MOving over to the other side of the argument for a moment, it seems to me that the building could be built one brick at a time. E.g., get the basic features in place first, such as bolding, underscoring, links, and god-forbid tables - and then move on from there. Worry only about the visual componets and leave under-the-hood stuff like categories for another day.
Whenever I need to write a 6-inch long formula in Excel, it rarely saves any time or effort if I try to do it all at once. Invariable breaking the problem down into smaller parts, then joining them up, results in a working solution "more fasterer."
Not that anyone here needs a lesson in applied software engineering, but maybe the problem really *is* that too much is being attempted in the first go.
----- Original Message ----- From: Daniel Barrett danb@VistaPrint.com To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 13:24:31 -0400 Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?
James Sullivan wrote:
Well, yes and no. Early word processors were quite buggy, and they had to produce postscript to send to a laser printer...
Hmmm, the "early word processors" I remember were HARDWARE. I guess that
makes me ancient. :-)
...but improvements were made and today we expect word processors to
work flawlessly...
Well, yes... except they don't. :-) My wife's word processor (Word 2008
on the Mac) crashes almost daily. And even the most sophisticated word processors today lack advanced features for writers. Consider a simple search-and-replace that changes "MediaWiki" into "Wikimedia." What if you want replacement only if "MediaWiki" is in a level-1 heading? Or only when it's part of a URL?
I'm going off on a tangent, so I'll stop here. :-)
Anyway, I agree with your points in principle and definitely welcome
improvements to ease-of-use. I just don't think they're going to come in the form of a fantastic WYSIWYG wiki editor, because the features that make MediaWiki great, as opposed to merely good (templates, parser functions, parent & child categories, etc.), seem incredibly difficult to support in WYSIWYG, and even harder to prevent novices from deleting by accident.
DanB
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On 19 May 2010 18:42, Steve VanSlyck s.vanslyck@spamcop.net wrote:
MOving over to the other side of the argument for a moment, it seems to me that the building could be built one brick at a time. E.g., get the basic features in place first, such as bolding, underscoring, links, and god-forbid tables - and then move on from there. Worry only about the visual componets and leave under-the-hood stuff like categories for another day.
I believe the CK-editor integration tries to do just that.
- d.
I agree. The latest version that I use (2.6.4) has a (C) menu button that allows you to add Categories to your page, bringing up a dialog box and showing existing categories to choose from or to create a new one. Nice feature since I always hate, while editing in wikitext, to have to start up a second browser just to go see what categories are available. I agree templates may be challenging, but that would be another brick to lay another day.
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: David Gerard [mailto:dgerard@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 1:55 PM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?
On 19 May 2010 18:42, Steve VanSlyck s.vanslyck@spamcop.net wrote:
Moving over to the other side of the argument for a moment, it seems to me that the building could be built one brick at a time. E.g., get the basic features in place first, such as bolding, underscoring, links, and god-forbid tables - and then move on from there. Worry only about the visual components and leave under-the-hood stuff like categories for another day.
I believe the CK-editor integration tries to do just that.
- d.
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Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] wrote:
I agree. The latest version that I use (2.6.4) has a (C) menu button that allows you to add Categories to your page, bringing up a dialog box and showing existing categories to choose from or to create a new one. Nice feature since I always hate, while editing in wikitext, to have to start up a second browser just to go see what categories are available. I agree templates may be challenging, but that would be another brick to lay another day.
Yeah we love being able to select pages and images via the associated popups for those also-- just start typing keywords and a list of matches is generated. We had to increase the list size to 100 though, 10 was way too short.
With respect to templates, FCKeditor has a little button for opening up a list of templates from which a user can select. It supports a title, description, and snapshot image via an XML configuration. We are going to be reworking this to have it support Wiki templates since currently it only supports HTML. Probably we'll ditch the XML file though and use a wiki page to configure entries so it can be done by bureaucrats :)
Anyways, a well integrated WYSIWYG is far less cumbersome for many of these routines tasks than using wiki code and multiple windows to view what is available. Although, there's nothing really stopping the WikiCode editor from having some of this functionality in it's buttons also instead of them just outputing the empty WikiCode for a link, or file.
Cheers, Rob.
I am so happy this issue is being addressed, but this is not only important for MediaWiki as such, but also for Wikipedia and her brothers and sisters.
Just imagine what a boost these projects would get when the Wikitext-illiterate would be able to add content without having to bother through learning Wikitext. How many people do you think stop adding content without even having started with Wikipedia, just because the text-screen is obscured with Wikitext, parser-functions, templates and so on. Wikimedia-projects are for the few people who have the will and knowledge (techies i.e). (I know quite a few).
I hoped that the usability-project would take care of FCK-editor integration and that WYSIWYG-editing would/will become standard in the future.
Not only for the sake of MediaWiki and its usage in companies and organizations, but also for the WM-Foundation and its projects.
Regards Peter van Londen
2010/5/19 Robert Cummings robert@interjinn.com
Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] wrote:
I agree. The latest version that I use (2.6.4) has a (C) menu button
that allows you to add Categories to your page, bringing up a dialog box and showing existing categories to choose from or to create a new one. Nice feature since I always hate, while editing in wikitext, to have to start up a second browser just to go see what categories are available. I agree templates may be challenging, but that would be another brick to lay another day.
Yeah we love being able to select pages and images via the associated popups for those also-- just start typing keywords and a list of matches is generated. We had to increase the list size to 100 though, 10 was way too short.
With respect to templates, FCKeditor has a little button for opening up a list of templates from which a user can select. It supports a title, description, and snapshot image via an XML configuration. We are going to be reworking this to have it support Wiki templates since currently it only supports HTML. Probably we'll ditch the XML file though and use a wiki page to configure entries so it can be done by bureaucrats :)
Anyways, a well integrated WYSIWYG is far less cumbersome for many of these routines tasks than using wiki code and multiple windows to view what is available. Although, there's nothing really stopping the WikiCode editor from having some of this functionality in it's buttons also instead of them just outputing the empty WikiCode for a link, or file.
Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Sullivan, James writes:
The latest version that I use (2.6.4) has a (C) menu button that allows you to add Categories to your page, bringing up a dialog box and showing existing categories to choose from or to create a new one
I wish categories worked in FCK Editor, but they have bad bugs.
Create an article with this category tag, using the standard wiki editor.
[[Category:Widgets | {{PAGENAME}}]]
Save it, then re-edit with FCK Editor. You'll see a weird {{PAGENAME}} word in the editor, as it mistakes your category tag for an internal link with alt text. Now, think like an end-user who sees something weird in the article. Delete {{PAGENAME}} in the editor. Save the article, and FCK Editor saves your category tag like this:
[[Category:Widgets | Widgets]]
which is wrong. Now edit the article again in FCK Editor. You (again an end-user) now see an unwanted "Widgets" word in the article. Delete it and save. Now the article wikitext contains:
[[Category:Widgets|<br>]]
which is even more wrong. Call your support desk for help. They tell you to delete the category tag and re-add it. So you add it using the (C) menu button and get:
[[Category:Widgets]]
which is syntactically correct, but you've lost the sort key {{PAGENAME}}....
Also, FCK Editor inserts categories with underscores instead of spaces in their names, like [[Category:Foo_Bar]]. Another small bug.
See, this stuff is tricky. :-)
DanB
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org