Dokuwiki is great and has everything need for creating meaning full content. However, I feel that with time, the complexity of organisation of content within a wiki page is increasing day by day and will continue to do so.
Some of the new wikis have adopted the path of wysiwyg editors and HTML markup to accommodate this complexity but they have their own issues - primary being non-standard manner of storing content and difficulties in moving content from one platform to another.
I love the philosophy of dokuwiki including that content should be separated from presentation. The default dokuwiki syntax does a great job but in number of cases it falls a little short in enabling a user to create rich formatted text. Some of the cases I would like to highlight -
- Colored text
- Highlighting text
- Floating blocks to include relevant extra information which is not a part of regular information flow
- Lists inside table
Now, I am not trying to do everything with Dokuwiki, but it would be great if it could deliver what basic word editors offers. All this is possible even now with different syntax plugins, but the problem is every plugin reinvents the wheel for doing these things. Further, most wysiwyg editors (including CKGEdit for dokuwiki) offer some of these, but again they create their own syntax. This results in compatibility issues when switching content from one wiki to another, and when changing plugins.
I have an idea that this extra (extended) syntax can be maintained in a single plugin maintained by Dokuwiki community and all other plugins try to comply to this extended syntax if they add need it (or WRAP plugin can be alleviated to this status). This will be very helpful for wysiwyg editors and allow easy switch from one wysiwyg editor to another in time and space. This way a middle ground can be created between HTML markup and little restrictive wiki markups.
I would love to have your comments on this.