On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Platonides <[email protected]> wrote:
> Brian wrote: > > This round the Usability Initiative got 800,000 dollars. That's a load of > > money. If the Foundation decides that it wants to fix the problem the > > correct way then it can. And it can start at any time! We just need to > agree > > on a solution. > > > > We can't fix the problem by looking backwards at the wikitext that has > > already been produced along with the language definition (5,000 lines of > > parser code) and saying that the problem is simply intractable. In fact, > the > > problem does not depend in any way on the quantity of wikitext that has > been > > produced - it only depends on an understanding (if not a definition) of > the > > language as it currently exists. Hard work but not, at all, impossible. > > > ... > > > > * wikitext parsing would be much faster if the language was well defined > and > > we could use flex/bison/etc... > > Have you read the archives? > It has been tried. Several times. > There's even a mailing list for that. > > Getting a formal definition of ~90% of the wikitext syntax is easy. The > other 10% drived nuts everyone trying to do it hard enough, so far. > > Keep trying, but build over what's already done. > > Platonides, if you had read the archives you would know that I am very familiar with previous work done on creating formal grammars for wikitext, and that I know it would take a redesign of certain parts of the language. Of course, this information is embedded in the very text you quote. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
