WikiMarkupStandard

Every single wiki engine, and often even different sites using the same engine, use different TextFormattingRules. This is about making a “standard” for this, so that they can all use the same markup.

There have been many attempts at creating WikiMarkupStandard:

• MeatBall:WikiMarkupStandard, MeatBall:WikiSyntax, MeatBall:WikiCoreAstStandard, MeatBall:SillyTextFormattingRules
• TikiWiki RFC
• Mediawiki syntax reform
• WikiCreole

Possibilities

One to rule them all

This would involve creating a detailed specification that would cover every and all relatively common aspect of wiki markup. Then all the wiki engines would have to implement, and all the wiki sites convert to using it. This is fairy impossible to do.

Implementation

The WikiCreole markup has a number of converters and plugins for various engines, but it’s still not widely used on many wikis.

Problems

Different wikis have different needs, and require different markup to easily cover them.

Different wiki engine developers and admins have different tastes in what is “good markup”.

Inventing new markup (and a parser for it) is one of the fun parts of creating a wiki engine.

See also

• WikiCreole:ExternalDiscussion – Some resources on the standardization attempts.
• MeatBall:WikiMarkupStandardIsMisguided – criticism
• MeatBall:WikiMarkupStandardWorkingGroup – one of attempts
• MeatBall:WikiSyntax – analysis of existing syntax
• MeatBall:WikiTextMimeType, CommunityWiki:WikiMime

CategoryEditing, CategoryInterWiki