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This page (revision-19) was last changed on 26-Sep-2007 09:06 by ChuckSmith  

This page was created on 02-Feb-2007 02:39 by 62.252.32.15

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At line 74 added 12 lines
While I agree with the sentiment stated in the title of this page, I also feel it's a red herring. I don't hear anybody honestly concerned about the amount of CPU time required to parse Wiki markup. It's going to be negligible in any case, although of course it's always possible to bloat that by having layers of interpreted languages, etc.
I have two concerns that I feel "make the machine work harder" tends to sweep under the rug. Both affect usability directly.
First, complex rules can be **mysterious** and **confusing.** To use one current example, if a space is sometimes required after an asterisk to make a bullet, but other times not, that increases the chance that the user will get the unexpected behavior, and be confused. The gain from having simple rules, easily expressible (in the scope of this community) by things like regexes, is not to reduce the CPU time required for parsing, but to reduce user confusion.
Second, I think we need to work to make Creole as **consistent** as possible across wikis. That helps avoid breakage of markup as text is cut and pasted from one wiki to another, but, perhaps more importantly, avoids users having to carry around arcane rules about what works in one wiki but not another.
I realize that the goal of consistency is in conflict with ExtensibleByOmission (in the extreme, a demand for perfect consistency means that extension is impossible), but I think it's possible to keep both in mind and balance the two. I think it's realistic, and desirable, to expect that all "bread-and-butter" markup is consistent between Creole implementations. Low-probability corner cases such as improperly nested styling markup, as well as things that obviously //look// like extensions (cf. [[Crossmark]] macros) concern me quite a bit less. But, to carry the example further, if one wiki treats a line reading "*bullet" as a list item, and another does not, we guarantee misformatting when moving either text or users betweeen wikis.
-- [[Raph Levien]], 2007-02-08
Version Date Modified Size Author Changes ... Change note
19 26-Sep-2007 09:06 13.708 kB ChuckSmith to previous restore
18 26-Sep-2007 01:02 13.721 kB 219.138.204.162 to previous | to last
17 24-Jul-2007 05:54 13.708 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last The -> They
16 22-Feb-2007 02:47 13.707 kB JimGettman to previous | to last
15 22-Feb-2007 02:39 13.659 kB JimGettman to previous | to last
14 20-Feb-2007 16:32 12.405 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last link to ambiguities
13 08-Feb-2007 21:51 12.113 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last rantitty rantitty rant :)
12 08-Feb-2007 20:36 9.411 kB RaphLevien to previous | to last be clear, be consistent
11 08-Feb-2007 00:24 7.383 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last welcome Jim Gettman
10 07-Feb-2007 19:59 6.238 kB SteffenSchramm to previous | to last
9 07-Feb-2007 15:49 5.565 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last use cases?
8 07-Feb-2007 15:32 5.167 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last spinning in cyrcles
7 07-Feb-2007 15:15 4.958 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last no chances with worst case
6 07-Feb-2007 15:10 4.763 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last not all people learn like this
5 07-Feb-2007 13:24 4.641 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last small correction
4 07-Feb-2007 11:00 4.626 kB 150.254.78.35 to previous | to last make less work hard for more
3 07-Feb-2007 10:01 2.683 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last how people learn
2 06-Feb-2007 22:42 2.142 kB SteffenSchramm to previous | to last
1 02-Feb-2007 02:39 0.296 kB 62.252.32.15 to last I agree
« This page (revision-19) was last changed on 26-Sep-2007 09:06 by ChuckSmith