[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.18.0 released

Mon Nov 28 23:13:31 UTC 2011

We are proud to announce the first stable release of the 1.18 series.

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                             What's new?
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MediaWiki 1.18 brings the usual host of various bugfixes and new
features.

jQuery 1.6.4 is now included as standard, along with numerous
more jQuery plugins.

Breaking changes:
    * action=watch / action=unwatch now requires a token

As of 1.18, some commonly used extensions are now being included in the
released tarball; this is allow ease
of installation of these extensions in new MediaWiki installs. If you
already use the extension just replace
the files like you have done for MediaWiki iteself. The following extensions
are bundled with MediaWiki as of
1.18. All are currently in use on Wikimedia sites.

* ConfirmEdit — Various CAPTCHA techniques to try to prevent spambots and
other automated tools from editing your wiki.
* Gadgets — A system to allow users to enable or disable JavaScript or CSS
tools made available to users site-wide.
* Nuke — A special page allowing administrators to mass-delete content added
by a spammer or vandal.
* ParserFunctions — Additional parser functions (like #if and #switch to
supplement the "magic words" present in MediaWiki.
* Renameuser — A special page which allows authorized users to rename user
accounts.
* Vector — Enhancements to the Vector skin.
* WikiEditor — An improved and customizable editing toolbar developed along
the Vector skin.

Major features
-- ------------

Better gender support
-- -------------------

Until version 1.17, MediaWiki used neutral nouns to address and identify
users on their user page.
In English, this was not an issue since "User" matches both genders, but in
some languages the
neutral gender is always masculine; for example, this would cause
French-speaking female
Wikipedia users to be referred to as "Utilisateur" (male user) instead of
"Utilisatrice" (female user).
With version 1.18, user pages reflect the user's gender, if they have
specified it in their preferences.
More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists) will be available
in MediaWiki 1.19.

Improved file metadata support
-- -----------------------------

MediaWiki now detects the camera orientation from Exif metadata, and rotates
the
picture preview accordingly. The original file remains unchanged.

The overall metadata support in MediaWiki has been greatly extended.
Previously, MediaWiki could only
extract limited Exif metadata, and showed a subset of it on file description
pages. Since 1.18, MediaWiki
can extract IPTC and XMP metadata from uploaded files, and  more Exif 
information. This includes an
embedded description, author information,  GPS coordinates, or copyright
statement.

Improved directionality support
-- -------------------------------

A lot of work has been done to fix directionality bugs (Left-To-Right,
Right-To-Left). Most notably bug 6100 is
fixed, which allows to display an RTL interface on an LTR wiki properly (and
vice versa). This was developed
under $wgBetterDirectionality, which is now no longer used because the
improvements are merged with the core code.

A positive consequence is that the page content on wikis with multiple
scripts is aligned according to the
direction of the selected variant. For example, on a Kazakh language wiki,
selecting the Arabic script
variant will align the text as RTL, while selecting the Latin or Cyrillic
variant will align it as LTR.

Easily find where to customize interface messages
-------------------------------------------------

MediaWiki allows you to customize the user interface by editing pages in the
MediaWiki namespace.
However, even though they can be viewed at Special:AllMessages] the sheer
number of these messages
makes it difficult to find which one needs to be customized. In MediaWiki
1.18, a new pseudo-language
is introduced (qqx) to help people find such messages, by displaying the
messages' key instead of the
actual messages. All one has to do is append ?uselang=qqx to the page's
index.php/
URL
(see https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki_1.18&uselang=qqx 
as an example).

New plugin for collapsible elements
-- -----------------------------------

The new jQuery.makeCollapsible allows you to create collapsible tables,
lists and so on,
by adding the class mw-collapsible to the elements.
See the manual for
details: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Collapsible_elements

Protocol-relative URLs
-- ----------------------

MediaWiki now supports protocol - relative URLs in links, interwiki targets
and $wgServer.
Protocol-relative URLs look like //example.com/wiki/Foo ; the browser will
recognize this
as http://example.com/wiki/Foo when following a link from an HTTP page, and
https://example.com/wiki/Foo when following a link from an HTTPS page.
This way, protocol-relative URLs enable a wiki to support HTTP and HTTPS
while serving
the same HTML for both, which means the parser cache doesn't have to be
split.

More personalisable styles and scripts
-- --------------------------------------

MediaWiki now automatically loads javascript and stylesheets more specific
to each user.
There is a separate CSS and JS file for each usergroup
(MediaWiki:Group-sysop.css,
MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js, etc), and also a CSS file for users
viewing without
JavaScript (MediaWiki:Noscript.css).

Other changes
-- -------------

$wgEnableDublinCoreRdf and $wgEnableCreativeCommonsRdf no longer
work in core, and the functionality has been moved to the relevant
extensions.
See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DublinCoreRdf and
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CreativeCoreRdf as appropriate

Math
-  ----
$wgUseTeX has been superseded by the Math extension. To re-enable
math conversion after upgrading, obtain the Math extension from SVN or from
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math and add to LocalSettings.php:
require_once "$IP/extensions/Math/Math.php";

Language support
- ----------------

As with every release, MediaWiki 1.18 brings improved support for
languages in MediaWiki, with improved translation and features for
the many supported languages.

New languages:

* Angika (anp)
* Brahui (brh)
* Central Dusun (dtp)
* Jamaican Creole English (jam)
* Khowar (khw)
* Liv (liv)
* Kichwa (qug)

API
- ---

API bug fixes and new features have been added to 1.18, providing
more options for input and output.

    * API modules were added to access QueryPage based special
      pages, to Compare pages, Revert files, and to be able to access
      other special pages such as Special:UnwatchedPages,
      Special:MimeSearch and Special:ActiveUsers

    * The output of the generated help page has been improved

The API contains a breaking changes against previous releases:

    * action=watch now requires POST and token.

Other
- -----

Our thanks go to everyone who helped to improve MediaWiki
by testing the beta release and submitting bug reports and patches.

For more information about what's new in the MediaWiki 1.17 branch, see:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.17

Frequently asked questions about upgrading:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ#Upgrading

Changes since 1.18.0rc1
-- ---------------------------

* (bug 32228) regression in Special:Search which did not conserve profile on
new search
* (bug 32460) Categories were improperly aligned in Simple and CologneBlue
* (bug 32412) TOC links on [[Special:EditWatchlist]] points to the fieldsets
* (bug 32582) Fix TOC show/hide link regression on IE 8

Release notes
- -------------

Complete release notes are at

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.18

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Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.tar.gz

Patch to previous version (1.18.0rc1), without interface text:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.patch.gz
Interface text changes:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-i18n-1.18.0.patch.gz

GPG signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.tar.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.0.patch.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-i18n-1.18.0patch.gz.s
ig

Public keys:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html