sstream of consciousness

Having used a lot of different software tools for a long time, I know how important data exchange is. As Wikis become increasingly important collaboration and knowledge management tools, the need of having standard wiki syntax and interchange format will be more and more acute.

The problem is that different wikis cannot agree neither on wiki markup language, nor on common storage format. Some people believe that there should be no standard Wiki syntax at all

There is little consistency across WikiEngines for a variety of reasons. One, there should be no standard syntax. The WikiSyntax is the UserInterface, it is not the data encoding. This point gets lost on many people (e.g. the TikiWiki RFC for standard syntax), but wikis aren't really a medium unto themselves. They are more like pure expressions of CyberText. To get away from philosophy, many wikis have to change their local syntax to fit their local users' needs, such as adding LatexInWiki or conforming to pre-existing documentation markup or pre-existing text formatting conventions in that community. This is as it should be. By now, given the proliferation of syntaxes, it should be clear that it is not reasonable to standardize the syntax.

I agree that decoupling of wiki syntax from interchange format is extremely important. However I do not agree that syntax should not be standard. Granted, some specific Wiki uses may require special syntactic extensions, but syntax base must be the same for all Wikis. I use three or four different wiki engines on a daily basis and every now and then I find myself typing "!!" instead of "==" for headers, or word between quotes when I should really put it between asterisks. This is irritating to say the least. Besides, user interface standartization is even more important than standard things behind the scenes. While we can perform a lot of different transformations on user-invisible parts, we cannot do the same for UI. The truth is, users hate even slightest difference in the interface, that drives them mad. Every good programmer should think about users first and only after that about his or her own convenience. Just put Windows-only user before the Linux desktop and watch...

While common wiki syntax is really really nice to have, common interchange format is an absolute "must have". Open wiki interchange standard will help to avoid vendor lock-in and simplify data retention One would easily transfer wiki data from one application to another, just because new wiki engine has more features or old one is not supported anymore.

Many people recognize the importance of standard wiki syntax and standard wiki interchange format. Take, for example, TikiWiki standartization effort or wiki markup standard and wiki interchange formatpages at Meatball wiki.

I favour the idea of microformats. Microformat is a lightweight format based on XHTML. Folks behind microformats discuss non-XHTML wiki format, but in fact they are talking about standard wiki syntax, not wiki interchange format. In my opinion XHTML would be very good choice of interchange format - at the end of the day all wiki texts are translated into HTML or XHTML.

And I would really like to see standard interchange format developed for blogs too. That would simplify transition to other blogging systems, even to newer versions of the same blogging system.

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