Take a look at what Wikipedia is currently doing with the vector skin. I'm having no problems, and, really, asking people to do their own markup is not something I see as a great issue. It requries people to engage mentally - at least somewhat - with what they're doing and forces them to use the interface. Every car needs to run reliably, but every car does not need automatic mirrors or A/C.
I'm not suggesting that luxuries and tools are not warranted, but only that the users really do not require as much hand-holding as we think they do, and if they're insisting on it for something which is really pretty basic then I have to question why. I am a great believer in tools-for-efficiencies, but I also believe that a little bit of work never hurt nobody. Typing ''2,'' '''3,''' or '''''5''''' single quotation marks, or [one] or [[two]] brackets, or even <u>underscoring</u> one's own text really isn't a big deal.
On tables I agree with you 100%, but for bold, underline, strikeout, italics, and links, well, I think people can - and largely should - do it themselves. I don't want to have to learn Dreamweaver simply to edit a wiki page. And if we're not carefull that's exactly what we'll end up with.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C]" sullivan@mail.nih.gov To: 'MediaWiki announcements and site admin list' mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 09:59:52 -0400 Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?
I've been following the CKeditor effort and their promises, once version
3.0 was out, to work on a CKeditor+Mediawiki. Version 3.2 is now out and no sign of a CKeditor+Mediawiki effort, and most concerning is the lack of any recent responses to direct questions about the previously promised effort on the CKeditor's forum. Wikia's efforts are not comforting either. Almost all wikia wikis I have visited have the wysiwyg editor disabled, which is not the default, so people must be purposely disabling it. And the discussion page of wikia's editor help page (http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help_talk:Rich_text_editor) has people asking for the older version of the editor because of problems with their latest version.
We are currently using version 2.6.4 of the FCKeditor and even with its
issues have found it has lead to a wider acceptance of using our wikis. For us there is no going back to wikitext. If the wysiwyg editor future is not resolved for Mediawiki soon I'm afraid we will be forced to move toward another wiki software, most likely commercial where wysiwyg has been around for years, because requiring non-technical people to learn a markup language to use a wiki seems archaic in the 21st century.
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: Clayton [mailto:ccornell@openoffice.org] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 3:51 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct
venue?
On 05/19/2010 01:20 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On 18 May 2010 18:35, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Forwarding on behalf of Jack, which is not subscribed:
Maybe the best idea would be to kill off our FCKeditor extension and
try
to collaborate with Wikia regarding their CKeditor integration
extension.
It certainly would be cool to have a good WYSIWYG editor for MediaWiki
one day...
argh argh argh. I was so looking forward to 1.16 specifically for a half-decent WYSIWYG editor ...
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Steve VanSlyck wrote:
Take a look at what Wikipedia is currently doing with the vector skin. I'm having no problems, and, really, asking people to do their own markup is not something I see as a great issue. It requries people to engage mentally - at least somewhat - with what they're doing and forces them to use the interface. Every car needs to run reliably, but every car does not need automatic mirrors or A/C.
I'm not suggesting that luxuries and tools are not warranted, but only that the users really do not require as much hand-holding as we think they do, and if they're insisting on it for something which is really pretty basic then I have to question why. I am a great believer in tools-for-efficiencies, but I also believe that a little bit of work never hurt nobody. Typing ''2,'' '''3,''' or '''''5''''' single quotation marks, or [one] or [[two]] brackets, or even <u>underscoring</u> one's own text really isn't a big deal.
On tables I agree with you 100%, but for bold, underline, strikeout, italics, and links, well, I think people can - and largely should - do it themselves. I don't want to have to learn Dreamweaver simply to edit a wiki page. And if we're not carefull that's exactly what we'll end up with.
I have to disagree with you given my experience. In one government department where MediaWiki was installed we saw the active user base spike from about 1000 users to about 8000 users within a month of having enabled FCKeditor. FCKeditor definitely has it's warts, but it very closely matches the experience non-technical people have gotten used to while using Word or WordPerfect. Leveraging skills people already have cuts down on training costs and allows them to be productive almost immediately.
Cheers, Rob.
On 19 May 2010 15:50, Robert Cummings robert@interjinn.com wrote:
I have to disagree with you given my experience. In one government department where MediaWiki was installed we saw the active user base spike from about 1000 users to about 8000 users within a month of having enabled FCKeditor. FCKeditor definitely has it's warts, but it very closely matches the experience non-technical people have gotten used to while using Word or WordPerfect. Leveraging skills people already have cuts down on training costs and allows them to be productive almost immediately.
Our main problem is how to make things work for people who want WYSIWYG and people who want wikitext. I thought this was what CK in MW was working on ...
Should the page for the relevant extension be marked "no longer being worked on" or "your bugs are going into a void"?
- d.
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Our main problem is how to make things work for people who want WYSIWYG and people who want wikitext. I thought this was what CK in MW was working on ...
That really is the kicker isn't it? For longtime users of MW, there's nothing you can give me in a WYSIWYG that I can't do in wikitext. I would probably quit the project if WYSIWYG became mandatory.
So to answer the original question of "Why don't we have WYSIWYG when it's been around for 15 years?" It's because we need a lossless conversion between raw wikitext and wikitext output by the visual editor. Last time I checked, this was the major flaw that FCK and CK editor still haven't overcome.
-Chad
On 19 May 2010 16:08, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
So to answer the original question of "Why don't we have WYSIWYG when it's been around for 15 years?" It's because we need a lossless conversion between raw wikitext and wikitext output by the visual editor. Last time I checked, this was the major flaw that FCK and CK editor still haven't overcome.
It just (just!) has to not mangle the wikitext, or at least not in semantically significant ways. Only interact with what it understands and not trash the rest.
That would, of course, be the bug I just reported, where it was doing precisely that ...
- d.
On 05/19/10 17:12, David Gerard wrote:
On 19 May 2010 16:08, Chad wrote:
So to answer the original question of "Why don't we have WYSIWYG when it's been around for 15 years?" It's because we need a lossless conversion between raw wikitext and wikitext output by the visual editor. Last time I checked, this was the major flaw that FCK and CK editor still haven't overcome.
It just (just!) has to not mangle the wikitext, or at least not in semantically significant ways. Only interact with what it understands and not trash the rest.
That would, of course, be the bug I just reported, where it was doing precisely that ...
This mangling is the biggest complaint I see on the OOoWiki. Users who edit a page with the FCKEditor make a change and save. Behind the scenes the FCKEditor has completely rearranged the raw wiki syntax. So a minor change turns into a 100% content change with you do a compare in the history.
I'd love to know a workaround to this... other than removing the FCKEditor.
C.
David Gerard wrote:
On 19 May 2010 15:50, Robert Cummings robert@interjinn.com wrote:
I have to disagree with you given my experience. In one government department where MediaWiki was installed we saw the active user base spike from about 1000 users to about 8000 users within a month of having enabled FCKeditor. FCKeditor definitely has it's warts, but it very closely matches the experience non-technical people have gotten used to while using Word or WordPerfect. Leveraging skills people already have cuts down on training costs and allows them to be productive almost immediately.
Our main problem is how to make things work for people who want WYSIWYG and people who want wikitext. I thought this was what CK in MW was working on ...
Should the page for the relevant extension be marked "no longer being worked on" or "your bugs are going into a void"?
In my particular case I get to fix the bugs and enhance both MediaWiki and FCKeditor :) Unfortunately, at this time I am unable to pass fixes back to the community due to contracting issues and how it relates to GPL. This is being addressed and hopefully in the near future updates can be contributed back as one would expect when using open-source.
As an example, I think every version of FCKeditor I've seen so far used with MediaWiki has broken search/replace. This is fixed for us :)
Cheers, Rob.
On 19 May 2010 16:39, Robert Cummings robert@interjinn.com wrote:
In my particular case I get to fix the bugs and enhance both MediaWiki and FCKeditor :) Unfortunately, at this time I am unable to pass fixes back to the community due to contracting issues and how it relates to GPL. This is being addressed and hopefully in the near future updates can be contributed back as one would expect when using open-source. As an example, I think every version of FCKeditor I've seen so far used with MediaWiki has broken search/replace. This is fixed for us :)
I eagerly look forward to your employer issues being resolved then :-D
- d.
Our experience has been that once the FCKeditor was installed on our 60+ wikis usage went up. Our users are mostly intermittent, using a wiki infrequently, so learning and retaining wikitext is not something we can take for granted. And I agree if it were just bold, italics, etc, everything would be fine, but its text color, tables, image placement and formatting, and other things people are used to when using a word processor that wikitext does not make simple.
I teach users how to use our wikis and before we installed the FCKeditor the course was 3 hours long with tables taking up 45 minutes. Now teaching all editing takes 20 minutes as I go over the buttons and demonstrate what they are already familiar with from using other word processors. I used to get a call every day with a wikitext question. Now I get very few if any questions on editing.
WYSIWYG editing is about 15 years old so it is nothing new, so I'm perplexed why it is not available with Mediawiki, which has editing at its core. If this is how Mediawiki wants to continue because its main customer is Wikipedia, then I have no problem, I will simply find another wiki that includes a usable editor if the FCKeditor effort dies. I just don't understand the mindset that people should be expected to use wikitext when they use no other text formatting language to edit in other places, on facebook for example. Can you imagine facebook's acceptance had they required wikitext?
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: Steve VanSlyck [mailto:s.vanslyck@spamcop.net] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 10:16 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?
Take a look at what Wikipedia is currently doing with the vector skin. I'm having no problems, and, really, asking people to do their own markup is not something I see as a great issue. It requries people to engage mentally - at least somewhat - with what they're doing and forces them to use the interface. Every car needs to run reliably, but every car does not need automatic mirrors or A/C.
I'm not suggesting that luxuries and tools are not warranted, but only that the users really do not require as much hand-holding as we think they do, and if they're insisting on it for something which is really pretty basic then I have to question why. I am a great believer in tools-for-efficiencies, but I also believe that a little bit of work never hurt nobody. Typing ''2,'' '''3,''' or '''''5''''' single quotation marks, or [one] or [[two]] brackets, or even <u>underscoring</u> one's own text really isn't a big deal.
On tables I agree with you 100%, but for bold, underline, strikeout, italics, and links, well, I think people can - and largely should - do it themselves. I don't want to have to learn Dreamweaver simply to edit a wiki page. And if we're not carefull that's exactly what we'll end up with.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C]" sullivan@mail.nih.gov To: 'MediaWiki announcements and site admin list' mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 09:59:52 -0400 Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?
I've been following the CKeditor effort and their promises, once version
3.0 was out, to work on a CKeditor+Mediawiki. Version 3.2 is now out and no sign of a CKeditor+Mediawiki effort, and most concerning is the lack of any recent responses to direct questions about the previously promised effort on the CKeditor's forum. Wikia's efforts are not comforting either. Almost all wikia wikis I have visited have the wysiwyg editor disabled, which is not the default, so people must be purposely disabling it. And the discussion page of wikia's editor help page (http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help_talk:Rich_text_editor) has people asking for the older version of the editor because of problems with their latest version.
We are currently using version 2.6.4 of the FCKeditor and even with its
issues have found it has lead to a wider acceptance of using our wikis. For us there is no going back to wikitext. If the wysiwyg editor future is not resolved for Mediawiki soon I'm afraid we will be forced to move toward another wiki software, most likely commercial where wysiwyg has been around for years, because requiring non-technical people to learn a markup language to use a wiki seems archaic in the 21st century.
-Jim
-----Original Message----- From: Clayton [mailto:ccornell@openoffice.org] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 3:51 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct
venue?
On 05/19/2010 01:20 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On 18 May 2010 18:35, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Forwarding on behalf of Jack, which is not subscribed:
Maybe the best idea would be to kill off our FCKeditor extension and
try
to collaborate with Wikia regarding their CKeditor integration
extension.
It certainly would be cool to have a good WYSIWYG editor for MediaWiki
one day...
argh argh argh. I was so looking forward to 1.16 specifically for a half-decent WYSIWYG editor ...
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org