I've retooled the 'Parser Playground' gadget as an extension, which lets us
more easily edit it & keep a master copy up to date. The gadget on
mediawiki.org now loads the JS files from the extension, from a SVN checkout
on toolserver -- handy that! :)
The updated gadget integrates a little better into the WikiEditor toolbar
system, though it's still young and primitive. There's also now a primitive
in-place editing mode when using the PegParser: you can click on any
selectable node in either the preview or inspector panes and get a dialog
box with the reconstructed source of just the piece you clicked on.
When done editing, click OK and it re-parses and drops it back into the
updated document. Spiffy eh? After a while this'll get replaced with the
fancier editing surface systems that Trevor & Inez are working on, but this
gives something to poke in the meantime. ;)
Features, next todo steps, and screenshots on the extension's page:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ParserPlayground
Primary next steps will be getting some round-tripping test helpers in
there, making it a little easier to plug a third or customized parser in,
and getting automated tests running from command-line (probably using
node.js). And of course actually expanding templates will start making
things interesting. ;)
The actual PEG grammar and the intermediate structure still need a lot more
serious work to go beyond these demo stages, but at the moment I'm more
actively looking at fleshing out the API between the parser/renderer and its
host environment.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com / brion @
wikimedia.org)