Proposal:A MediaWiki Parser in C

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The status of this proposal is:
Request for Discussion / Sign-Ups

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Summary

A MediaWiki Parser in C

Proposal

The mission of WMF is to spread the free knowledge; in order to increase the potential usage of data from Wikipedia, it is fundamentally to write a separate and portable parser for wiki-text.

It should be official and standardized.

Motivation

A standard, portable parser will enable lots of applications of Wikipedia data. The potential usage of the parser might be:

• To replace the original MediaWiki PHP parser with faster performance and smaller memory usage
• Various note-taking tools which can render wiki-text directly and exchange wiki-text from desktop to Wikimedia servers via API.(See Proposal:Wikimedia editor)
• Store and show Wikipedia data in a USB disk.
• Enable convertion between formats: Not only wikitext to HTML, but also PDF generating, LaTex generating...
• Offline Wikipedia

Approaches

Two approaches are there to implement the parser:

• A brand new parser in C
• Compile the PHP parser into C

Key Questions

• The complexity of wiki-text syntax
• Syntax-extending mechanism to meet various requirements

References

• Proposal:Offline Wikipedia
• Proposal:Wikimedia editor
• MediaWiki Markup Spec (draft)
• mw:Alternative parsers

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:A MediaWiki Parser in C.

How about using LIME instead?

Want to work on this proposal?

1. Vibhijain 10:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
2. .. Sign your name here!