[WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
Hi all, This is something I've been tinkering with for a bit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9svwrlvf839z9f/device-2014-06-04-085320.png IMHO, the Wiki markup syntax can be quite daunting for new editors, and when editing articles with a lot of markup, the edit window can look like a cacophony of symbols. In lieu of a full-blown VE interface, I propose implementing a minimal form of syntax highlighting that will at least guide new editors on the usage of Wiki markup, and might even help experienced editors double-check what they're adding without requiring a preview. What does everyone think of this? -Dmitry ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan yastrak...@wikimedia.org wrote: I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup. Possibly, although ACE (the one we use on desktop) has somewhat terrible perf on Mobile the last time I checked (a few months ago). Lots of cursor placement issues as well. If we do it on Android, it'll most likely just use Android Spannables in a regular EditText - should be much faster and bug free, I think. -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
Hmm, I wonder if we can do something crazy like embed Parsoid for consistent parsing? :D It might also make sense to explore a 'partial' VE that displays links like links, bold like bold, shows placeholders for images etc. For us programmers syntax highlighting is great but it's still scary markup. :) Whether it makes more sense to use attributed strings / rich strings in the system text editor widget or to use a webview as a VE or partial-VE may take some experimenting... depends how deep down the rabbit hole we're willing to go. :D -- brion On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 6:24 AM, Yuvi Panda yuvipa...@gmail.com wrote: Wooo, that is quite awesome! :D Simple subtle highlighting would be quite awesome. And assuming you are doing some amount of wikitext parsing (rather than regexing) that would be useful for other operations too, I think (popping up link inspectors and stuff). I greatly approve! -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
Yeah, Ace has some bad touch support too, and it's got serious problems with RTL and variable-width characters. If we do syntax highlighting, staying in the native editor widget is probably best for performance and consistency of behavior on both Android and iOS. (Text edit widgets support annotated text with some styling, which should be enough for our needs.) -- brion On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Yuvi Panda yuvipa...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan yastrak...@wikimedia.org wrote: I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup. Possibly, although ACE (the one we use on desktop) has somewhat terrible perf on Mobile the last time I checked (a few months ago). Lots of cursor placement issues as well. If we do it on Android, it'll most likely just use Android Spannables in a regular EditText - should be much faster and bug free, I think. -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
That's exactly how I'm implementing it (Spannable strings in the native EditText view). It's pretty simple and fast to do it this way; and I would think that any amount of syntax highlighting is better than none? This might serve well until we get around to a more complete VE for mobile. On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Brion Vibber bvib...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yeah, Ace has some bad touch support too, and it's got serious problems with RTL and variable-width characters. If we do syntax highlighting, staying in the native editor widget is probably best for performance and consistency of behavior on both Android and iOS. (Text edit widgets support annotated text with some styling, which should be enough for our needs.) -- brion On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Yuvi Panda yuvipa...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan yastrak...@wikimedia.org wrote: I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup. Possibly, although ACE (the one we use on desktop) has somewhat terrible perf on Mobile the last time I checked (a few months ago). Lots of cursor placement issues as well. If we do it on Android, it'll most likely just use Android Spannables in a regular EditText - should be much faster and bug free, I think. -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
I've always thought something like this would be useful for wikitext editing, I even tinkered with this on an older project (it's fricking hard problem on the web!). Alas, the textarea element on the web doesn't help this sort of thing... you have to basically maintain a textarea and a div with identical styling and keep them in sync with one another. If it's easier on apps you should definitely do this! On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: Great idea! I've added a card to our backlog for this. It'll need design refinement and it's not clear to me where it fits in with our current priorities, but it's a pretty nifty proof of concept! Thanks, Dan On 4 June 2014 06:21, Dmitry Brant dbr...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all, This is something I've been tinkering with for a bit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9svwrlvf839z9f/device-2014-06-04-085320.png IMHO, the Wiki markup syntax can be quite daunting for new editors, and when editing articles with a lot of markup, the edit window can look like a cacophony of symbols. In lieu of a full-blown VE interface, I propose implementing a minimal form of syntax highlighting that will at least guide new editors on the usage of Wiki markup, and might even help experienced editors double-check what they're adding without requiring a preview. What does everyone think of this? -Dmitry ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
Excellent job Dmitry this looks very promising. Dan, thanks for getting in on the board so that we can prioritize and allocate resources accordingly. --tomasz On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: Great idea! I've added a card to our backlog for this. It'll need design refinement and it's not clear to me where it fits in with our current priorities, but it's a pretty nifty proof of concept! Thanks, Dan On 4 June 2014 06:21, Dmitry Brant dbr...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all, This is something I've been tinkering with for a bit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9svwrlvf839z9f/device-2014-06-04-085320.png IMHO, the Wiki markup syntax can be quite daunting for new editors, and when editing articles with a lot of markup, the edit window can look like a cacophony of symbols. In lieu of a full-blown VE interface, I propose implementing a minimal form of syntax highlighting that will at least guide new editors on the usage of Wiki markup, and might even help experienced editors double-check what they're adding without requiring a preview. What does everyone think of this? -Dmitry ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Syntax highlighting in Edit window
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:42 PM, Vibha Bamba vba...@wikimedia.org wrote: This is solid progress. Does this mean preview will also carry highlighting very soon? :) Of course we will want to treat colors etc so the markup doesn't feel like a link. Preview highlighting is another can of worms but solveable. It requires HTML Diffs, which apps are well suited to be able to do (since we have the HTML structure before and after). Slightly complicated algorithmy problem, though. - Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
[WikimediaMobile] Apps page styling issues etherpad link
Here's a quick link to a page Vibha and I started as a scratchpad for a list of page styling issues we've identified in particular articles. https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/App_Page_Styling Wanted to share this as an initial touchpoint for surfacing some small styling tweaks that may need to be made to MobileApp css files. ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
[WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Discussions on apps: what do?
Hey everyone, Monte, Yuvi, Danny (PM for Flow) and I met today to discuss our way forwards with discussions on apps. The statement of the problem is that the apps currently don't surface discussions at all; both article talk and user talk are not made apparent to the user. This creates problems for power users and new users alike; power users workflows are built around discussions so we serve them poorly, and new users can't interact with anyone, which includes things like new users being unable to read vandalism warnings. Our solution needs to let people participate meaningfully in discussions, both on article talk pages and also meta-discussions (user talk pages, etc.) So the question is, do we do a styling pass on talk pages to make them easier to use on the apps and surface those talk pages, or do we just wait for Flow (for some definition of wait)? We were leaning towards the former, but wanted to make sure we'd considered all the variables before proclaiming we had a solution. We discussed. We felt that waiting for Flow introduces too many unknowns; Flow will not be deployed to user talk pages for at least six months, which is a long time to wait to get discussions implemented. Even then, it may be even longer before we can reliably say all discussions are on Flow. We can't afford to wait that long to serve the need for discussions in the app. *This email in a nutshell: Waiting for Flow is insufficient. We want to do a styling pass on talk pages to make them usable on apps.* Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks, Dan -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
[WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Edit workflow refinements
Hi all, Monte, Yuvi, Vibha, Moiz, Jared, Howie and I met today to talk about refining the edit workflow on the apps. The statement of the problem is that user testing has shown that in the current workflow the preview step is not useful; people are not recognising that it is a preview, not recognising the edit summary box is there, and accidentally abandoning their edits because they think they've saved already. This is related to the fact that there are too many steps in the edit workflow. In particular, the call to action to sign in and save or save anonymously was basically ignored by everyone who tested the app. Our macro-level goal for the app is to get people to edit. Whether that's by signing in and saving or by saving anonymously isn't as important to us as *actually getting them to edit.* Our course of action is therefore multi-faceted: 1. For the MVP we're removing the call to action to sign in and save. Since people are ignoring it, it's not really serving any purpose in the current workflow except to bloat it. This drastically reduces the number of steps in the process. 2. We're flipping the edit summary box and preview around, so that when you make a change and click next you see the edit summary on top. This makes it clearer that your edit hasn't saved, it emphasises the canned edit summaries that users responded positively to in the testing, and makes the preview step feel more optional. We're also going to restyle this page slightly to make it clearer. The workflow for editing is now press edit make change press next enter edit summary (and optionally view preview) save. This makes the workflow much easier to use, and a lot clearer. I realise that my description above isn't great; Vibha and Moiz are going to create a mockup for it, and I'll share that on this list once we've got it. Thanks everyone! Dan -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
Re: [WikimediaMobile] Apps page styling issues etherpad link
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/137504 also adds the enwiki Mobile.css hacks into the ResourceLoader module, so that should improve styling as well. You can also instead test on the Android app :D -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
[WikimediaMobile] Mobile tags for Wikipedia android app
This afternoon Dan and I reviewed how tags from the android app are captured in the change_tag and tag_summary tables. (1) We noticed that the “mobile app edit” tag is applied to recentchanges events that are not edits, but new account registrations: SELECT * FROM enwiki.change_tag WHERE ct_rev_id IS NULL AND ct_tag = mobile app edit; ct_rc_idct_log_id ct_rev_id ct_tag ct_params 661123291 56899294NULLmobile app edit NULL 661123407 56899301NULLmobile app edit NULL 661124928 56899375NULLmobile app edit NULL 661127933 56899610NULLmobile app edit NULL 661128644 56899685NULLmobile app edit NULL 661131626 56899908NULLmobile app edit NULL 661133278 5688NULLmobile app edit NULL 661134572 56900072NULLmobile app edit NULL 661140653 56900620NULLmobile app edit NULL 661155198 56901558NULLmobile app edit NULL 661155799 56901593NULLmobile app edit NULL 661156983 56901659NULLmobile app edit NULL AFAIK this is unusual behavior for tags and will create artifacts in tagged revisions unless people are aware that all these registration-related events always need to be excluded (it’s also confusing because the name of the tag explicitly refers to an edit). As suggested earlier [1], we should not track the source of account registrations via MediaWiki tags but via the ServerSideAccountCreation log. (2) edits made on apps should be stored with two separate tags: “mobile edit” and “mobile app edit”. The tags are correctly stored in the change_tag table with 2 records for each revisions, e.g. SELECT * FROM enwiki.change_tag WHERE ct_rc_id = 661110028; ct_rc_idct_log_id ct_rev_id ct_tag ct_params 661110028 NULL611585155 mobile app edit NULL 661110028 NULL611585155 mobile edit NULL but when the tags are combined in the tag_summary table, the “mobile app edit” tag is lost: SELECT * FROM enwiki.tag_summary WHERE ts_rc_id = 661110028; ts_rc_idts_log_id ts_rev_id ts_tags 661110028 NULL611585155 mobile edit This should not be the case, the 2 tags should be concatenated in the ts_tags field, see for example this desktop revision with 2 tags: SELECT * FROM enwiki.change_tag WHERE ct_rc_id = 578489188; ct_rc_idct_log_id ct_rev_id ct_tag ct_params 578489188 NULL64321 gettingstarted edit NULL 578489188 NULL64321 visualeditorNULL SELECT * FROM enwiki.tag_summary WHERE ts_rc_id = 578489188; ts_rc_idts_log_id ts_rev_id ts_tags 578489188 NULL64321 gettingstarted edit,visualeditor I believe that neither (1) nor (2) is intended behavior for apps. Can you guys confirm and if so, can we fix this? Dario [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2014-May/007150.html___ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
