I just ran a quick serialize to see what the timing was like in comparison to a parse - in case we decide to convert HTML into an intermediary format that would translate into whatever other format we want to use. I think the two seconds that it takes to serialize wouldn't be greatly affected by an extra step in the serializer process, and I think the benefits of having a general solution for converting between formats would be greatly useful.

Reg. 1. the DOM post processor cannot run before the DOM is built, it requires information that is available only after the DOM is fully built.

We're chatting on IRC currently, and I think the rough consensus is something like..."HTML should be the common format, and the rest can deal with it." This makes some amount of sense, though it does mean that, temporarily at least, we'll have to deal with parsing WT to HTML before going to other formats. Since anything beyond that is relatively fast, in terms of performance, we can live with that issue for now.

So Molly, we'll throw out the insane charts and maps we've drawn up (which really just consists of one chalk scribble at Harvard) and see what HTML can offer as an intermediary format - to that end, I guess gwicke's suggestion of pandoc is a good place to start.

molly.white5 wrote:

Alright, that sounds fine as long as you're not concerned with the speed. I'm not familiar with pandoc, but I'll read up on it. I'm curious to see how they perform wikitext <-> LaTeX and HTML <-> LaTeX.

Have you discussed whether or not we'll want to be able to roundtrip wikitext and LaTeX?

I think we could call that "of dubious usefulness", but you're the one who's going to have to implement it, so I probably shouldn't dictate anything. In any case I think LaTeX and HTML have a much closer 1:1 ratio than WT and HTML, so it should be much easier to add in, even if it winds up being an afterthought.

And as ever, we're in IRC if you'd like any help or guidance :)

molly.white5 wrote:

I agree that LaTeX to wikitext would not be terribly useful. I wonder if the community would benefit from having some other formats be two-way, though. I'm sure there are people out there who would rather write their articles using Markdown... Then again, if we're trying to make the switch to the VisualEditor anyway, the ability to write articles in Markdown would be of only temporary value.

I agree. If we wind up supporting Markdown, it will be because we've found a way to do HTML <--> Markdown, or at least one direction or t'other. Converting to HTML is simple enough, at least.

molly.white5 wrote:

From my brief look at pandoc, it appears that it can do it. As always, it's roundtripping that's the issue.

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