Wikitext standard

(content to be moved from, where relevant) Wikipedia lexer, Wikitext syntax, Wikitax, Wiki markup syntax, Wiki syntax, Wikipedia DTD

A single Wikitext standard is of great importance for the long-term stability of the MediaWiki software. We need to describe and formalize a 1.0 version of the Wikitext language, based on what is used currently. In other words this work should not (for right now) involve incorporating improvements or changes to the Wikitext language.

Metaweb is tracking which mediawiki sites are doing what best - this is quite strategic. Wikipedia won't always be the furthest ahead on an issue, nor should it's needs necessarily always trump others in the mediawiki software design effort.

Tasks

 * 1) Write a formal description of the Wikitext language.
 * 2) Write an efficient Wikitext to HTML converter, to replace the current PHP code.
 * 3) Write a set of unit tests to validate the correctness of a Wikitext to HTML converter.

XML-related tasks

 * 1) Write a Wikitext DTD that can serve as a canonical translation of Wikitext <=> XML, for further processing by XML tools.
 * 2) Write a Wikitext to XML converter.

Discussion
A clear standard can be published and supported by other wikis, like MoinMoinWiki (python-based) and tikiwiki (see sourceforge), which are very popular, and more extensible than mediawiki, which has serious structural problems

Even if mediawiki can keep up with those other packages, text import/export has to be one of our priorities, given the objectives of this project to become a central GNU FDL repository of trusted text for use all over the place.

The Wikimedia activities shouldn't be in any way trapped or tied to MediaWiki, if drastically better software emerges from tikiwiki or the Python world. And it will.

See also: simple ideology of Wikitax, Wikitext DTD, person DTD, ecoregion DTD, spacetime DTD, the first useful map