Thomas Dalton wrote:
Why is the parser outputting something other than what
the user
wants ever desirable?
You're talking about some very different things when you use the
word "user" here. The current parser (PHP regexp) is used both
when an editor saves an article and when a reader browses an
article (unless it was still in the cache). Producing an error
message for a reader isn't meaningful. Some editors only fix a
single spelling error and are not interested in learning about
syntax errors in other parts of the article. Any kind of error
message must be opt-in, that is what "lint" was to old C
programmers, or what "-Wall -pedantic" (activate all warning
messages) is to the GCC compiler. This could be useful, though,
which suggests the parser should be able to run in different
modes: Just-show-it mode and lint mode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lint_(software)
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se