[wiki-standards] Some thoughts on WSR-3

[Filippo Salustri]

I'm not sure how to add this to wiki.wikisym.org, so I'm sending it out 
on the list.

WSR-3 is about wiki interchange format.

I would like to suggest such a WIF would be extremely valuable, and 
could be more important than "just" as an interchange mechanism.

It seems to me that every wiki shorthand is designed for the benefit of 
the content provider.  It's a human-centred syntax, and *not* 
necessarily the way to save things to disk.

I envision a wiki engine that uses WIF as its file format, and 
translates it into shorthand only on (edit) requests by the user.  Thus 
the engine could support different wiki shorthands simultaneously (one 
could use a plugin mechanism to allow new wiki shorthands to be 
downloaded as needed).  Users could choose their favourite from a 
variety of shorthands.

I also envision a small, efficient library, suitably ported to the main 
platforms and major languages in which wikis are written, that parses 
the WIF format and provides appropriate API to let wiki implementers 
worry about other things.

...am I making sense?

Cheers.
Fil
-- 
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: salustri at ryerson.ca
http://deed.ryerson.ca/~fil/