1 _NB! this page has been refactored, hopefully it is clearer now_
2 _I propose putting discussion posts somewhere in the vincity of
3 the secttion Individual reStructuredText Issues_
9 To be able to use rst as a first-class markup language in ikiwiki. I think
10 most believe this is almost impossible (ikiwiki is built around markdown).
14 **WikiLinks**, first and foremost, are needed for a wiki. rST already allows
15 specifying absolue and relative URL links, and relative links can be used to
16 tie together wiki of rst documents.
18 1. Below are links to a small, working implementation for resolving
19 undefined rST references using ikiwiki's mechanism. This is **Proposal 1**
22 2. Looking over at rST-using systems such as trac and MoinMoin; I think it
23 would be wiser to implement wikilinks by the `:role:` mechanism, together
24 with allowing a custom URL scheme to point to wiki links. This is
27 This is a simple wiki page, with :wiki:`WikiLinks` and other_ links
29 .. _other: wiki:wikilink
31 We can get rid of the role part as well for WikiLinks::
33 .. default-role:: wiki
35 Enables `WikiLinks` but does not impact references such as ``other``
36 This can be made the default for ikiwiki.
38 Benefits of using a `:role:` and a `wiki: page/subpage` URL scheme are
41 1. rST documents taken out of the context (the wiki) will not fail as bad as
42 if they have lots of Proposal-1 links: They look just the same as valid
43 references, and you have to edit them all.
44 In contrast, should the `:wiki:` role disappear, one line is enough
45 to redefined it and silence all the warnings for the document:
47 .. role:: wiki (title)
49 ### Implementation ###
51 Implementation of Proposal-2 wikilinks are in the branch
52 [rst-wikilinks][rst-wl]
55 This is a simple wiki page, with :wiki:`WikiLinks` and |named| links
57 .. |named| wiki:: Some Page
59 We can get rid of the role part as well for WikiLinks::
61 .. default-role:: wiki
63 Enables `WikiLinks` but does not impact references such as ``named``
64 This can be made the default for ikiwiki.
66 [rst-wl]: http://github.com/engla/ikiwiki/commits/rst-wikilinks
68 On top of **rst-wikilinks** is [rst-customize][rst-custom] which adds two
69 power user features: Global (python) file to read in custom directives
70 (unsafe), and a wikifile as "header" file for all parsed .rst files (safe,
71 but disruptive since all .rst depend on it). Well, the customizations have
72 to be picked and chosen from this, but at least the global python file can
75 Some rst-custom [examples are here](http://kaizer.se/wiki/rst_examples/)
77 [rst-custom]: http://github.com/engla/ikiwiki/commits/rst-customize
81 Now **Directives**: As it is now, ikiwiki goes though (roughly):
82 filter, preprocess, htmlize, format as major stages of content
83 transformation. rST has major problems to work with any HTML that enters the
86 1. Formatting rST in `htmlize` (as is done now): Raw html can be escaped by
91 \[[!inline and do stuff]]
93 (This can be simplified to alias the above as `.. ikiwiki::`)
94 This escape method works, if ikwiki can be persuaded to maintain the
95 indent when inserting html, so that it stays inside the raw block.
97 2. Formatting rST in `filter` (idea)
98 1. rST does not have to see any HTML (raw not needed)
99 2. rST directives can alias ikiwiki syntax:
101 ..ikiwiki:: inline pages= ...
103 3. Using rST directives as ikiwiki directives can be complicated;
104 but rST directives allow a direct line (after :: on first line),
105 an option list, and a content block.
107 ### Implementation ###
109 Preserving indents in the preprocessor are in branch [pproc-indent][ppi]
111 [ppi]: http://github.com/engla/ikiwiki/commits/pproc-indent
115 I guess you (or someone) has been through this before and knows why it
116 simply won't work. But I hoped there was something original in the above;
117 and I know there are wiki installations where rST works. --ulrik
119 **Individual reStructuredText Issues**
121 * We resolve rST links without definition, we don't help resolving defined
122 relative links, so we don't support specifying link name and target
125 * Resolved by |replacement| links with the wiki:: directive.
127 **A first implementation: Resolving unmatched links**
129 I have a working minimal implementation letting the rst renderer resolve
130 undefined native rST links to ikiwiki pages. I have posted it as one patch at:
132 Preview commit: http://github.com/engla/ikiwiki/commit/486fd79e520da1d462f00f40e7a90ab07e9c6fdf
133 Repository: git://github.com/engla/ikiwiki.git
135 Design issues of the patch:
137 The page is rST-parsed once in 'scan' and once in 'htmlize' (the first to generate backlinks). Can the parse output be safely reused?
139 > The page content fed to htmlize may be different than that fed to scan,
140 > as directives can change the content. If you cached the input and output
141 > at scan time, you could reuse the cached data at htmlize time for inputs
142 > that are the same -- but that could be a very big cache! --[[Joey]]
144 >> I would propose using a simple heuristic: If you see \[[ anywhere on the
145 >> page, don't cache it. It would be an effective cache for pure-rst wikis
146 >> (without any ikiwiki directives or wikilinks).
147 >> However, I think that if the cache does not work for a big load, it should
148 >> not work at all; small loads are small so they don't matter. --ulrik