// sorry for cross-posting
Hello!
Several improvements are planned for this year to make working with
templates easier. [1] All of them are part of the Technical Wishes project
at Wikimedia Germany [2]. After a lot of research, feedback on- and
off-wiki as well as testing [3], the following projects were chosen to
solve different problems that people on the wikis encounter when they work
with templates:
For template users:
-
The VisualEditor template dialog will be improved significantly. This
will be a bigger series of changes to help users make small edits without
accidentally breaking the template or page, and without needing to fully
understand the complexities of templates. This will include, among other
things, making descriptions and examples more visible, added links to
documentation, an easier way to insert files into a template, and a sidebar
which always shows the parameters a template can have. Also, some advanced
functionality will be hidden when they are not relevant.
-
It will become easier to find and to insert templates on a page, both in
the VisualEditor/Wikitext Editor 2017 and the TemplateWizard (WikiEditor
2010).
-
A small but helpful change will be that removing a template from a page
will become much easier when you’re using the VisualEditor.
For template creators and maintainers:
-
The TemplateData editor will be improved. TemplateData offers guidance
to VisualEditor users, and helps reduce errors and cleanup work, but many
templates don’t make full use of TemplateData yet. The work on this editor
will include several changes to make adding and changing TemplateData
easier.
-
A new parameter property ‘suggestedvalues’ will be introduced. This can
be used to create a list of values which VisualEditor users will be able to
select from a dropdown. This can also help reduce errors and create more
consistency in how the template fields are filled.
-
Matching brackets will be highlighted inside the existing syntax
highlighting feature. This will make working with complex template syntax
easier and is already active on a few wikis.
-
The color scheme for syntax highlighting will be improved, making code
easier to read, especially for contributors with low vision.
-
Finally, in syntax highlighting, line numbers will be added to be able
to detect line breaks at a glance. A side effect of this feature could be
that it will become easier to refer to a particular line in discussions.
Hence, the impact of this feature might be well beyond templates.
More information on the projects can be found on their project pages, which
are linked in this overview:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Templates
We plan to deploy these changes in batches, and the process will differ
depending on the feature: By June 2021, one change after the other will be
deployed to a set of initial wikis – some smaller changes will however be
deployed to all wikis right away. If your wiki wants to get all the changes
as soon as they are available, let me know. In any case, deployment of all
changes to all wikis is planned for later this year.
After bracket matching, which is already active on some wikis, we plan to
deploy the improved color scheme for syntax highlighting, the new parameter
property ‘suggestedvalues’ and line numbering next.
A big thanks to everyone who contributed to the Templates project so far,
by testing, providing feedback or else. Comments and questions are welcome
on the project's talk page. [4]
For the Technical Wishes team,
Johanna
[1] Make working with templates easier:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes
[2] Technical Wishes:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes
[3] Project history:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Templates#History
[4] Talk page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Templates