WikiWorld

[adam hyde <adam AT flossmanuals.net>]

> >
> > ah...thats an easy one...use wysiwyg and copy and paste the html ;)
> 
> Yes, it is one of the very possible solutions. However, I am thinking
> almost the whole day about this (I got the similar, but not the same
> responses elsewhere, too) and something is missing... When I find what
> is that, I'll say it here, of course :)
> 
> BTW, the other important way of thinking is that XML will be that
> "copy-paste" markup medium. However, something is still missing...


Well...I hope this is the right place for this conversation as I find
its interesting. If this shoudl eb held off-list please let me know as I
am new to this list...

I think there is nothing missing :D

There was a discussion at Wikimania about this very topic as Creole were
presenting their ideas and the Apache Foundation people put their hands
up and asked 'do we need wml anymore?' Its a good point. WML is pretty
much, as I understand it, a legacy issue. Its been included in wikis
since (literally) day one and hasn't been seriously re-evaluated on
mass. 

When comes down to it though WML was invented because people couldnt
write html. it was a tactic to 'lower the threshold' for new
contributers. However now we have very sophisticated WYSIWYG and its
hard to see how WML could be considered simpler to use than WYSIWYG.
Just about everyone is used to the icons used in word processors for
bolding, underlining etc which are all in good WYSIWYG editors. So a
transition from a software based word processor to one in a browser is
trivial. Learning mark up, however is not trivial - and its not
universal as Creole points out (whereas most WYSIWYG operations are).

I have heard some comments on the TWiki irc that WYSIWYG deters
contributions which is interesting but I haven't heard that argument
elaborated. I'd be interested in any thoughts about it.

So if content is created in WYSIWYG and kept in html then i think we
have a perfect toolkit. HTML is easy to copy and paste not just between
wikis that store their content in html, but there are _so_ many tools
for working with html - for parsing/converting into other formats etc

I'm not sure what is missing from this picture. Some might argue XML is
the way, but I personally doubt it. What namespaces will be used for
example? I can't imagine getting the same conformity to XML as you would
for HTML.

so...if anyone can tell me where the hole in my plan is please do. it
could be i am missing something fundamental, but I can't see it at the
moment.

adam








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adam hyde
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