[MediaWiki-announce] MediaWiki 1.18.0 released

We are proud to announce the first stable release of the 1.18 series.   *********************************************************************                              What's new? *********************************************************************   MediaWiki 1.18 brings the usual host of various bugfixes and new features.   jQuery 1.6.4 is now included as standard, along with numerous more jQuery plugins.   Breaking changes:     * action=watch / action=unwatch now requires a token   As of 1.18, some commonly used extensions are now being included in the released tarball; this is allow ease of installation of these extensions in new MediaWiki installs. If you already use the extension just replace the files like you have done for MediaWiki iteself. The following extensions are bundled with MediaWiki as of 1.18. All are currently in use on Wikimedia sites.   * ConfirmEdit — Various CAPTCHA techniques to try to prevent spambots and other automated tools from editing your wiki. * Gadgets — A system to allow users to enable or disable JavaScript or CSS tools made available to users site-wide. * Nuke — A special page allowing administrators to mass-delete content added by a spammer or vandal. * ParserFunctions — Additional parser functions (like #if and #switch to supplement the "magic words" present in MediaWiki. * Renameuser — A special page which allows authorized users to rename user accounts. * Vector — Enhancements to the Vector skin. * WikiEditor — An improved and customizable editing toolbar developed along the Vector skin.   Major features -- ------------   Better gender support -- -------------------   Until version 1.17, MediaWiki used neutral nouns to address and identify users on their user page. In English, this was not an issue since "User" matches both genders, but in some languages the neutral gender is always masculine; for example, this would cause French-speaking female Wikipedia users to be referred to as "Utilisateur" (male user) instead of "Utilisatrice" (female user). With version 1.18, user pages reflect the user's gender, if they have specified it in their preferences. More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists) will be available in MediaWiki 1.19.   Improved file metadata support -- -----------------------------   MediaWiki now detects the camera orientation from Exif metadata, and rotates the picture preview accordingly. The original file remains unchanged.   The overall metadata support in MediaWiki has been greatly extended. Previously, MediaWiki could only extract limited Exif metadata, and showed a subset of it on file description pages. Since 1.18, MediaWiki can extract IPTC and XMP metadata from uploaded files, and  more Exif  information. This includes an embedded description, author information,  GPS coordinates, or copyright statement.   Improved directionality support -- -------------------------------   A lot of work has been done to fix directionality bugs (Left-To-Right, Right-To-Left). Most notably bug 6100 is fixed, which allows to display an RTL interface on an LTR wiki properly (and vice versa). This was developed under $wgBetterDirectionality, which is now no longer used because the improvements are merged with the core code.   A positive consequence is that the page content on wikis with multiple scripts is aligned according to the direction of the selected variant. For example, on a Kazakh language wiki, selecting the Arabic script variant will align the text as RTL, while selecting the Latin or Cyrillic variant will align it as LTR.   Easily find where to customize interface messages -------------------------------------------------   MediaWiki allows you to customize the user interface by editing pages in the MediaWiki namespace. However, even though they can be viewed at Special:AllMessages] the sheer number of these messages makes it difficult to find which one needs to be customized. In MediaWiki 1.18, a new pseudo-language is introduced (qqx) to help people find such messages, by displaying the messages' key instead of the actual messages. All one has to do is append ?uselang=qqx to the page's index.php/ URL (see https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki_1.18&uselang=qqx  as an example).   New plugin for collapsible elements -- -----------------------------------   The new jQuery.makeCollapsible allows you to create collapsible tables, lists and so on, by adding the class mw-collapsible to the elements. See the manual for details: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Collapsible_elements   Protocol-relative URLs -- ----------------------   MediaWiki now supports protocol - relative URLs in links, interwiki targets and $wgServer. Protocol-relative URLs look like //example.com/wiki/Foo ; the browser will recognize this as http://example.com/wiki/Foo when following a link from an HTTP page, and https://example.com/wiki/Foo when following a link from an HTTPS page. This way, protocol-relative URLs enable a wiki to support HTTP and HTTPS while serving the same HTML for both, which means the parser cache doesn't have to be split.   More personalisable styles and scripts -- --------------------------------------   MediaWiki now automatically loads javascript and stylesheets more specific to each user. There is a separate CSS and JS file for each usergroup (MediaWiki:Group-sysop.css, MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js, etc), and also a CSS file for users viewing without JavaScript (MediaWiki:Noscript.css).   Other changes -- -------------   $wgEnableDublinCoreRdf and $wgEnableCreativeCommonsRdf no longer work in core, and the functionality has been moved to the relevant extensions. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DublinCoreRdf and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CreativeCoreRdf as appropriate   Math -  ---- $wgUseTeX has been superseded by the Math extension. To re-enable math conversion after upgrading, obtain the Math extension from SVN or from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math and add to LocalSettings.php: require_once "$IP/extensions/Math/Math.php";   Language support - ----------------   As with every release, MediaWiki 1.18 brings improved support for languages in MediaWiki, with improved translation and features for the many supported languages.   New languages:   * Angika (anp) * Brahui (brh) * Central Dusun (dtp) * Jamaican Creole English (jam) * Khowar (khw) * Liv (liv) * Kichwa (qug)   API - ---   API bug fixes and new features have been added to 1.18, providing more options for input and output.       * API modules were added to access QueryPage based special       pages, to Compare pages, Revert files, and to be able to access       other special pages such as Special:UnwatchedPages,       Special:MimeSearch and Special:ActiveUsers       * The output of the generated help page has been improved   The API contains a breaking changes against previous releases:       * action=watch now requires POST and token.   Other - -----   Our thanks go to everyone who helped to improve MediaWiki by testing the beta release and submitting bug reports and patches. For more information about what's new in the MediaWiki 1.17 branch, see: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.17 Frequently asked questions about upgrading: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ#Upgrading Changes since 1.18.0rc1 -- --------------------------- * (bug 32228) regression in Special:Search which did not conserve profile on new search * (bug 32460) Categories were improperly aligned in Simple and CologneBlue * (bug 32412) TOC links on [[Special:EditWatchlist]] points to the fieldsets * (bug 32582) Fix TOC show/hide link regression on IE 8   Release notes - -------------   Complete release notes are at   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.18     ********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.tar.gz   Patch to previous version (1.18.0rc1), without interface text: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.patch.gz Interface text changes: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-i18n-1.18.0.patch.gz   GPG signatures: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.tar.gz.sig http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.patch.gz.sig http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-i18n-1.18.0patch.gz.s ig     Public keys: https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html