On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 5:54 PM, Chad <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Rob Lanphier <[email protected]> wrote: >> If, for example, we can build some sort of per-revision indicator of >> markup language (sort of similar to mime type) which would let us >> support multiple parsers on the same wiki, then it would be possible >> to build alternate parsers that people could try out on a per-article >> basis (and more importantly, revert if it doesn't pan out). The >> thousands of MediaWiki installs could try out different syntax >> options, and maybe a clear winner would emerge. > > Or you end up supporting 5 different parsers that people like > for slightly different reasons :)
Yup, that would definitely be a strong possibility without a disciplined approach. However, done correctly, killing off fringe parsers on a particular wiki would be fairly easy to do. Just because the underlying wiki engine allows for 5 different parsers, doesn't mean a particular wiki would need to allow the creation of new pages or new revisions using any of the 5. If we build the tools that allow admins some ability to constrain the choices, it doesn't have to get too out of hand on a particular wiki. If we were to go down this development path, we'd need to commit ahead of time to be pretty stingy about what we bless as a "supported" parser, and brutal about killing off support for outdated parsers. Rob _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
