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>

An: Dan Garry <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

[2] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/157107

[3] http://pegjs.majda.cz/development

[4] http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/acorn/

 

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Dan Garry <dgarry@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Thanks Sage. Keep your eye out for it in the Wikipedia Beta app! :-)

>

> Dan

>

>

> On 28 August 2014 16:43, Sage Ross <sage@ragesoss.com> wrote:

>>

>> Grey all the things!

>>

>> This sounds like an excellent project. I don't use syntax

>> highlighting, because it's complicated and ends up generally

>> *highlighting* the markup rather than making the content stand out.

>> But something simple like this, intended to separate markup from

>> content but keeping the content in the foreground... that's

>> potentially very appealing.

>>

>> Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

>>

>> -Sage

>>

>> On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 4:38 PM, Dan Garry <dgarry@wikimedia.org> wrote:

>> > Hi everyone,

>> >

>> > Dmitry, Monte, James, Vibha and I just met to discuss where to go with

>> > syntax highlighting in the apps.

>> >

>> > For a variety of technical reasons, implementing VisualEditor in the

>> > apps is

>> > a gigantic undertaking. The Mobile Apps team left wondering whether

>> > there

>> > are lower-hanging fruit that we can run with in the meantime. So we're

>> > looking at syntax highlighting for wikitext to make it easier for users

>> > to

>> > understand.

>> >

>> > Dmitry has a working prototype (example screenshot). On discussing this

>> > prototype, we were wary that while multi-coloured highlighting makes a

>> > lot

>> > of sense for programmers it may not make sense for newer users who

>> > aren't

>> > programmers, and may actually have the opposite of intended effect of

>> > making

>> > wikitext more scary. Oops!

>> >

>> > The way we're going to proceed is by changing the colour of all the

>> > highlighting to grey. That way, the actual content in the wikitext is

>> > brought to the foreground. The exception will be wikilinks; the text

>> > will be

>> > black, but the brackets will be grey. Hopefully this will help users

>> > make

>> > the association between the wikitext and the reader experience more

>> > apparent. We need to choose the right colour such that the text doesn't

>> > look

>> > disabled and disincline people from touching it if they want to, but we

>> > can

>> > do that!

>> >

>> > Since this is a side-project and potentially could make the experience a

>> > lot

>> > worse if we do it wrong, this is just going to be pushed to the

>> > Wikipedia

>> > Beta app on Android, and we'll analyse the data. We are only going to

>> > push

>> > this to production if the data strongly supports our hypothesis (i.e.

>> > the

>> > bounce rate on the edit screen is significantly reduced). If the data

>> > does

>> > not support this, or is inconclusive, we'll look at other ways to test

>> > this

>> > hypothesis.

>> >

>> > Special thanks to James for offering his editing domain knowledge to us

>> > for

>> > this meeting. :-)

>> >

>> > Let me know if there any questions!

>> >

>> > Thanks,

>> > Dan

>> >

>> > tl;dr: EVERYTHING GREY

>> >

>> > --

>> > Dan Garry

>> > Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps

>> > Wikimedia Foundation

>> >

>> > _______________________________________________

>> > Mobile-l mailing list

>> > Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org

>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

>> >

>>

>> _______________________________________________

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>> Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org

>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

>

>

>

>

> --

> Dan Garry

> Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps

> Wikimedia Foundation

>

> _______________________________________________

> Mobile-l mailing list

> Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org

> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

>

 

 

 

--

Jon Robson

* http://jonrobson.me.uk

* https://www.facebook.com/jonrobson

* @rakugojon

 

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