Re: Pre-save transformations in VisualEditor

bvibber <at> wikimedia.org:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Adam Wight <spam <at> ludd.net> wrote:
> 
> > So, in the course of trying to implement user signature processing in
> > the PEGjs grammar (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35392),
> > it occurred to me that this is in a whole new class of transformation
> > function.  "~~~~" is actually replaced in the wikitext during the
> > round-trip of saving on the server.  Ha ha, not the quaint little
> > evening project I thought I was taking on!
> >
> > Looking at includes/parser/Parser.php::pstPass2, in addition to user
> > signatures, pre-save transformations can also insert the current
> > timestamp, do a literal transclusion using the {{subst:  tag, or
> > complete the "context" of a wikilink.
> >
> > Implementing this class of transformation in the VisualEditor gets
> > tricky because the client wikitext must be kept in sync.  Is there
> > already a provision made for mutating wikitext after a round-trip?
> >
> 
> These sorts of things really should be happening *in* the editor, rather
> than in the parser. We only have to put ~~~~ in because the original editor
> was too primitive to have a nice "insert signature" live function. So I
> think it's worth really rethinking how these things get done for the new
> paradigm. :)
> 
> -- brion

+1.0

The {{subst: incantation would be easy to handle with the editor as well, if we
care.  Just make an api call to fetch template wikitext.

-adam