On 9/25/09 3:39 PM, Roan Kattouw wrote: > 2009/9/25 Platonides<[email protected]>: >> Those descriptions will have to be edited by the same user base that >> edit all other pages. Even if they are power users, it's not easy to >> write correct XML on the wiki textarea. We would need to create an >> editor for the language being created so a template editor can be made. >> > Since the XML file describes the template, it need only be changed > when the template is changed. Realistically, newbie editors don't edit > templates; anyone skilled enough to edit templates can handle some > simple XML. > >> I advocate for a simpler syntax for form definition (but we shouldn't on >> the way reinvent wikitext). >> > Exactly. XML is a decent choice here because it has a well-defined, > pre-existing grammar with parsers already available, which means it's > easy to parse and easy to learn (assuming you've got some shred of a > technical background; see my earlier point about newbies not editing > templates).
My preference is that we shouldn't actually expose the template definition markup at all during the normal course of events, even when changing a template. The field metadata can be fairly straightforwardly displayed and edited through a nice web interface. XML as such is simply a conveniently well-defined structured data tree format which can be used both for storing the field metadata in the DB and exposing it to the template invocation editor interface (whether client-side JS or server-side PHP or a custom bot-based tool speaking to our API). Of course if template creators *want* to dive into the raw field metadata definition as humans, we do love to expose such things to power power users for them to play with. :) -- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
