Back in July, we had a lengthy discussion about the possibility of switching to HTML5:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/043865.html
The conclusion appeared to be that switching to HTML5 was a good idea. As of July 12 (r53142), MediaWiki has been outputting HTML5 continuously as the default:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/53142
There have been only a few minor problems reported by various trunk users, all of which were quickly fixed. The current state of HTML5 support is discussed here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/HTML5
When we had our last scap six weeks ago, $wgHtml5 was disabled on Wikimedia to reduce the number of variables to keep track of, since a huge amount of code was changing at once. Although we're currently in the middle of some organizational issues due to Brion's resignation, I think it would be safe to experimentally turn on $wgHtml5 and see what happens. If any problems are reported that can't be fixed immediately, of course, it could be turned off again, but I think this is quite unlikely. I'll be available for the next few weeks to work on any issues that arise. Would this be okay?
On 04.11.2009, 19:28 Aryeh wrote:
Back in July, we had a lengthy discussion about the possibility of switching to HTML5:
. . .
Would this be okay?
Fine by me as a bot developer, the lack of XML well-formedness will not break AWB. Those poor souls who still screen-scrape should expect all kinds of breakages anyway. The API is mature and was there for enough time for everyone who cares to migrate.
Max Semenik wrote:
Those poor souls who still screen-scrape should expect all kinds of breakages anyway.
That's no reason not to warn them ahead of time. Crossposting the notice to wikibots-l and pywikipedia-l.
A change like wgHtml5=true seems a good time to change the legacy code to use the api.
Please report anything doable with screen-scrapping but not with mediawiki api.
Aryeh Gregor writes:
Back in July, we had a lengthy discussion about the possibility of switching to HTML5:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/043865.html
The conclusion appeared to be that switching to HTML5 was a good idea. As of July 12 (r53142), MediaWiki has been outputting HTML5 continuously as the default:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/53142
There have been only a few minor problems reported by various trunk users, all of which were quickly fixed. The current state of HTML5 support is discussed here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/HTML5
When we had our last scap six weeks ago, $wgHtml5 was disabled on Wikimedia to reduce the number of variables to keep track of, since a huge amount of code was changing at once. Although we're currently in the middle of some organizational issues due to Brion's resignation, I think it would be safe to experimentally turn on $wgHtml5 and see what happens. If any problems are reported that can't be fixed immediately, of course, it could be turned off again, but I think this is quite unlikely. I'll be available for the next few weeks to work on any issues that arise. Would this be okay?
On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
That's no reason not to warn them ahead of time. Crossposting the notice to wikibots-l and pywikipedia-l.
A change like wgHtml5=true seems a good time to change the legacy code to use the api.
Please report anything doable with screen-scrapping but not with mediawiki api.
I don't expect any bots to break, even if they screen-scrape. The actual changes to HTML output are minimal -- a different doctype, a few useless elements and attributes dropped. Unless your script relies on the fact that all <script> elements have type="text/javascript" or something similarly crazy, you should be fine even if you screen-scrape.
Switching $wgWellFormedXml to false would certainly break screen-scrapers that rely on XML parsing libraries. However, I don't propose we do this right now -- I'm only suggesting we output HTML5, not cease outputting well-formed XML. Eventually, perhaps, we should consider dropping XML output, especially once HTML5 parsing libraries are more readily available, but not in the foreseeable future.
The only breakage I can foresee would be caused by the switch from "almost standards" to "standards" mode. But the difference is pretty minor (far more minor than quirks vs. almost standards), and I don't expect anything to break seriously, or in a way that can't be quickly fixed. No trunk users (TranslateWiki, etc.) have reported any outstanding problems that I know of.
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