My term for any lite-markup approach to ASCII/Plain Text to add some structure/style.
argh, shouldn't really use ASCII in name since it could be UTF. But UTF makes my head hurt, esp in terms of URI creation.
http://dev.tikiwiki.org/Why+Wiki+Syntax+is+Important
Possible contexts:
comments in programming Source Code (both for reading within the programming editor, and for extraction into a pretty browser)
writing/reading EMail
authoring within Content Management System, or any FreeText TextArea in any WebApp (e.g. Sales Force Automation, CRM), and maybe even in Rich Client text fields.
writing notes in a non-"standard" environment (e.g. on a PDA)
Examples:
TextIle (orig and Mark Pilgrim's PyThon clone )
WikiText - see http://collab.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiText
I wish a standard (Wiki Standards) would converge on this, so you could learn one set of conventions for all areas. see WikiMarkupStandard.
also see Textwiki translator code - does it work? http://ciaweb.net/free/textwiki.php
counter-argument: The WikiSyntax is the User Interface, it is not the data encoding.
Why do this at all, vs a GUI (HTML) editor?
in some contexts this wouldn't make sense (e.g. in programming Source Code)
in some environments it might not be available (e.g. on a PDA).
"fancier" standards tend to change - you could just update your SmartAscii renderer to re-generate HTML v2, HTML v4, XHTML, XML, PDF, etc.
for public/risky sites taking user text, avoids SecurIty risks around XSS, plus avoids ugliness from users not closing tags properly. (Note that some SmartAscii variants allow HTML to be included, which destroys this benefit.)
Some areas to compare:
- tags for inline styles (e.g. bold, italic)
- can you nest them (have an italic sentence with a bold word in the middle)?
- bullet points, ordered lists, etc.
- sections/headers
- hrefs
image URLs turned into 'img' tags?
- support for tables? (for tabular data, not fancy layout)
- escaping style tags
also allow HTML in the document? Mix within the same line?
what about HTML form tags?
things can get extra messy when you want to render WikiWord cases within such a document.
evaluating alternatives
Aug'2007: considering choice to use with RoBaccia
currently using PikiPiki, not fan of the lots-of-single-quotes model
Structured Text: already in my WikiLog
- annoyed by italics getting broken by pasted-in non-low-ascii chars (like curly quotes) - but that may be code issue, not spec issue
- don't like single-quote breaking italics, since pasted-in text often uses them
- don't like single-square-brackets having meaning, since they are often used as normal punctuation
sublists need 2 spaces per level
- ugh, the hyperlinks syntax is horrible, having to move them to a separate line
I'd still consider it if there was an existing converter for Structured Text, but I haven't seen one.
Wiki Creole: not supported much yet
Oct'2009 update: it has more support now (e.g. in PinAx/Django Wikiapp, and MoinMoin), so looking at it
- not bad in general
- hmm can't have double-linebreaks between sublist items (though seem to be ok between level-1 bullets)
TextIle: poor performance
MarkDown: blech I hate the syntax
Fall'2009: Cloning Zwiki With Moinmoin - used MoinMoin tag style, with some modifications.
Oct'2012: z2012-10-25-FutureOfMarkdown