Editing API Versus Markup Standardisation? The Latter Gets My Vote

Dave asks: should there be “Editing APIs for Wikis?“.

Wikis have been “invented”, to use that word, to make it possible for anyone to edit a Wiki page inside the browser. In a Wiki, content is more important than fancy layouts. Wiki editors thus prescribe a simple markup system for things like ‘bold’ and ‘italic’ lettering, bullet lists, etc. Creole, the attempt to unify dozens of markups, has never been a success. When going from one Wiki to another you may need to adapt your markup automatisms. These markup languages are rather similar, so in practice adaptation from one to another isn’t too hard.

Would it be nice to have a WYSIWYG editor in your Wiki? For some people, the answer is yes. They will indeed be more comfortable with an editor that resembles the editor they use for writing books or letters. But many Wikis allow you to change the editor used for editing Wiki pages. At work, I have activated the FCKEditor (aka. CKEditor) in JSPWiki, and currently our users can still choose the editing style they prefer.

All/most Wikis store the user’s content in their own markup format, not in HTML. The MyWord Editor that Dave Winer has built works differently, if I’m not mistaken: it is a WYSIWYG layer for HTML editing. It should not be too hard to convert the HTML from a simple HTML editor to whatever markup the Wiki uses. But even for a single editor that would require a convertor for multiple Wiki markup dialects.

Yet another Wiki editor: Eclipse/Mylyn and Textile

In the end, the real question is: what would be the added value of such an API?

The purpose of a Wiki is to capture information and not layout. That is why the built-in editors are relatively simple. For hard-core Wiki authors, an HTML textbox plus knowledge of the local markup language will be enough. Occasional authors will have to make do with the built-in MOLWYSIWYG (More Or Less WYSIWYG) editor. I suspect most occasional wiki authors won’t be authoring texts in more than one Wikis, so they will deal with a single variant only.

Would a common API be a good idea? Of course! But such an API would already exist if it served a greater purpose beyond the technical promise of plug-and-play editors.

If you ask me, Wiki’s would be better served with a common markup language like Creole or Markdown or ReST, rather than an editor API. If you think otherwise, then just build such an API. I’ll be happy to write about it!

PS. For a comparison between Creole, Markdown and ReST, check out “Why Markdown Is Not My Favourite Language“…

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