On 05/03/2011 07:45 PM, Ryan Lane wrote: > It's slightly more difficult, but it definitely isn't any easier. The > point here is that only having one implementation of the parser, which > can change at any time, which also defines the spec (and I use the > word spec here really loosely), is something that inhibits the ability > to share knowledge.
I was thinking whether it would be possible to have two-tier parsing? Define what is valid wikitext, express it in BNF, write a parser in C and use it as a PHP extension. If the parser encounters invalid wikitext, enter the quirks mode AKA the current PHP parser. I assume that >90% of wikis' contents would be valid wikitext, and so the speedup should be significant. And if someone needs to reuse the content outside of Wikipedia, they can use >90% of the content very easily, and the rest not harder than right now. The only disadvantage that I see is that every addition to wikitext would have to be implemented in both parsers. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
