Re: [WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Syntax highlighting - next step is "everything grey!" :-)

29 Aug 2014


      Woot! Maybe I'll take a peek at iOS app version over the weekend. :)
-- Brion
On Friday, August 29, 2014, florian.schmidt.welzow@t-online.de <
florian.schmidt.welzow@t-online.de> wrote:
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That looks awesome!
@Jon: Did i understand you right, that you're ok that someone amend your
change(s)? Just to be clear in that (don't want to "steal" your changes" :-)
P.S.: Good flight!
Freundliche Grüße / kind regards
Florian Schmidt
-----Original-Nachricht-----
Betreff: Re: [WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Syntax highlighting - next step is
"everything grey!" :-)
Datum: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 14:02:42 +0200
Von: Jon Robson <jdlrobson@gmail.com
javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jdlrobson@gmail.com');>
An: Dan Garry <dgarry@wikimedia.org
javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dgarry@wikimedia.org');>
And this is why we do things on public mailing lists :-D
I wanted to steal this for mobile web... so on the flight over to
England I knocked up a first version [1] (currently for beta). It
doesn't auto-update highlighting as you edit, but it does apply the
syntax highlighting on existing content, which makes things look less
scary in that initial load (it would be good to run an A/B test at
some point if I can get this fully working to see if more people get
to the preview screen when we do this).
Links, html comments and headings were pretty easy to wrap,but it's
going to need some kind of JavaScript parser (maybe PEG [3] or acorn
[4]) to be able to successfully match templates, html.
So for instance things like "{{hello {{nested template}} template
madness}}" will only be somewhat matched. I've got failing test cases
for all those [2].
That said it's enough to give you a feel for how this would work on web.
I'm about to jump on a plane and am running on little sleep, so if
anyone feels like picking up my code and running with it over the
finish line go for it. Go on.. it will be fun! :)
[1] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/157106
http://?ctl=dereferer&to=aHR0cHM6Ly9nZXJyaXQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy9yLzE1NzEwNg%3D%3D
[2] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/157107
http://?ctl=dereferer&to=aHR0cHM6Ly9nZXJyaXQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy9yLzE1NzEwNw%3D%3D
[3] http://pegjs.majda.cz/development
http://?ctl=dereferer&to=aHR0cDovL3BlZ2pzLm1hamRhLmN6L2RldmVsb3BtZW50
[4] http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/acorn/
http://?ctl=dereferer&to=aHR0cDovL21hcmlqbmhhdmVyYmVrZS5ubC9hY29ybi8%3D
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Dan Garry dgarry@wikimedia.org wrote:
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Thanks Sage. Keep your eye out for it in the Wikipedia Beta app! :-)
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Dan
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On 28 August 2014 16:43, Sage Ross sage@ragesoss.com wrote:
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Grey all the things!
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This sounds like an excellent project. I don't use syntax
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highlighting, because it's complicated and ends up generally
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*highlighting* the markup rather than making the content stand out.
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But something simple like this, intended to separate markup from
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content but keeping the content in the foreground... that's
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potentially very appealing.
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Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!
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-Sage
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On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 4:38 PM, Dan Garry dgarry@wikimedia.org
wrote:
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Hi everyone,
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Dmitry, Monte, James, Vibha and I just met to discuss where to go with
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syntax highlighting in the apps.
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For a variety of technical reasons, implementing VisualEditor in the
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apps is
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a gigantic undertaking. The Mobile Apps team left wondering whether
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there
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are lower-hanging fruit that we can run with in the meantime. So we're
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looking at syntax highlighting for wikitext to make it easier for
users
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to
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understand.
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Dmitry has a working prototype (example screenshot). On discussing
this
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prototype, we were wary that while multi-coloured highlighting makes a
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lot
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of sense for programmers it may not make sense for newer users who
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aren't
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programmers, and may actually have the opposite of intended effect of
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making
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wikitext more scary. Oops!
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The way we're going to proceed is by changing the colour of all the
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highlighting to grey. That way, the actual content in the wikitext is
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brought to the foreground. The exception will be wikilinks; the text
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will be
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black, but the brackets will be grey. Hopefully this will help users
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make
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the association between the wikitext and the reader experience more
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apparent. We need to choose the right colour such that the text
doesn't
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look
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disabled and disincline people from touching it if they want to, but
we
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can
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do that!
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Since this is a side-project and potentially could make the
experience a
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lot
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worse if we do it wrong, this is just going to be pushed to the
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Wikipedia
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Beta app on Android, and we'll analyse the data. We are only going to
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push
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this to production if the data strongly supports our hypothesis (i.e.
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the
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bounce rate on the edit screen is significantly reduced). If the data
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does
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not support this, or is inconclusive, we'll look at other ways to test
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this
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hypothesis.
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Special thanks to James for offering his editing domain knowledge to
us
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for
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this meeting. :-)
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Let me know if there any questions!
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Thanks,
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Dan
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tl;dr: EVERYTHING GREY
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--
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Dan Garry
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Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
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Wikimedia Foundation
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Mobile-l mailing list
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Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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Mobile-l mailing list
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--
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Dan Garry
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Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
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Wikimedia Foundation
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Mobile-l mailing list
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Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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--
Jon Robson

http://jonrobson.me.uk

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Re: [WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Syntax highlighting - next step is "everything grey!" :-)