----- Original Message ----- > From: "Neil Harris" <[email protected]>
> I think it cannot be emphasized enough that what's valuable about > Wikipedia and other similar wikis is the hard-won _content_, not the > software used to write and display it at any given, which is merely a > means to that end. > > Fashions in programming languages and data formats come and go, but > the person-centuries of writing effort already embodied in Mediawiki's > wikitext format needs to have a much longer lifespan: having a > well-defined syntax for its current wikitext format will allow the > content itself to continue to be maintained for the long term, beyond > the restrictions of its current software or encoding format. The project of creating a formal specification for Mediawikitext was one of the primary reasons for the creation of the (largely dormant) wikitext-l list. I fell off shortly after it was created myself, so I don't know how far along that project got -- except that I know that it was decided that since MWtext was not -- and could not be -- a strict subset of Creole, that Creole was a Pretty Nice Idea... and we had no time for it. For my money, that means the Creole folks lost[1], but what do I know. Cheers, -- jra [1] Which is not incompatible with observations then that MWtext has some really unaccepable boners in itself... _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
