Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:04:25 UTC
Please, make Wiki to honor BBCodes as well.
First, as far as I know, there is no standard syntax for "BBCodes" (unless this name is used in particular by one particular piece of software) any more than there is a standard wiki syntax. As such, how would we know which variant to implement? (My understanding is that "BBCode" just means "HTML-like but using [] instead of <> to show that it's not, in fact, HTML) Second, altering the parser to "honor" a completely different class of syntax, some of which probably overlaps with existing syntax, would be a lot of work. Making it some kind of either/or system would currently be more-or-less impossible, since the "parser" in the MediaWiki code is very tightly tied up with everything else, and complicated enough as it is. And what of features that don't exist on any bulletin board; should we invent "BBCode style" alternatives to our existing, perfectly good, syntax? The only advantage to having BBCode available to use is that it might be easier to learn for people already familiar with it; but any syntax has to be learned once, so why not just learn the one that MediaWiki already has (it'll let you edit all the thousands of pages of existing content written in it, after all!)? I really don't think the effort involved in making this work with the current code is in any way proportional to the gain from doing so. Now, if I was to write a piece of software from scratch, the idea of having multiple alternative, interchangeable, syntaxes (wiki-style of one or more varieties, HTML-style, BB-style, etc) would be an interesting one to explore, but that's not the position we're in.
Sure it is you right just refuse proposed enhancement. But you provide reasons are irrelevant. The reason for proposition is to have ability copy-paste content from forum to Wiki and vice versa. It will allow to automate it in future. That will open new opportunities for Wiki in future. Second. If you dictate The User what should (s)he do and what shouldn't, you definitely loose competition. I don't want to say my user, that (s)he should learn extra "language". About syntax. I don't think that Wiki syntax is something more than Type I language according Chomsky. If so, the parser is nothing else but simple State-Action table. If it is not Type I, that means the parser is a little bit more complicated. In any case adding new syntax is nothing more than changing couple tables. If your parser is not organized the regular way... Bad for you. Take Computer Science course. About HTML and BBCode. If they are so similar, why do you say it is so difficult to implement changes. I don't see any logic. Wiki honors HTML subset, so go ahead and adjust the HTML module. Unfortunately it is not true. Such standard BBCode tag as Quote does not have an HTML pal. Again. It is your right just to say: "I don't want to do it". Just don't try to derogate opponent.
We would not find this useful or desirable.
(In reply to comment #2) > The reason for proposition is to have ability copy-paste content from forum to > Wiki and vice versa. It will allow to automate it in future. That will open new > opportunities for Wiki in future. An interesting idea. Perhaps a better approach to this problem would be to have a tool which could *convert* from "BBCode" to MediaWiki markup; this could be completely external to MediaWiki, and would probably be more sane than my "if I was starting from scratch, I'd make things flexible" musing. Your mention of "[quote]" not having an HTML equivalent reminds me that it also doesn't have an equivalent in MediaWiki markup, but some creative use of {{templates}} could probably allow you to "emulate" such gaps fairly easily. > Second. If you dictate The User what should (s)he do and what shouldn't, you > definitely loose competition. I don't want to say my user, that (s)he should > learn extra "language". But if, rather than making a conversion tool, we make a *mixture* of syntaxes available *in the same wiki*, then the users of that wiki will essentially have to learn *multiple* "languages" in order to edit each other's contributions. That seems like rather a bad move to me, so the only way forward would seem to be conversion, perhaps via some neutral "interchange" format, even if this happened transparently such that users could appear to be editting in their favourite markup language (although the thought of providing users with support in that case makes me shudder). > If your parser is not organized the regular way... Bad for you. > Take Computer Science course. Sadly for us, the "parser" is in fact a hideous tangle of regexes, loops, and special cases. There have been attempts to create alternative, saner, parsers for the same markup, but so far we haven't got as far as plugging them into the main code. Consequently, changing it *isn't* easy. That's not because we (or, rather, they - I wouldn't call myself anything like a core developer) haven't taken Computer Science courses but more, I suspect, because the code (and the syntax) has evolved complexity over time, and a formal parser didn't seem essential when the code was first written. > About HTML and BBCode. If they are so similar, why do you say it is so difficult > to implement changes. I don't see any logic. Wiki honors HTML subset, so go > ahead and adjust the HTML module. Unfortunately it is not true. Such standard > BBCode tag as Quote does not have an HTML pal. Well, the HTML subset is allowed simply by whitelisting it and letting it through unprocessed, but to be clear I wasn't suggesting that BBCode and HTML were directly equivalent. I was merely stating my - possibly erroneous - understanding that there is no standard for BBCode, only a general "style" of markup, which consists of [tag]...[/tag] pairs, conceptually similar to SGML/HTML/XML's <tag>...</tag> pairs. > Again. It is your right just to say: "I don't want to do it". Just don't try to > derogate opponent. I'm sorry if my response came across as overly confrontational; it wasn't really intended that way. Like I say, I actually rather *like* the idea of interchange between various markup formats, but knowing the MediaWiki code as well as I do, I know that it's just not realistic to talk of incorporating such interchange into that code in its current state.
OK, no problem Respectfully, Henry
