On 11/14/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Templates complicate the "is this valid" test. Multiple templates can
contain invalid syntax which when used together form proper syntax.
I don't think there's any question that templates will continue to be
parsed by a preprocessor.
Just like in C, there's really no way to do a one-pass
parse if elements can expand to literally anything.
So where do you place the validation logic? If you validate the
Template pages themselves, they'll fail - so do
you omit Templates
from conformance? If so, what about transcluding pages from other
Namespaces?
I'm not sure where all this discussion about a validator came from. The answer
seems obvious though: don't validate template text, and validate a page
after transcluding and parsing.
The discussion of error messages is a bit misplaced though - the parser
could generate helpful information which the skin could display in a useful
way as a warning to the user. I don't think you'd consider them error
messages though.
Consider this: '''Some bold''' and then ''''
what?
The three apostrophes at the end aren't an error. Nor does the parser really
know what to do with them, so it'll guess (render literally) and warn.
Steve