[Mediawiki-l] Real live preview

[Titoxd@Wikimedia]

Sorry for the double post, but I realized this would perhaps be a better
list to discuss this, as this involves more the MediaWiki software than
Wikimedia administration.

 

Since that WYSIWYG thread is becoming excessively long, and I already wasted
three hours trying to read the arguments, and didn't even get halfway
through the thread, I'll just post anyway. Forgive me I repeat something
already said.

 

There's two opinions that throw the baby out with the bathwater: one asks
for complete WYSIWG editing, and the other one includes no support for that.
Both of them have no chance of making it through, so try to pick things out
of them that are beneficial and try to combine them.

 

I have "Show preview on first edit" enabled on my preferences, so I see the
current state of a page every time when I click edit. My current approach is
to hover down to where the edit box is and attack the blob of text
indiscriminately, then click "Show preview" and make sure I didn't destroy
anything. Most users do that, so we already have a wikitext->parsed text
conversion going. Why don't we have a parsed text->wikitext conversion
available too? For example, I could click on the "preview" text, type a
sentence or correct a typo, make sure it looks ok, then click an "refresh
boxes" button that would update the edit box with the text I added, and if
possible, convert it to wikitext, where the current save and preview
functions would still be available.

 

This has several advantages:

* There is a considerably lower barrier to entry

* Making a change on the preview pane will also update the wikitext, which
allows users to see what changes they did, and more importantly, the wiki
markup that corresponds to those changes, making the learning curve easier

* Seasoned editors do not need to touch the preview text; they can go
straight for the markup in the edit box

* It can be disabled in a user's preferences, if it really gets that
annoying for the user to have to deal with it

* More complicated edits on the preview pane, such as adding a wikilink, can
be done only with button, essentially encouraging editors to learn wiki
markup

* Adding unsafe HTML tags can be disabled when preview pane editing, or even
better - all XHTML tags need to be added through the current edit box, to
discourage their use

* No real changes to data storage, parser tests, etc...

 

Since it is not a matter of whether it is going to be done (as by what I
understand, The Boss said that it should be done *eventually*), wouldn't
that be a better approach, instead of forcing all users to have to go under
a system they may not like? 

 

Titoxd.