[wiki-standards] Re: proposed wiki markup standard - font

[Filippo Salustri]

Michael has expressed my thinking better than I was able to.

I also like the notion of establishing a common feature set as a starting 
point.  From that, one can (in principle) plan syntax and other things better.

Cheers.
Fil

Michael Futreal wrote:
> Ward Cunningham wrote:
> 
>     On Jul 15, 2006, at 9:35 AM, Filippo Salustri wrote:
> 
>      > different users would see different syntaxes at the same wiki,
>      > depending on what they prefer and have identified as their
>      > preference. This per-user syntax could even be local to the user's
>      > browser.
> 
>     Although it is possible to have every user speak to the computer a
>     different way, when the differences are superficial, they serve only
>     to isolate users and discourage real space collaboration.
> 
> 
> It seems to me that what Filippo is suggesting is a 2-way parser on the 
> editing side -- something that aspires to be a "universal translator" of 
> wikis.  In such a scheme, content would be stored on the wikiServer in a 
> single "neutral" format, but would get parsed into a particular wiki 
> syntax when it is served to a  editor client (and vice versa).  Given a 
> reasonably rich editing client, users would be able to select from 
> different syntaxes and/or modify their own preferences in a systematic 
> way.   So, when Filippo says "different users would see different 
> syntaxes," I gather he means that different users would see the same 
> wiki text in their individually preferred formats.
> 
> Such a system would be difficult to implement well and requires solving 
> a new set of problems (writing parsers that create wikitax from, say, 
> saved XHTML, instead of just parsing wikitax into XHMTL), but I don't 
> see why it would affect users abilities to share content and 
> collaborate.  You might edit pages in C2 format, but, under Filippo's 
> suggested scheme,  I'd work with the same content in the wikiX format 
> that I favor ... and thanks to the wiki application running on the 
> server, we can still share our documents and participate.   Ward refers 
> to "real space collaboration" being discouraged, though -- I'm not sure 
> what he means with that phrase, though, so I'm not sure if my 
> interpretation of Fil's suggestion has any bearing on that concern.
> 
> Regardless, Filippo's suggestion is an interesting idea that could do 
> with some more brainstorming, even it turns out not to be the favored 
> direction.  To me, it suggests that what we may really need to settle on 
> is a common feature set -- a meta-wikitax, if you will -- instead of a 
> common wiki markup per se.  The downside to such a 'solution' is that it 
> would make our development work more complicated.  Ideally, in order to 
> realize the benefits of such a scheme, everyone's wiki software would 
> need to be able to back-translate into the various splintered wiki 
> formats that users of different stripes prefer.  As Filippo points out, 
> however, it's much more likely such wikitax translation would probably 
> be realized only with respect to some core set of features ( e.g, the 
> 20% of features that 80% use).
> 
> -- 
> Michael Futreal
> http://michael.futreal.com
> 
> 
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-- 
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://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/