Re: Pre-Proposal: Text_Wiki

On Friday, July 18, 2003 1:17, Paul M Jones wrote: > Hi, all, > Nicolas Hoizey wrote: >> > I'd like to propose Text_Wiki, a package that [...] allows you >> > to define different source markup rulesets for Wiki text, converts >> > that source to an internal standard, then sends the converted source >> > to an output engine that renders into any number of target formats. >> >> I think you should divide this in several parts: >> >> - one main package that deals with the "internal standard" (which will >> be?) >> >> - other more specific packages that deal with transformation from >> another >> "language" to this standard and/or the other way > That is exactly the plan, although I will say that I do not intend to > address XMLish source markups at the start -- I think that is more the > domain of XML parsers, not structured text parsers. > However, I do intend to include at least one XML render class (well, > XHTML) so that Wiki-source can become XHTML. There is no reason that > Wiki sources could not also be rendered into, say, DocBook XML, if > someone writes the appropriate render class. (In fact, this is one of > my driving reasons for Text_Wiki: easy writing of simple documentation > that can be translated to many formats. If doc-writing is trivial, > maybe we'll write more of them; they are sorely, desperately needed for > most projects.) > To reiterate: the plan is to have one Text_Wiki "master" class handle > the transformation interface in general, with a set of interchangeable > "source/parse" and "output/render" container classes with rulesets for > the specific transformations. > The "parse" classes parse text conforming to a source ruleset (e.g., > Tavi-style wiki, PHPWiki, SPIP, StructuredText, etc) into a Text_Wiki > meta-standard (an array of meta-keys indicating "bold starts/ends > here", "this is a header", "don't process this", etc., with the > associated text). > The "render" classes take the meta-standard markup and convert it to > some output format (e.g., XHTML or RTF). The general process is very > similar to the way the Config class does now with reading different > config file formats. > Good news: Scott Moonen, the originator of Tavi, has given his > > approval to the Text_Wiki project, so all the preconditions for > development are in place. I'll post preliminary code and examples when > I have some, and ask for more input at that time. Hell, I'll ask for > more input now: does anybody think this is not a reasonable or workable > plan? > Finally: can I get some preliminary votes on the package name > "Text_Wiki"? Or is this not the proper time? I'm +1 for this package, allthough I would wait to commit it when the develop gets consistent. If it could parse (or have room for) other wiki implementations would be nice too. -- Tomas V.V.Cox mailto:cox@idecnet.com