On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 2:55 PM, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw(a)gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
We disagree on that one then. VisualEditor is meant to
hide wikitext
entirely. The primary focus is on people that don't know wikitext. I
agree that we should keep nowiki-fication to a minimum and get rid of
the other bugs that cause this to happen, but I think the action we
currently take when a user types in wikitext (which is to warn them
and say "this won't work") is appropriate. VE is meant to be a visual
editor, not a
visual-except-with-weird-shortcuts-that-only-make-sense-if-you-know-the-legacy-markup-we-used-before-your-time
editor.
That's my opinion. Actual product direction is not something I'm in
charge of, that's James F's job, but AFAIK our current product
direction is similar to what I just said.
<snip>
If we accept, as a premise, that VE is aiming to eventually be the
best possible wiki editor for everyone, then I would say part of that
includes providing shortcuts and alternative workflows for some tasks.
Often power users may want an approach that works well for them, but
isn't necessarily intended to be easily discoverable by newbies.
Keyboard shortcuts are an example of this on many platforms.
To use an obvious example, the template editor coupled to TemplateData
is snazzy and probably helpful to many users who don't know parameter
names or aren't comfortable with syntax. That said, the template
editor is not particularly fast. For many applications using it can
be much more cumbersome than editing the wikitext directly, assuming
you already know what you want to edit / add.
While developers can (and probably should) work on making tools like
the template editor easier to use, that isn't necessarily the best
solution for all users. For many workflows giving power users a
limited means of manipulating wikitext directly -- without busting all
the way out of VE -- would seem to be a natural way of improving the
power user experience. Access to wikitext within VE could be
controlled by a button, or an option, or a keyboard shortcut, or magic
keystrokes like "[[" and "{{" that just work the old way. Any of
those approaches could work and each comes with different pluses and
minuses. In the long run providing good usability for the complex
tasks frequently performed by power users is just as important as
providing tools for newbies (at least if we assume VE is intended for
everyone), and I strongly believe that some form of advanced shortcuts
or integrated wikitext-like mode will likely be a part of that.
It's not enough to provide a pretty visual interface. One also has to
find ways to make that interface efficient and useful across a wide
spectrum of different user needs.
-Robert Rohde