This thread has gotten WAY off topic - so I wanted to try and help
clarify a few things and then get it back on-topic if at all possible.
* As Roan mentioned, we are planning on implementing a *wiki-text
*editing interface with collapsible blocks for template calls and
tables. We may also get a bonus of basic syntax highlighting, but
that's not a driving feature.
* WYSIWYG is a hope, dream, intention, and long-term-plan of the
Wikimedia Foundation - but it's not going to be a reality until we
can make progress in at least 3 areas (explained below) and
perhaps others as well.
* It's important to understand that wiki-text it'self is not the
enemy of WYSIWYG, these (and perhaps others as well) are...
o *Data corruption: *All current solutions convert wiki-text
to some kind of HTML, edit it as if it were HTML, and then
convert it back, causing disconnection between the original
content and edited content. This in-turn causes diffs to
show changes made by the lossy process for conversion such
as white-space, tables being in short or long notation, and
HTML comments being stripped. More importantly of course, it
changes the wiki-text of the page in ways the user did not
intend to and wipes out important formatting and comments
that people using text editing interfaces (by choice or
because their browser is unsupported) need, want and use.*
*
o *Template abuse: *Template calls do not always result in
whole objects. When expanding a template, the result is
allowed entirely arbitrary. For instance, I've seen
templates that create only the head, a single row, or the
foot for a table. When the user wants to change the table,
they click edit, and not only does the software not have any
way of knowing that these consecutive template calls are
related.*
*
o *Embedded page logic:* Template functions are not visually
representable in any way I've ever seen that would make any
sense to a non-programmer, yet they often have a profound
impact on the content of the page. Nesting a series of if
statements is especially going to be a mess in a GUI.
* This is not to say I have no ideas or plans on how to solve these
issues. We are actively making choices to pave the way for
WYSIWYG, but a topic like this hasn't yet proven to be very useful
in this process. So far I have only seen the same circle of
"Editing wiki-text sucks!" -> "We need WYSIWYG!" -> "WYSIWYG is
broken" -> "It must be wiki-text's fault!" -> "Let's change
wiki-text" -> "But it's so easy to edit!" -> "No it's not! Editing
wiki-text sucks" -> and so on... So, FYI, this is not a new or in
anyway original chain of thought or conversation - it's not bad,
it's just going to be seen as spam to most people on this list.
* The topic is supposed to be on Template Editing which is, at least
in the way it's being proposed, a little less of a stale topic -
so where is all the energy on that front? We have an XML format to
design and complex problems to sort out. Help is really needed.
Let's all take a look at the link provided at the beginning of
this thread http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_forms
- Trevor
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