[xwiki-devs] [Discussion] Designing the new Rendering/Parsing component/API

[Fabio Mancinelli]

On Sep 11, 2007, at 1:46 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:
>
>     1. Have a WikiSyntax Object (A simple class with one property: a
> combox box with different syntaxes: XWiki Legacy, Creole, MediaWiki,
> Confluence, JSPWiki, etc) that users can attach to pages to tell the
> Renderers what syntax is used. If no such object is attached then
> it'll default to XWiki's default syntax (XWiki Legacy or Creole for
> example).
>     2. Have some special syntax, independent of the wiki syntaxes to
> tell the Rendered that such block of content should be rendered with
> that given syntax. Again there would be a default.
>

Regarding multiple syntaxes... Is it really a requirement to support  
them?
I think that adding this feature could lead to confusion.

For example, imagine an XWiki-Pedia as sketched in 1. A contributor  
could potentially need to edit
3 documents written in 3 different syntaxes.

Solution 2. is even worse because it pushes this heterogeneity down  
to the document level.

An alternative solution could be to have a model for the page that is  
"presented" in different syntaxes when the page is edited. In this  
way a document can be edited in whatever syntax the user feels  
comfortable with. However this raises several issues... A model that  
is the LCM of all the supported syntaxes is fine, but what happens  
when an element in the model is requested to be presented in a syntax  
that doesn't support it?

The best option, probably, is to keep it simple by having and  
supporting only a single syntax for editing pages, with some "import"  
plugins that can translate a previously existing content to that  
syntax when a new page is created.

Sorry if this was an already discussed topic or if I missed some  
relevant detail :)

Cheers,
Fabio