RE: [Yaml-core] YAML spec as YAML, preview

[Oren Ben-K. <or...@be...>]

Steve Howell wrote:
> Most Wikis have fairly small pages, but in MoinMoin you can 
> get in-page links when you make a table of contents:
> 
> http://wiki.yaml.org/yamlwiki/YamlTestingSuite
> 
> Edit the page to see the [[TableOfContents]] macro.

My ISP has some DNS problems so I can't access yaml.org right now. AFAIK
from reading about Wiki the TableOfContents macro doesn't quite provide
the functionality I require. I did find in MoinMoin the simple trick of
writing [#anchor description] which is almost half the challenge - there
was no way I could find to define an anchor (sort of writing the
explicit HTML). Then again, this may be enough for the spec needs
because all anchors would be generated automatically anyway (from
production and section names).

> > - Wiki seems to have several variants... Is there such a thing as
"the 
> > Wiki format" or is always "someone's Wiki format"? If the latter,
I'd 
> > feel much less guilty about "polluting" it with "@" and "^".
> 
> I'd just roll your own Wiki format.

It seems this is the common practice... Wiki is quite an anarchistic
format. I like that :-) However, people don't always bother to document
the variant they implemented (I'm determinedly ignoring Brian shouting
"people talk!" in the background :-)

> MoinMoin seems to be the standard in the Python community, and UseMod
is
> a popular Perl flavor, but I'd use both for inspiration, not
limitation.

Good advice. MoinMoin automatically numbers headers...

> The only Wiki format that could even remotedly be considered the one
true
> format is C2, but it has annoyances like requiring tabs for lists.

Ugh. Been there, done that, never again :-)

> Wikis are small pieces of code to begin with, and since you don't need
any
> of the CGI stuff for the spec project, you're only really building a
> translation engine.  Since you'd have to customize it to work with
YAML,
> it may be easiest to just build a really tiny engine from scratch. 
> UseMod and MoinMoin are both open source, so you can scavenge from
them.  

I'll do that.

> A lot of HTML formatting is YAGNI.  I found Michael's example to be
very
> readable.  Great job, Michael.

+1.

Have fun,

	Oren Ben-Kiki