Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote:
Why not?
The reason that a span is needed there is because there's no access to
the attributes of a
Or maybe you actually want a span. Like, say, to provide a background
around the link or something, like
span class=foo[[Bar]]/span
.foo { background: red; padding: 1em; }
.foo a { background: green; color: white; }
Or whatever. ab/b/a is not the same as b/b.
Allowing a, the silly spambots posting html links would begin working. :(
Well, the edit is no more obnoxious if the link actually shows up as a
link instead of HTML gibberish. It has to be reverted either way.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
Aryeh Gregor wrote: In theory. The problem is organizational: the people who change the software, the people who change the stylesheets on any particular wiki, and the people who sync new versions of the software to the site constitute a few hundred different groups, mostly pairwise disjoint. There are over a thousand Wikimedia wikis last I heard, and to be sure we didn't break anything we'd have to review all of their stylesheets and fix them if necessary. We have done other big changes in the past. Almost all creations/renamings of mediawiki messages need local community action! It would be interesting if we had a procedure for this, however. It should suffice to write a script to grep all the stylesheets on all sites for appropriate rules, and ask a steward or other global sysop to add the replacement rules before the software is synced (in addition to the old ones, so there's no period where neither set works). This is more convenient now than it used to be, since we do have a unified login and global sysops. Now, why don't we allow a in wikimarkup? . . . What's the problem with it? Just not being able to add class/style attributes? There's some code adding parameters to the wikilinks, but I find them ugly. I'd prefer compressing spans surrounding anchor elements into the a. Ie. span foo=bar[[baz]]/span to produce a href=baz foo=barbaz/a ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
Also sprach Aryeh Gregor: We have done other big changes in the past. Almost all creations/renamings of mediawiki messages need local community action! The real problem is user CSS/JS, I suspect. People tend to copy-paste that, and changes to document structure can break a lot of it without any easy way to gauge the extent of the problem or fix it. (For those more familiar with CSS/JS than with MediaWiki, I'm referring to user subpages here, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Simetrical/monobook.js. I'm not referring to stuff people have in their browsers, which is of course impossible to track or fix even in principle.) Right. While user CSS/JS is an interesting feature (in fact, it's a fundamental feature in CSS), it would be a loss if it prevents the HTML code from being improved. Wikipedia should be bold, both in the content and in the style and structure. Cheers, -hkon Håkon Wium Lie CTO °þe®ª howc...@opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Håkon Wium Lie howc...@opera.com wrote: Right. While user CSS/JS is an interesting feature (in fact, it's a fundamental feature in CSS), it would be a loss if it prevents the HTML code from being improved. Wikipedia should be bold, both in the content and in the style and structure. Well, I'm okay with it. It might be a useful project to allow a in wikitext like other HTML. I don't think it would be a big deal, although some others have pointed out that it would need to be make part of link updates. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
2009/4/2 Håkon Wium Lie howc...@opera.com: Also sprach Aryeh Gregor: (For those more familiar with CSS/JS than with MediaWiki, I'm referring to user subpages here, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Simetrical/monobook.js. I'm not referring to stuff people have in their browsers, which is of course impossible to track or fix even in principle.) Right. While user CSS/JS is an interesting feature (in fact, it's a fundamental feature in CSS), it would be a loss if it prevents the HTML code from being improved. Wikipedia should be bold, both in the content and in the style and structure. Indeed. Wikitext is a significant backward compatibility requirement; IE6 compatibility and text/speech browser graceful degradation is a significant backware compatibility requirement. Random hacked-up customisations and ricing-up that people put on their personal views themselves are not significant backward compatibility requirements. - d. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
[Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
In the quest to simplify and improve Wikipedia's HTML code, the turn has come to footnotes. Here is a proposal that describes how the number of elements needed to represent footnotes can be halved: http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/ref/ As far as I can tell, the proposed markup works in legacy browsers, too. Cheers, -hkon Håkon Wium Lie CTO °þe®ª howc...@opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
Håkon Wium Lie wrote: In the quest to simplify and improve Wikipedia's HTML code, the turn has come to footnotes. Here is a proposal that describes how the number of elements needed to represent footnotes can be halved: http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/ref/ As far as I can tell, the proposed markup works in legacy browsers, too. I like it, except adding square brackets with CSS. Uses that are the most likely not to support CSS are exactly the uses where the brackets are most needed. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:52 AM, Håkon Wium Lie howc...@opera.com wrote:
In the quest to simplify and improve Wikipedia's HTML code, the turn
has come to footnotes. Here is a proposal that describes how the
number of elements needed to represent footnotes can be halved:
http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/ref/
As far as I can tell, the proposed markup works in legacy browsers,
too.
This looks good overall. Some comments:
1) A problem we often tend to have with this kind of thing is that
users write lots of custom CSS and JS that depends on the exact
elements used, which breaks if we change the markup. For instance, I
find the following rules in the English Wikipedia's custom stylesheet:
sup.reference:target {
background-color: #DEF;
}
/* stop references with groups from line-breaking */
sup.reference a {white-space: nowrap;}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css
These would break if we got rid of the sup, on the English Wikipedia
and possibly on tons of other wikis as well. This makes me reluctant
to do that.
2) I notice you used font-size: 85%; vertical-align: 35% instead of
the CSS2.1 recommended value for sup, font-size: 83%; vertical-align:
sup. Is there any particular reason for this? Specifically, one
important objective for such a change would be that line-spacing
shouldn't be changed, and I'd have to test that in various browsers to
avoid regression there.
3) Some of the changes you recommend actually aren't software issues,
but customizations by the particular wiki's sysops. In particular,
the extra spans around the square brackets are specific to enwiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cite_reference_linkaction=history
So is the b:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cite_references_link_oneaction=history
In the default software, they don't exist. To get rid of them, you'd
want to make a suggestion on wikien-l, the enwiki Village Pump, or a
similar forum. wikitech-l is mostly for the developers and sysadmins,
who can't really affect what particular communities choose to do in
this sort of thing.
4) The reason we have an a inside a sup turns out to be because in
wikimarkup, you can't give custom attributes to a. The markup used
for the message is wikimarkup, which simply cannot achieve your
suggested HTML output. We'd have to move this to raw HTML to allow
it, which would mean hardcoding it into the software, since we don't
like to give sysops access to output raw HTML (to reduce the chance of
invalid markup -- they can add arbitrary JS anyway, so XSS isn't
really an issue). This would probably annoy people, since they've
already customized it. Or we'd have to add support for explicit a
to wikimarkup -- maybe a good idea, but also a bigger project.
I do like your proposed markup, and think it would be great if we
could move to simpler and more semantic markup overall, but it's not
clear to me how to best go about implementing most of it. I've at
least removed the empty title= attribute, in r49075. Of the rest,
some I can't do: it's up to enwiki sysops. And one bit (giving
attributes to the a element) wouldn't work at all without some
potentially significant unrelated changes. But it would be nice if we
could move more in this direction, definitely.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
Also sprach Aryeh Gregor:
http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/ref/
This looks good overall.
Thanks.
1) A problem we often tend to have with this kind of thing is that
users write lots of custom CSS and JS that depends on the exact
elements used, which breaks if we change the markup. For instance, I
find the following rules in the English Wikipedia's custom stylesheet:
sup.reference:target {
background-color: #DEF;
}
/* stop references with groups from line-breaking */
sup.reference a {white-space: nowrap;}
The selectors would have to be rewritten to match the revised markup:
a.ref:target { background-color: #DEF }
a.ref { white-space: nowrap }
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css
These would break if we got rid of the sup, on the English Wikipedia
and possibly on tons of other wikis as well. This makes me reluctant
to do that.
It's easy enough to rewrite, and the worst-case scenario is a minor
stylistic change for some users. In the best case, the markup and the
style sheet are changed in sync.
2) I notice you used font-size: 85%; vertical-align: 35% instead of
the CSS2.1 recommended value for sup, font-size: 83%; vertical-align:
sup. Is there any particular reason for this?
Indeed, CSS 2.1 proposes [1]:
sup { vertical-align: super }
However, with this value, some legacy browsers (IE6/IE7) place the
footnote call slightly higher than Wikipedia currently uses. So, the
35% value was chosen as it seems to result in pixel-perfect
renditions. I would be equally happy with the super value.
The 85% value is semi-arbitrary, I've changed it to 83% which seems to
work equally well.
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/sample.html
Specifically, one important objective for such a change would be
that line-spacing shouldn't be changed, and I'd have to test that
in various browsers to avoid regression there.
Yes.
3) Some of the changes you recommend actually aren't software issues,
but customizations by the particular wiki's sysops. In particular,
the extra spans around the square brackets are specific to enwiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cite_reference_linkaction=history
So is the b:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cite_references_link_oneaction=history
Interesting. No good reasons are given. Hmm.
In the default software, they don't exist. To get rid of them, you'd
want to make a suggestion on wikien-l, the enwiki Village Pump, or a
similar forum. wikitech-l is mostly for the developers and sysadmins,
who can't really affect what particular communities choose to do in
this sort of thing.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
4) The reason we have an a inside a sup turns out to be because in
wikimarkup, you can't give custom attributes to a. The markup used
for the message is wikimarkup, which simply cannot achieve your
suggested HTML output. We'd have to move this to raw HTML to allow
it, which would mean hardcoding it into the software, since we don't
like to give sysops access to output raw HTML (to reduce the chance of
invalid markup -- they can add arbitrary JS anyway, so XSS isn't
really an issue). This would probably annoy people, since they've
already customized it. Or we'd have to add support for explicit a
to wikimarkup -- maybe a good idea, but also a bigger project.
I'm happy to be put in the bigger project category -- I'm here for
the long term -- centuries :-)
I do like your proposed markup, and think it would be great if we
could move to simpler and more semantic markup overall, but it's not
clear to me how to best go about implementing most of it. I've at
least removed the empty title= attribute, in r49075. Of the rest,
some I can't do: it's up to enwiki sysops. And one bit (giving
attributes to the a element) wouldn't work at all without some
potentially significant unrelated changes. But it would be nice if we
could move more in this direction, definitely.
Thanks for your considered reply.
Cheers,
-hkon
Håkon Wium Lie CTO °þe®ª
howc...@opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome
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Re: [Wikitech-l] A proposal to simplify and improve footnote markup in Wikipedia
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Håkon Wium Lie howc...@opera.com wrote: It's easy enough to rewrite, and the worst-case scenario is a minor stylistic change for some users. In the best case, the markup and the style sheet are changed in sync. In theory. The problem is organizational: the people who change the software, the people who change the stylesheets on any particular wiki, and the people who sync new versions of the software to the site constitute a few hundred different groups, mostly pairwise disjoint. There are over a thousand Wikimedia wikis last I heard, and to be sure we didn't break anything we'd have to review all of their stylesheets and fix them if necessary. It would be interesting if we had a procedure for this, however. It should suffice to write a script to grep all the stylesheets on all sites for appropriate rules, and ask a steward or other global sysop to add the replacement rules before the software is synced (in addition to the old ones, so there's no period where neither set works). This is more convenient now than it used to be, since we do have a unified login and global sysops. Now, why don't we allow a in wikimarkup? . . . ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
