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questpc at rambler

Sep 15, 2009, 4:24 AM

Post #1 of 29 (1753 views)
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Usability initiative

Hi!
I've read that usability is important for MediaWiki. Why don't integrate
wikitext syntax highlighting then? That will greatly improve editing of
the pages. There is Extension:WikEd which has most of the work
implemented already.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:WikEd_screenshot.png
I know that it should be possible to install the extension separately.
But I remember that important extensions are sometimes integrated into
MediaWiki.
There's also FCKeditor, but it cannot perform diffs, and visual editing
is not always desirable (non-technical users like it, but I personally
prefer to edit wikitext).

It just comes to me everytime I edit source PHP with hightlighting, then
editing wikitext without highlighting :-(
Dmitriy

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roan.kattouw at gmail

Sep 15, 2009, 4:34 AM

Post #2 of 29 (1726 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

2009/9/15 Dmitriy Sintsov <questpc [at] rambler>:
> Hi!
> I've read that usability is important for MediaWiki. Why don't integrate
> wikitext syntax highlighting then?
We're planning to do exactly that in our third release (Citron). Right
now, we're working on bugfixing and deploying our second release
(Babaco).

> That will greatly improve editing of
> the pages. There is Extension:WikEd which has most of the work
> implemented already.
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:WikEd_screenshot.png
Yeah, we knew about wikEd, and we'll definitely be looking at it.

> I know that it should be possible to install the extension separately.
> But I remember that important extensions are sometimes integrated into
> MediaWiki.
> There's also FCKeditor, but it cannot perform diffs, and visual editing
> is not always desirable (non-technical users like it, but I personally
> prefer to edit wikitext).
>
There's still quite a few issues with FCKeditor, and as far as I know
it's been decided that the usability project is not gonna cover
WYSIWYG; I'm not entirely sure of the official stance here, you'd have
to ask Naoko.

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

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questpc at rambler

Sep 15, 2009, 4:55 AM

Post #3 of 29 (1728 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

* Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw [at] gmail> [Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:34:07
+0200]:
> We're planning to do exactly that in our third release (Citron). Right
> now, we're working on bugfixing and deploying our second release
> (Babaco).
>
What do these codenames mean? Citron is v1.16 and Babaco is v1.17 or
it's something else?
Will these improvements be announced, when available?

> Yeah, we knew about wikEd, and we'll definitely be looking at it.
>
Thanks!

> There's still quite a few issues with FCKeditor, and as far as I know
> it's been decided that the usability project is not gonna cover
> WYSIWYG; I'm not entirely sure of the official stance here, you'd have
> to ask Naoko.
>
I am not really a supporter of WYSIWYG, too. Source markup is better,
but, with syntax highlighting :-)
Dmitriy

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roan.kattouw at gmail

Sep 15, 2009, 5:09 AM

Post #4 of 29 (1727 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

2009/9/15 Dmitriy Sintsov <questpc [at] rambler>:
> * Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw [at] gmail> [Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:34:07
> +0200]:
>> We're planning to do exactly that in our third release (Citron). Right
>> now, we're working on bugfixing and deploying our second release
>> (Babaco).
>>
> What do these codenames mean? Citron is v1.16 and Babaco is v1.17 or
> it's something else?
No. Acai, Babaco and Citron are names used by the usability
initiative, and these "releases" aren't related to MediaWiki versions
or releases. Basically, each is a set of new features that we're
deploying. Acai is already live, Babaco will hopefully go live in a
few weeks, and Citron has yet to be developed. For details as to
what's in each release, see
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases .

> Will these improvements be announced, when available?
>
Absolutely.

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

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Ryan.Lane at ocean

Sep 15, 2009, 10:41 AM

Post #5 of 29 (1713 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

> I've read that usability is important for MediaWiki. Why
> don't integrate
> wikitext syntax highlighting then? That will greatly improve
> editing of
> the pages. There is Extension:WikEd which has most of the work
> implemented already.
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:WikEd_screenshot.png
> I know that it should be possible to install the extension
> separately.
> But I remember that important extensions are sometimes
> integrated into
> MediaWiki.
> There's also FCKeditor, but it cannot perform diffs, and
> visual editing
> is not always desirable (non-technical users like it, but I
> personally
> prefer to edit wikitext).
>
> It just comes to me everytime I edit source PHP with
> hightlighting, then
> editing wikitext without highlighting :-(
> Dmitriy

See: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases

This is listed as one of the features of the Citron release.

V/r,

Ryan Lane

questpc at rambler

Sep 15, 2009, 11:15 AM

Post #6 of 29 (1717 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

* "Lane, Ryan" <Ryan.Lane [at] ocean> [Tue, 15 Sep 2009
12:41:26 -0500]:
> See: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases
>
> This is listed as one of the features of the Citron release.
>
Thanks. I've figured out that will be
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:UsabilityInitiative
then probably moved to core.
I've just confused the codename with release number of MediaWiki.
(You know, how these developers of operating systems love to give
codenames to their systems - Fedora or Windows usually come with
codename)
Dmitriy

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sergey.chernyshev at gmail

Sep 15, 2009, 12:05 PM

Post #7 of 29 (1724 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

Are these releases in any way connected to MediaWiki releases though?

I understand that all that gets release on Wikimedia projects, but it'll be
great to have the rest of MW user base benefit from these as well (I have
personal interest here as you can imagine ;)).

Thank you,

Sergey

--
Sergey Chernyshev
http://www.sergeychernyshev.com/

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Dmitriy Sintsov <questpc [at] rambler> wrote:

> * "Lane, Ryan" <Ryan.Lane [at] ocean> [Tue, 15 Sep 2009
> 12:41:26 -0500]:
> > See: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases
> >
> > This is listed as one of the features of the Citron release.
> >
> Thanks. I've figured out that will be
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:UsabilityInitiative
> then probably moved to core.
> I've just confused the codename with release number of MediaWiki.
> (You know, how these developers of operating systems love to give
> codenames to their systems - Fedora or Windows usually come with
> codename)
> Dmitriy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l [at] lists
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
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Ryan.Lane at ocean

Sep 15, 2009, 12:13 PM

Post #8 of 29 (1713 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

> Are these releases in any way connected to MediaWiki releases though?
>
> I understand that all that gets release on Wikimedia
> projects, but it'll be
> great to have the rest of MW user base benefit from these as
> well (I have
> personal interest here as you can imagine ;)).
>

AFAIK the releases are not connected to MediaWiki releases, but instead are
phases of the usability initiative.

V/r,

Ryan Lane

roan.kattouw at gmail

Sep 15, 2009, 12:17 PM

Post #9 of 29 (1726 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

2009/9/15 Lane, Ryan <Ryan.Lane [at] ocean>:
>> Are these releases in any way connected to MediaWiki releases though?
>>
>> I understand that all that gets release on Wikimedia
>> projects, but it'll be
>> great to have the rest of MW user base benefit from these as
>> well (I have
>> personal interest here as you can imagine ;)).
>>
>
> AFAIK the releases are not connected to MediaWiki releases, but instead are
> phases of the usability initiative.
>
That is correct. However, all of the features we code are in the
UsabilityInitiative extension, which is available from SVN just like
any other extension, so other MW users will benefit (and, in fact,
they can already do so). It's not compatible with MW 1.15, however.
The Vector skin is in MW core, and will be part of the 1.16 release.

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

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rarohde at gmail

Sep 15, 2009, 12:23 PM

Post #10 of 29 (1712 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw [at] gmail> wrote:
> 2009/9/15 Lane, Ryan <Ryan.Lane [at] ocean>:
>>> Are these releases in any way connected to MediaWiki releases though?
>>>
>>> I understand that all that gets release on Wikimedia
>>> projects, but it'll be
>>> great to have the rest of MW user base benefit from these as
>>> well (I have
>>> personal interest here as you can imagine ;)).
>>>
>>
>> AFAIK the releases are not connected to MediaWiki releases, but instead are
>> phases of the usability initiative.
>>
> That is correct. However, all of the features we code are in the
> UsabilityInitiative extension, which is available from SVN just like
> any other extension, so other MW users will benefit (and, in fact,
> they can already do so). It's not compatible with MW 1.15, however.
> The Vector skin is in MW core, and will be part of the 1.16 release.

Is there a road map somewhere for features you plan to include but
haven't gotten to yet?

-Robert Rohde

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roan.kattouw at gmail

Sep 15, 2009, 12:26 PM

Post #11 of 29 (1725 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

2009/9/15 Robert Rohde <rarohde [at] gmail>:
> Is there a road map somewhere for features you plan to include but
> haven't gotten to yet?
>
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

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brion at wikimedia

Sep 15, 2009, 5:35 PM

Post #12 of 29 (1726 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:34:07 +0200, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw [at] gmail>
wrote:
> There's still quite a few issues with FCKeditor, and as far as I know
> it's been decided that the usability project is not gonna cover
> WYSIWYG; I'm not entirely sure of the official stance here, you'd have
> to ask Naoko.

Full wysiwyg has lots of fun problems, mainly because the strategy of
translating between wiki markup and HTML leads to a lot of edge cases which
ends up breaking things. Folks have been trying to tackle it for years and
still aren't quite there; Wikia's current work with FCKeditor is pretty
good but still has a lot of things that just don't work... conversion can
be lossy and the handling of templates, tables, extensions, etc would lead
to most pages having to be edited in source mode at exactly the times you
least want to touch the raw markup.

Instead, we've got the Usability project focusing on things we think we
can really deliver, providing most of what's actually useful about a
wysiwyg environment:

* modernizing the look, feel, and interaction model (more live, less
post-and-wait)
* getting the scariest parts of the markup out of your face
* providing humane user interfaces for tasks like finding links and
categories, uploading/picking/sizing images, filling out templates,
creating and editing tables
* context-aware editing (an editor that knows what section you're in,
where this link points to and if it exists, what fields this template
needs, etc)

-- brion

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magnusmanske at googlemail

Sep 16, 2009, 2:01 AM

Post #13 of 29 (1720 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:35 AM, <brion [at] wikimedia> wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:34:07 +0200, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw [at] gmail>
> wrote:
>> There's still quite a few issues with FCKeditor, and as far as I know
>> it's been decided that the usability project is not gonna cover
>> WYSIWYG; I'm not entirely sure of the official stance here, you'd have
>> to ask Naoko.
>
> Full wysiwyg has lots of fun problems, mainly because the strategy of
> translating between wiki markup and HTML leads to a lot of edge cases which
> ends up breaking things. Folks have been trying to tackle it for years and
> still aren't quite there; Wikia's current work with FCKeditor is pretty
> good but still has a lot of things that just don't work... conversion can
> be lossy and the handling of templates, tables, extensions, etc would lead
> to most pages having to be edited in source mode at exactly the times you
> least want to touch the raw markup.
>
> Instead, we've got the Usability project focusing on things we think we
> can really deliver, providing most of what's actually useful about a
> wysiwyg environment:
>
> * modernizing the look, feel, and interaction model (more live, less
> post-and-wait)
> * getting the scariest parts of the markup out of your face
> * providing humane user interfaces for tasks like finding links and
> categories, uploading/picking/sizing images, filling out templates,
> creating and editing tables
> * context-aware editing (an editor that knows what section you're in,
> where this link points to and if it exists, what fields this template
> needs, etc)

Not sure if this was considered:
* Categories (in the page, not in templates), language links, and
magic words (NOTOC) are position-independent within a page
* They are also relatively easy to extract from the wikitext (regexp
should do, after removing HTML comments and nowiki; I did something
like that in JS a while ago, should be much easier if supported from
PHP)
* They clutter the text (even though they tend to be towards the end
of the text), and might scare off newbies
* They can be represented in separate visual elements (toggles, lists,
or some JS as I did with hotcat)

Any plans of separating these on edit, then re-attach them to the text
on saving? It's low-hanging fruit IMHO.

Cheers,
Magnus

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agarrett at wikimedia

Sep 16, 2009, 3:01 AM

Post #14 of 29 (1707 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On 16/09/2009, at 10:01 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Not sure if this was considered:
> * Categories (in the page, not in templates), language links, and
> magic words (NOTOC) are position-independent within a page
> * They are also relatively easy to extract from the wikitext (regexp
> should do, after removing HTML comments and nowiki; I did something
> like that in JS a while ago, should be much easier if supported from
> PHP)
> * They clutter the text (even though they tend to be towards the end
> of the text), and might scare off newbies
> * They can be represented in separate visual elements (toggles, lists,
> or some JS as I did with hotcat)
>
> Any plans of separating these on edit, then re-attach them to the text
> on saving? It's low-hanging fruit IMHO.

I've added an experimental AJAX management interface for categories
(like HotCat, but good). It requires the JS2 system to be enabled
(which might be a while).

I'm not sure that it's strictly necessary to actually pull it all out
of the wikitext, because it usually just sits at the bottom, out of
everybody's way.

--
Andrew Garrett
agarrett [at] wikimedia
http://werdn.us/

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beesley at gmail

Sep 16, 2009, 3:13 AM

Post #15 of 29 (1707 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

> On 16/09/2009, at 10:01 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
>> Not sure if this was considered:
>> * Categories (in the page, not in templates),

CategorySelect handles this. It separates categories from the wikitext
and lets you add categories without having to edit the whole page.
Categories remain available to be edited on the edit page if you like.
It also provides an easier interface to adding categories, and
combines with category suggestions to optionally let you select one
instead of having to type it. Things like sort parameters are still
supported and there's the option to switch back to code view.

code: <https://svn.wikia-code.com/wikia/trunk/extensions/wikia/CategorySelect/>
help: <http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:CategorySelect>

Angela

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questpc at rambler

Sep 16, 2009, 5:50 AM

Post #16 of 29 (1704 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

* brion [at] wikimedia [Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:35:16 +0000]:
> Full wysiwyg has lots of fun problems, mainly because the strategy of
> translating between wiki markup and HTML leads to a lot of edge cases
> which
> ends up breaking things. Folks have been trying to tackle it for years
> and
> still aren't quite there; Wikia's current work with FCKeditor is
pretty
> good but still has a lot of things that just don't work... conversion
> can
> be lossy and the handling of templates, tables, extensions, etc would
> lead
> to most pages having to be edited in source mode at exactly the times
> you
> least want to touch the raw markup.
>
> Instead, we've got the Usability project focusing on things we think
we
> can really deliver, providing most of what's actually useful about a
> wysiwyg environment:
>
> * modernizing the look, feel, and interaction model (more live, less
> post-and-wait)
> * getting the scariest parts of the markup out of your face
> * providing humane user interfaces for tasks like finding links and
> categories, uploading/picking/sizing images, filling out templates,
> creating and editing tables
> * context-aware editing (an editor that knows what section you're in,
> where this link points to and if it exists, what fields this template
> needs, etc)
>
I hope that wikitext syntax highlighting fits to some of these tasks. It
was mentioned in the third step of Usability Initiative site.
Dmitriy

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lists at schwen

Sep 16, 2009, 6:19 AM

Post #17 of 29 (1693 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

> (like HotCat, but good).
Care to elaborate? I'm not too fond of this kind of inuendo without
concrete points. FWIW HotCat is working quite well on Commons.

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agarrett at wikimedia

Sep 16, 2009, 7:26 AM

Post #18 of 29 (1712 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On 16/09/2009, at 2:19 PM, Daniel Schwen wrote:

>> (like HotCat, but good).
> Care to elaborate? I'm not too fond of this kind of inuendo without
> concrete points. FWIW HotCat is working quite well on Commons.

I'm sure it works fine, but:
* It reloads the page 3 times, actually stepping through an edit form,
modifying wikitext with JS, and saving.
* It is 1100 lines of ugly code.
* It isn't localised.
* It breaks if translations or aliases of the Category namespace are
used.
* It adds random text to the category display, instead of using nice
icons.
* It doesn't prompt for an edit summary, nor does it provide any sort
of confirmation.

By contrast, my newer version:
* Submits an edit through the API, and selectively reloads the
category section with no user disruption other than a progress spinner.
* Is 300 lines of simple jQuery code.
* Is fully localisable.
* Has full support for translations and aliases of the category
namespace.
* Uses icons for the actions.
* Prompts for confirmation and an edit summary before making an edit.

--
Andrew Garrett
agarrett [at] wikimedia
http://werdn.us/

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stevagewp at gmail

Sep 16, 2009, 8:00 PM

Post #19 of 29 (1667 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Magnus Manske
<magnusmanske [at] googlemail> wrote:
> Any plans of separating these on edit, then re-attach them to the text
> on saving? It's low-hanging fruit IMHO.

Good question. IMHO, all position independent stuff (ie, metadata)
would be better off saved separately, and edited separately. As a
legacy solution, users could still type [[Category:Blah]] in the main
edit box, but at save time, it would be moved to the metadata area.

References are another example of location-independent metadata that
should be dealt with like that. But honestly, the Usability people
seem to be doing a pretty good and know what they're doing. Do they
need more ideas from us?

Steve

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magnusmanske at googlemail

Sep 17, 2009, 4:35 AM

Post #20 of 29 (1676 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:00 AM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Magnus Manske
> <magnusmanske [at] googlemail> wrote:
>> Any plans of separating these on edit, then re-attach them to the text
>> on saving? It's low-hanging fruit IMHO.
>
> Good question. IMHO, all position independent stuff (ie, metadata)
> would be better off saved separately, and edited separately. As a
> legacy solution, users could still type [[Category:Blah]] in the main
> edit box, but at save time, it would be moved to the metadata area.

I agree that all this should be stored separately; however, that would
mean a (major) rewrite of things (least of all the dumping process)
and thinking (e.g. the category table suddenly becomes the
authoritative storage for that data, not the wikitext). I was thinking
about a quickly implemented solution that could simulate these effects
for the user without major code revisions.

> References are another example of location-independent metadata that
> should be dealt with like that. But honestly, the Usability people
> seem to be doing a pretty good and know what they're doing. Do they
> need more ideas from us?

Yes, they do a pretty good job; that doesn't mean they have all the
answers (who has? except me of course!:-) or all the ideas. At the
very least, publicly mentioning our ideas can re-enforce their
decision to implement it.

Cheers,
Magnus

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roan.kattouw at gmail

Sep 17, 2009, 4:52 AM

Post #21 of 29 (1661 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

2009/9/17 Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail>:
> But honestly, the Usability people
> seem to be doing a pretty good and know what they're doing. Do they
> need more ideas from us?
>
We /always/ welcome more ideas, we just can't guarantee we'll agree
with you, or that we'll have the time or resources to implement it :)

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

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agarrett at wikimedia

Sep 17, 2009, 5:39 AM

Post #22 of 29 (1672 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On 17/09/2009, at 4:00 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Magnus Manske
> <magnusmanske [at] googlemail> wrote:
>> Any plans of separating these on edit, then re-attach them to the
>> text
>> on saving? It's low-hanging fruit IMHO.
>
> Good question. IMHO, all position independent stuff (ie, metadata)
> would be better off saved separately, and edited separately. As a
> legacy solution, users could still type [[Category:Blah]] in the main
> edit box, but at save time, it would be moved to the metadata area.

We have an excellent system for storing, versioning, backing up,
restoring, editing, and retrieving raw wikitext in one blob.

Why do you want to scrap this, and embark on a several-month-long
development effort to reimplement it with more complexity? There
certainly isn't any significant technical benefit in it, besides the
fact that it seems a little cleaner from the outside.

It's definitely much easier and much safer to store it all together,
and then separate it at edit time. We can reliably parse this stuff
out and present another interface for editing it.

--
Andrew Garrett
agarrett [at] wikimedia
http://werdn.us/

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Sep 17, 2009, 8:29 AM

Post #23 of 29 (1648 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:00 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
> Good question. IMHO, all position independent stuff (ie, metadata)
> would be better off saved separately, and edited separately. As a
> legacy solution, users could still type [[Category:Blah]] in the main
> edit box, but at save time, it would be moved to the metadata area.

This is simply not feasible as long as we have templates. Templates
can contain both position-dependent data and metadata, and the
template reference needs to be stored with the data to preserve the
position. This means the metadata inherently depends on the page
text.

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Sep 17, 2009, 8:31 AM

Post #24 of 29 (1654 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Andrew Garrett <agarrett [at] wikimedia> wrote:
> Why do you want to scrap this, and embark on a several-month-long
> development effort to reimplement it with more complexity? There
> certainly isn't any significant technical benefit in it, besides the
> fact that it seems a little cleaner from the outside.

If, for instance, all category links were stored only in
categorylinks, we wouldn't have the problem of denormalization.
categorylinks isn't fully reliably right now because it duplicates
information from the page text, and might fall out of sync. Storing
things in a single blob instead of broken into tables -- or
duplicating data in multiple places -- is a violation of the
relational model and tends to hurt correctness, performance, or both.

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Sep 17, 2009, 1:16 PM

Post #25 of 29 (1641 views)
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Re: Usability initiative [In reply to]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:00 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
>> Good question. IMHO, all position independent stuff (ie, metadata)
>> would be better off saved separately, and edited separately. As a
>> legacy solution, users could still type [[Category:Blah]] in the main
>> edit box, but at save time, it would be moved to the metadata area.
>
> This is simply not feasible as long as we have templates. Templates
> can contain both position-dependent data and metadata, and the
> template reference needs to be stored with the data to preserve the
> position. This means the metadata inherently depends on the page
> text.

And if it were changed, templates *should* be able to continue being a
source of metadata.
So I think that requirement blocks changing the way categories are stored.

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