Re: [xwiki-devs] [VOTE] XWiki 2.0 formal syntax definition - Bold & Link

Hi, I think I've finished enough in the new rendering implementation so that we should now start defining formally the new XWiki 2.0 syntax. However before we do that let me highlight one important limitation due to the underlying frameworks we use (wikimodel in this case): Wikimodel is using a JavaCC grammar and thus is not able to do look ahead and backtracking (ANTLR can do it, but even if JavaCC could do it it would still be too expensive to use). This means that wikimodel is not able to support the following example: This is a * that is not a bold. When wikimodel sees one of XWiki's special char (like the star for bold) it'll put everything that comes after as bold, till it find another star or till the end of the document.

There are 2 solutions out of this: * We don't allow users to enter non-escaped star for example. * Or better we change our syntax for bold so that it uses a 2 chars. For example **. It's less likely people will use 2 stars in their content and this is the reason most wikis use 2 chars. This is also consistent with our other syntaxes for underline, strikethrough, italics, etc. Note that this is also inline with the creole syntax: http://www.wikicreole.org/ The same problem exists for links. We're currently using single brackets which means people cannot use brackets in their text. I'd also propose to use double brackets for links as in: [[This is a link]]. Again this is consistent with the rest. There are several other topics to address but let's start with Bold and Link syntaxes right now. Once we agree on them, I'll do the following: * Create a XWiki 2.0 syntax page on xwiki.org and put Bold and Linkj syntax there * Send change requests to wikimodel for the changes we decide * Adapt the new rendering module code * Send other emails for remaining syntax elements To summarize the vote here is about: * Using ** for bold in the new XWiki 2.0 syntax * Using [[ for links in the new XWiki 2.0 syntax