On Thu, 8 May 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I wonder if we shouldn't contact the developers of
other open source
wiki software, and convene a by-email "mini summit meeting" about wiki
syntax, and try to formalize a standard that they and we can all
follow.
We've deviated, with good cause and good results, from the traditional
CamelCase method, but there's a lot of syntax that wikis share, but
lots of little idiosyncracies that should probably be ironed out.
The problem is, that when there would be a standard, those that have
something different would have to change. Few will have a problem with
adding some extra Wiki-syntax (like the \\ for a linebreak someone else
proposed in this thread), but when existing syntax has to be deprecated,
it means that lots of pages have to be changed, possibly causing errors,
users suddenly have to change their habits, etcetera. I think that many
developers will have an "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" attitude to
that.
To give an example of the 'little idiosyncracies' Jimmy is talking
about: In Wikipedia, one links to another title than the text of the
link with [[link|title]]. In Sensei's Library (the only other Wiki of
this kind that I frequent) it is [title|link]. Very similar, using the
same ideas, and yet totally non-compliant with each other.
Andre Engels