Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Wikitech

Reasoning

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pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 5:50 AM

Post #1 of 18 (73 views)
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Reasoning

You want wiki(pedia) to generate valid HTML pages ?

Then there is only one answer: forbid authors to
write HTML in their articles.
Or at least don't call it 'html', it confuses
everybody (even people on this list), instead,
incorporate those tags into the Wiki-syntax and
define them as Wiki-markup-codes: document them
and ban all other HTML-markup-codes.

Pieter Suurmond

tarquin at planetunreal

Jan 22, 2003, 6:32 AM

Post #2 of 18 (73 views)
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Re: Reasoning [In reply to]

Pieter Suurmond wrote:

>Or at least don't call it 'html', it confuses
>everybody (even people on this list), instead,
>incorporate those tags into the Wiki-syntax and
>define them as Wiki-markup-codes: document them
>and ban all other HTML-markup-codes.
>
>
>
Yup -- stop treating then as HTML to be passed "as is" to the browser --
treat them as wiki tags that must be parsed.
<td>s must be closed
<br> is deprecated
etc

>
>

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 7:09 AM

Post #3 of 18 (72 views)
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Re: <br> [In reply to]

tarquin wrote:
>
> Pieter Suurmond wrote:
>
> >Or at least don't call it 'html', it confuses
> >everybody (even people on this list), instead,
> >incorporate those tags into the Wiki-syntax and
> >define them as Wiki-markup-codes: document them
> >and ban all other HTML-markup-codes.
> >
> >
> >
> Yup -- stop treating then as HTML to be passed "as is" to the browser --
> treat them as wiki tags that must be parsed.
> <td>s must be closed
> <br> is deprecated
> etc
>
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l [at] wikipedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Agree! :-)
However... <td>s don't necessarily have to be closed, it just depends
on how one defines them. They should, indeed, be regarded as 'wiki-tags',
not as 'passable html-tags'.
If <br> is deprecated, what would be the way to generate single line-breaks?
I like them: they provide a way to sub-structure a paragraph, and it does
almost cost nohing: no special character, no special tag...
Why not allow single line-break?

Thanks,
Pieter

taw at users

Jan 22, 2003, 9:36 AM

Post #4 of 18 (73 views)
Permalink

Re: <br> [In reply to]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 03:09:57PM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> Agree! :-)
> However... <td>s don't necessarily have to be closed, it just depends
> on how one defines them.

I know how to fix table markup issue and it is exactly the opposite way.

We should completely forbid </td>, </th> and </tr>.
They are just noise and table is completely unambiguous without them.

This is also completely correct in HTML, but we may automatically
generate closing tags if we want to generate XHTML.

This reduces weight of table markup by almost half.

(Most tables on Polish Wikipedia are already written this way)

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 10:18 AM

Post #5 of 18 (74 views)
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Re: generate closing tags, also in regular HTML [In reply to]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 03:09:57PM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> > Agree! :-)
> > However... <td>s don't necessarily have to be closed, it just depends
> > on how one defines them.
>
> I know how to fix table markup issue and it is exactly the opposite way.
>
> We should completely forbid </td>, </th> and </tr>.
> They are just noise and table is completely unambiguous without them.

Yes, it is maybe possible to forbid </td>, </th> and </tr> in Wiki-source.
But please DO generate them when you generate HTML out of it: although
HTML4.01 does not require end-tags, many browsers still can't do
without them. As it says on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AHow_does_one_edit_a_page :

If your table doesn't look right, make sure that all <tr> and <td> tags
are closed with corresponding </tr> and </td> tags. Do not indent lines,
and do not include empty lines within a table. Otherwise, you will get
spurious space above the table or even a browser crash.

Wiki-server should be able to take care of this, I presume....
(I am an experienced CGI/C/C++ programmer but am not too familiar with
python, perl, php, SQL-quering. etc... I don't know what you system-
administrators all use to keep the wiki-servers up and running.....)

Kind regards (and anyhow, thanks for Wikipedia, I really love it!),
Pieter Suurmond

> This is also completely correct in HTML, but we may automatically
> generate closing tags if we want to generate XHTML.
>
> This reduces weight of table markup by almost half.
>
> (Most tables on Polish Wikipedia are already written this way)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l [at] wikipedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

e.moeller at fokus

Jan 22, 2003, 10:31 AM

Post #6 of 18 (73 views)
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Re: generate closing tags, also in regular HTML [In reply to]

On Mit, 2003-01-22 at 18:18, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> Wiki-server should be able to take care of this, I presume....
> (I am an experienced CGI/C/C++ programmer but am not too familiar with
> python, perl, php, SQL-quering. etc... I don't know what you system-
> administrators all use to keep the wiki-servers up and running.....)

Pieter,

if you know C/C++, PHP should be a breeze to get into. We could really
use experienced developers. Why not give it a try? You can find some
useful info in the growing (still underdeveloped)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hacker
on meta.

BTW, do we want to build a public tasklist on meta where anyone can pick
projects to work on? The SourceForge facilities are seriously underused,
and it seems to me like a wiki is best for that kind of stuff.

Regards,

Erik - always pimpin' for new developers
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 10:48 AM

Post #7 of 18 (72 views)
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Re: (wiki got me hooked now :-) [In reply to]

Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> On Mit, 2003-01-22 at 18:18, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> > Wiki-server should be able to take care of this, I presume....
> > (I am an experienced CGI/C/C++ programmer but am not too familiar with
> > python, perl, php, SQL-quering. etc... I don't know what you system-
> > administrators all use to keep the wiki-servers up and running.....)
>
> Pieter,
>
> if you know C/C++, PHP should be a breeze to get into. We could really
> use experienced developers. Why not give it a try? You can find some
> useful info in the growing (still underdeveloped)
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hacker
> on meta.
>
> BTW, do we want to build a public tasklist on meta where anyone can pick
> projects to work on? The SourceForge facilities are seriously underused,
> and it seems to me like a wiki is best for that kind of stuff.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik - always pimpin' for new developers
> --
> FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
> Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Thanks for your reply Erik. Sounds stimuling, exciting... :-)
I am going to have a look at ''How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hacker''.
As a matter of fact, I think *specifying* wiki-syntax is more
important than *implementing* it. I regard myself not as a
''hacker'' any longer :-)... and I would like to rename that
page to ''How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_developer''.

I also dislike the METAwiki-concept a bit. When a systems fails to
describe itself in its' own terms (a recursive definition thus)
it is not good: all METAwiki-people should come down to regular
wiki in my opinion. I am afraid some people will soon start a
metameta..... (Or am I just a bit 'paranoid'). Let's stop forking,
let's unite!

I've got other weird ideas: Write a complete standalone Wiki-server
in pure C. (not depending on any mySQL, PHP, Apache-webserver, etc.).
Once a proper definition of Wiki-syntax and semantcs cristalizes,
this could be done (I could do it).
I already started to describe wikisyntax with use of (metasyntax)
ISO-EBNF on one of the Dutch pages...
Well, I'll keep in touch, going to read that 'hackers-page' now...
Thanks,
Pieter Suurmond

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 11:11 AM

Post #8 of 18 (72 views)
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Re: antimeta [In reply to]

Wouldn't it be nice if those PHP-scripts
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PHP_script
is talking about became edittable via the normal,
regular Wikipedia-interface itself!?
(Writable by 'staff' only, of course, but at least
readable to any visitor.)

Is this Wikipedia itself running on some kind of
CVS-like system?
(Then many people could use regular CVS-software
to easily edit pages, and also have their copies
('backups at home') synchronised automatically.)

Can I somewhere download a (huge) weekly or monthly
tarball of the complete Wilipedia-contents?
How much would it actually be? 500MB or 40GB ?

Sorry for bothering,
Pieter Suurmond

engels at uni-koblenz

Jan 22, 2003, 11:25 AM

Post #9 of 18 (73 views)
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Re: antimeta [In reply to]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Pieter Suurmond wrote:

> Wouldn't it be nice if those PHP-scripts
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PHP_script
> is talking about became edittable via the normal,
> regular Wikipedia-interface itself!?
> (Writable by 'staff' only, of course, but at least
> readable to any visitor.)

See
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/

Andre Engels

dramatic at xtra

Jan 22, 2003, 1:25 PM

Post #10 of 18 (73 views)
Permalink

Re: <br> [In reply to]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:36:07 +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
<taw=Rn4VEauK+AKRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f [at] public> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 03:09:57PM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
>> Agree! :-)
>> However... <td>s don't necessarily have to be closed, it just depends on
>> how one defines them.
>
> I know how to fix table markup issue and it is exactly the opposite way.
>
> We should completely forbid </td>, </th> and </tr>.
> They are just noise and table is completely unambiguous without them.
Except Netscape 4 which will then refuse to display the page at all if
there is any nesting of tables!

--
Richard Grevers

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 1:27 PM

Post #11 of 18 (72 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: <br> [In reply to]

Richard Grevers wrote:
>
> On Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:36:07 +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
> <taw=Rn4VEauK+AKRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f [at] public> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 03:09:57PM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> >> Agree! :-)
> >> However... <td>s don't necessarily have to be closed, it just depends on
> >> how one defines them.
> >
> > I know how to fix table markup issue and it is exactly the opposite way.
> >
> > We should completely forbid </td>, </th> and </tr>.
> > They are just noise and table is completely unambiguous without them.
> Except Netscape 4 which will then refuse to display the page at all if
> there is any nesting of tables!

And therefore, the html-output generated by the wikiserver should include
terminating -td, -th, and tr-tags automatically.
I think Tomasz Wegrzanowski was talking about wiki-source here and
not about wiki-html-output. These are 2 different things (input and output).
Kind regards,
Pieter

> --
> Richard Grevers
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l [at] wikipedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

vibber at lvl-sun703

Jan 22, 2003, 1:45 PM

Post #12 of 18 (74 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: <br> [In reply to]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> Richard Grevers wrote:
> > On Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:36:07 +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
> > > We should completely forbid </td>, </th> and </tr>.
> > > They are just noise and table is completely unambiguous without them.
> > Except Netscape 4 which will then refuse to display the page at all if
> > there is any nesting of tables!
>
> And therefore, the html-output generated by the wikiserver should include
> terminating -td, -th, and tr-tags automatically.

Our current parser *tries* to do this (insert end tags where they're
missing), but it doesn't do a very good job of it.

Anyone who'd like to rewrite it is more than welcome to do so! Please take
a look at removeHTMLtags() in OutputPage.html. Once you've finished
wiping the tears from your eyes, write up something better. :) If you can
integrate it with the rest of the markup parsing, so much the better.

> I think Tomasz Wegrzanowski was talking about wiki-source here and
> not about wiki-html-output. These are 2 different things (input and output).

As long as we allow use of the HTML tags*, we should take them both with
and without end tags. We should ideally produce valid XHTML from *any*
given input. If the input is broken, we may not produce what the author
intended, but we *must* produce something that will pass a validating
parser.

*(And if we some day decide not to allow them, we should provide
equivalent functionality and, if possible, automatically convert
articles to use the newer system at the time the change is made. If
automatic conversion is not possible, we should make a conscious effort to
fix anything that's broken.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 1:56 PM

Post #13 of 18 (74 views)
Permalink

Re: table suggestion [In reply to]

Hi, here my table-suggestion (in ISO-EBNF):
Wiki-text is compressed as follows (terminating tags are not rejected
but they just dissappear from wiki-source).

input-rules:
"<td>"|"<TD>", blabla, "</td>"|"</TD>", = "<td>", blabla;
"<th>"|"<TH>", blabla, "</th>"|"</TH>", = "<th>", blabla;
"<tr>"|"<TR>", blabla, "</tr>"|"</TR>", = "<tr>", blabla;

At request, the server expands it again as follows:

output-rules:
"<td>", blabla = "<td>", blabla, "<td>";
"<th>", blabla = "<th>", blabla, "<th>";
"<tr>", blabla = "<tr>", blabla, "<tr>";

But please let's use symbols that are different from these html-lookalikes.
I'm quite new here so I don't know which symbols can be used to replace
"<td>", "<th>", "<tr>", and also "<table>" (and </table> ???).

Just thinking out loud.., kind regards,
Pieter Suurmond

taw at users

Jan 22, 2003, 3:50 PM

Post #14 of 18 (73 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: <br> [In reply to]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 12:45:57PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> As long as we allow use of the HTML tags*, we should take them both with
> and without end tags. We should ideally produce valid XHTML from *any*
> given input. If the input is broken, we may not produce what the author
> intended, but we *must* produce something that will pass a validating
> parser.
>
> *(And if we some day decide not to allow them, we should provide
> equivalent functionality and, if possible, automatically convert
> articles to use the newer system at the time the change is made. If
> automatic conversion is not possible, we should make a conscious effort to
> fix anything that's broken.)

XHTML is not completely compatible with HTML, so making XHTML default
may not be very friendly to some browsers.

Does anybody have experience with XHTML websites ?
Are all browsers happy about that ?

taw at users

Jan 22, 2003, 3:56 PM

Post #15 of 18 (72 views)
Permalink

Re: (wiki got me hooked now :-) [In reply to]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 06:48:03PM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> I also dislike the METAwiki-concept a bit. When a systems fails to
> describe itself in its' own terms (a recursive definition thus)
> it is not good: all METAwiki-people should come down to regular
> wiki in my opinion. I am afraid some people will soon start a
> metameta..... (Or am I just a bit 'paranoid'). Let's stop forking,
> let's unite!
>
> I've got other weird ideas: Write a complete standalone Wiki-server
> in pure C. (not depending on any mySQL, PHP, Apache-webserver, etc.).
> Once a proper definition of Wiki-syntax and semantcs cristalizes,
> this could be done (I could do it).
> I already started to describe wikisyntax with use of (metasyntax)
> ISO-EBNF on one of the Dutch pages...
> Well, I'll keep in touch, going to read that 'hackers-page' now...

All in pure C without even using SQL and HTTP server ?
You want to make it slow, not portable, insecure, leak memory,
be hard to maintain and extend and to segfault at random or what ?

It doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

pieter at kmt

Jan 22, 2003, 4:31 PM

Post #16 of 18 (74 views)
Permalink

Re: Integrating WikiWare, PHP, mySQL and Apache == too weird [In reply to]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 06:48:03PM +0100, Pieter Suurmond wrote:
> > I also dislike the METAwiki-concept a bit. When a systems fails to
> > describe itself in its' own terms (a recursive definition thus)
> > it is not good: all METAwiki-people should come down to regular
> > wiki in my opinion. I am afraid some people will soon start a
> > metameta..... (Or am I just a bit 'paranoid'). Let's stop forking,
> > let's unite!
> >
> > I've got other weird ideas: Write a complete standalone Wiki-server
> > in pure C. (not depending on any mySQL, PHP, Apache-webserver, etc.).
> > Once a proper definition of Wiki-syntax and semantcs cristalizes,
> > this could be done (I could do it).
> > I already started to describe wikisyntax with use of (metasyntax)
> > ISO-EBNF on one of the Dutch pages...
> > Well, I'll keep in touch, going to read that 'hackers-page' now...
>
> All in pure C without even using SQL and HTTP server ?

Yes, I like Wiki that much, I'm considering the effort.

> You want to make it slow, not portable, insecure, leak memory,

No, secure, leak-free, indeed hard to maintain and extend (I dislike
maintainance anyway :-) but with possibly more efficient execution.
I think C and C++ are the most portable languages of all, they are
standardised and documented very well, etc. . . I'm just imagining
myself a mini wiki-machine with as less as possible dependancies...
More the design-once/update-never-approach, which is maybe
not appropriate here, all right. Thanks for your opninion, Pieter. :-)

> be hard to maintain and extend and to segfault at random or what ?
>
> It doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l [at] wikipedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

dramatic at xtra

Jan 22, 2003, 7:43 PM

Post #17 of 18 (72 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: <br> [In reply to]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003 23:50:08 +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski
<taw=Rn4VEauK+AKRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f [at] public> wrote:

> XHTML is not completely compatible with HTML, so making XHTML default
> may not be very friendly to some browsers.
>
> Does anybody have experience with XHTML websites ?
> Are all browsers happy about that ?
>
It all depends on the MIME type you serve it with.
See
http://www.tntluoma.com/opera/beyond30/2002/10/confessions_of_a_browser_sniffer.html#000079
for one description of the trouble you can end up in. THis was also
discussed extensively on css-d.

--
Richard Grevers

toby+wikipedia at math

Jan 23, 2003, 7:52 PM

Post #18 of 18 (73 views)
Permalink

Re: table suggestion [In reply to]

Pieter Suurmond wrote in part:

>But please let's use symbols that are different from these html-lookalikes.
>I'm quite new here so I don't know which symbols can be used to replace
>"<td>", "<th>", "<tr>", and also "<table>" (and </table> ???).

I don't see any problems with <table>, which is self explanatory
-- quite unlike <td>, <th> and <tr>!
For several possibilities for new symbols
(some of which make <table> unnecessary too,
some of which don't), see:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_markup_tables

(Not much happening there lately, but you could start it up again.
I for one have it on my watchlist.)

-- Toby

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