand"?
Also, extension tag/attributes/contents, rendered extension output,
WikiSource transclusions etc.

- One of the functions I have issues with in WYSIFTW is copy&paste.
Besides making it work in the new editor, would it be worth to add
special behaviour for (cut|copy)/paste between articles? Like,
automatically adding the source article link to the edit description,
so the source of text can be traced, even if it's just manually?

- Toolserver access to full wiki text is a pain. Once the new parser
is live (even if it's "only" in parallel with the old one), could we
have new, fast access capability for both raw wikitext and parser JSON
output on the toolserver? I mean that in addition to API parser
output, which I take as a given here :-)

- Will there be a JSON-in-XML dump besides the current wikitext-in-XML one?

- Will there be an interface for to the parser for JavaScript tools
/outside/ edit mode? I'm thinking "Add a reference", "insert image"
etc. Just getting a char-based WikiText position from a mouse click
would be very helpful indeed, so the user can click where he wants the
reference in the rendered HTML, and JS can insert it at the
corresponding WikiText position.

- A point discussed endlessly before: As a "side effect" of the new
parser, will we store page-template-passed_value triplets in the
database? Think {{Information}} on Commons.

- Will there be an import page or JS function for parser JSON objects?
Think Word/OpenOffice export, or "paste HTML" (with JS HTML-to-JSON
converter).


That should keep us busy for a while... ;-)

Magnus