Development model for wiki syntax parser?
Apologies for originally posting this in the wrong forum (features/usability):
I realise I am new here, so although I have looked around a little for an answer in vain, this question might have been asked before:
What is the development model for the wiki syntax parser?
What I mean is, what is the consensus/decision-making pattern for making changes to the wiki syntax?
Each change has of course the risk of breaking pages on existing sites — and is of course breaking Rule#3...
While I find the concept of plugins as a way of optional extension very good, I do find there is some very basic stuff that should be considered for inclusion in basic wiki syntax.
Three examples come to mind:
- Text alignment. Right now we can do default alignment and centering. Why not opposite alignment (that's right alignment for English), left alignment, right alignment and justified alignment? This seems inconsistent.
- Linking to anchors within wiki pages. (Tiki)Wiki is inherently about linking, so it seems odd that such a basic feature of HTML is not integrated into basic wiki syntax.
- Table syntax can produce only very rudimentary tables, with hardly any support for column alignment or merging.
Now, I realise that these features are provided by (probably several) plugins, but the extensive syntax for plugins makes wiki less usable for novices, due to the many brackets in the wiki source text. And these features just seem SO basic (to me, at least).
I haven't followed the historical development of TikiWiki wiki syntax, so I cannot tell what the Right Thing To Do is, and it has also been mentioned that someone is developing a new version of the parser. But if I was to suggest extensions to the wiki parser for the first three issues above, I could think of
-
- :o:...text...:/o: for opposite alignment
- :r:...text...:/r: for right alignment
- :l:...text...:/l: for left alignment
- :j:...text...:/j: for justified alignment
- ( (WikiPageName#AnchorName) ) for links, and o+)(AnchorName) starting at the first column for anchors
- Someone (I forget who) suggested doing table cell alignment according to whether the source text had spaces after the first bar (right alignment), before the last bar (left alignment), both (centered alignment) or none (justified alignment). At least on the face of it, this seems smart.
— Arne