[Wikipedia-l] A vision for wiki syntax, documented

Wed May 14 19:12:30 UTC 2003

Here's the URL:

<http://www.piclab.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Wikipedia_Text_Syntax>

A few points to note:

While the document may seem complex because it attempts to be
rigorously specified, the final syntax is actually simpler than
what we have now. For one thing, ALL HTML is forbidden; the things
we use it for now can be replaced by the major new features: table
syntax and styles. Half the document describes how we deal with
lists, which we are already doing, but which is hard to specify.

Styles, in particular, hide a lot of complexity. With a good
toolbox of style classes in the standard stylesheet, users can do
a lot of things by simply calling them by name without having to
know how they work. This document does not specify how particular
stylesheets get attached to particular documents--that too is an
implementation detail the user shouldn't have to deal with.

Another simplification is that link syntax is unified: they all
use "[[...]]" now, whether external or internal, and all use "|".

I came to agree with those who said that users would expect
quote marks for italic and bold to span input lines, so I allowed
that, and close them only at the end of paragraphs.

I'm not married to the blockquote thing--it's just a trial
baloon, but I think it would be useful.

Note that math equations are now integrated, rather than being
an add-on; this is so that styles can be applied to them as well.
Also, the "$$" syntax seemed more consistent with the rest of
the syntax, and will be familiar to TeXies.

So as I said, this is a vision. I invite comment and criticism.
But I think it's important to Wikipedia's future that we do a
good job of this.

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC