Re-thinking WYSIWYG editors for Web CMS

I'm experimenting with this as well as I'm layering TinyMCE over a wiki for my side project, Bibdex (dev image <a href="http://bibdex.org:8080" rel="nofollow">http://bibdex.org:8080</a>). I have tried extending TinyMCE with a wiki syntax parser. However, I'm unconvinced there is real value in confusing the text with magic syntax, with one exception.<p>Wiki markup is mostly cosmetic, so you can throw all of it out--except for auto-linkification. Linking makes the wiki.<p>This was easy with CamelCase links, but much harder for free links or other types of links.<p>I do wonder if it's possible to train people to use exactly one syntactic form, the square brackets.<p><pre><code> [words] -&#62; free link [http://url text] -&#62; descriptive link [http://url] -&#62; escaped link (useful to pick up trailing punctuation) </code></pre> Presumably when you write a left square bracket, a floating div could appear with contextual help and auto-suggest.<p>If others are interested, I'm happy to share my efforts.

These rich text editors have control keys for linking. It's easy to link text without leaving the keyboard at all. Select text with arrows, press control+L, enter url, press return. You can also jump through words by pressing control+arrow. So, control+shift+arrow, control+L, url, return. It's basically what he's asking for with the last suggestion.

So similar to what Word 2007 is currently offering? You select text and an almost invisible ghost box appears, move your cursos in the box makes it appear fully.

Instant rendering of markdown sounds like a good idea, if users care to invest time to learn it.