Re: [ANN] MyWiki 0.8

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

On 2004-03-30 23:03:05 +0200 Yen-Ju Chen <yjchenx@hotmail.com> wrote:

> > Are there any plans to use that nice plain Wiki syntax instead of XML? I 
> > think, it is also the simple syntax that is making Wiki elegant. Or better: 
> > because we have geat text system ... no formatting syntax at all, just use 
> > plain RTF without user requiiring all those tags. Tags are not needed at 
> > all - only decent 'link' creation. Perhaps just "[this is link]" string 
> > parsing.
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> Hi,
>
> That would be the plan for next major release.
> The use of tags is for portability,
> and RTF format is not easiler to parse than XML from my point of view.
> So the bottom line is that the file will still save as XML.

You do not need to parse RTF, neither to write it! The reason of using special "wiki syntax" is, 
that usualy tou can not write formatted text into a web browser. And web browsers are usual places to host 
wiki systems. Thing is, that with GNUstep application based wiki system, you do not have to force user to use 
any special syntax at all. The user can write rich (formatted) text directly WITHOUT ANY tags. Use font 
panel, font menu entry, text formating commands,... Thw "wikiness" is about linking 
"nodes". Then you just use plain text and have special ways of creating links.

You do not even have to have "edit" button there - there is no reason, just have the text 
editable. Same as before: the "edit button" is there on web pages, because there is 
special syntax for formatting and one wants to view the wiki in a pretty way. Therefore you do not 
have to have two modes (edit/view) in the application. Again, just plain text view.


> But people should be able to make links the same way they mark text with bold 
> font.

Sure! Select a text and use menu action "Create link", and you have a wiki link! :-) Select 
"GNUstep", say "thisi s a link" and you have a link to the local GNUstep wiki page.

> Since the saved file is in XML format,
> the application is not required to extract the information.
> The application just makes it easy to do so.
> The most important thing for me is that I need to extract the information
> even when I have no access to GNUstep or Cocoa.

I see.

> I have some ideas about how to make links as formatting text,
> something like the email address in the Mail.app,
> which is a text attachment but contain not only the text, but other 
> attributes.

See above for the "link" formatting.

> It takes more time to implement and is not essentail for my current usage.

Well, it owuld be much easier to use without any tags. And much easier to 
implement -> no XML parsing :-)

Stefan
--
http://stefan.agentfarms.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win.
- Mahatma Gandhi