I did a comparison of the syntax we inherited from Wikit in the OpenACS Wiki and Mediawiki (used at wikipedia.)
The basic formating is the same.
Italics pairs of single quotes surround italic text/
Bold triple single quotes surround bold text
Bold Italic 5 single quotes surround bold italic text
Headings use a number of = signs surrounding the heading. THe number of = signs is the same as the heading number from HTML.
Links are handled slightly differently. The Tcl Wiki uses single square brackets [] and Mediawiki uses double [[]]
Also there are options to change the label of a link which the Tcl wiki does not support.
So for basic formatting they are almost equal and the link labels can be simply added. It might even be possible to support the Mediawiki link format completly.
For lists the unordered list syntax is the same, a * at the beginning of each list element.
For ordered lsits the Tcl wiki uses a number, while Mediawiki uses the # sign. It should not be difficult to allow this with the Tcl wiki.
Images, the Tcl wiki supports linking to images and will display them inline. There are no formatting options for hwo the image will be displayed. Mediawiki includes extensive support for aligning, and resizing images.
This about covers the Tcl wiki syntax. Mediawiki has more options for tables and probably other things I have not discovered yet.
How much interest is there is making the Tcl/OpenACS wiki more compatible with Mediawiki syntax?
