Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Brian  wrote:
> Whatever happened to object-oriented programming and abstraction? Why can't
> you define and provide a consistent API?

Object-oriented programming and abstraction do not magically avoid the
problem of requirements and functionality changing over time.  It's
possible to provide a very stable API, but it takes a lot of work.
It's necessary for, say, an operating system (and even they often mess
up), but it's just not worth it in most other cases.  Firefox
extensions also sometimes break on upgrade, for instance.  The same is
true for extension mechanisms in the large majority of software.

You have to weigh the costs against the benefits in all cases.  Since
no actual significant costs have yet been presented here, this whole
line of discussion seems like a tempest in a teapot.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Andrew Garrett]

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 3:08 AM, Brion Vibber  wrote:
> On 4/24/09 6:36 AM, Eugene Zelenko wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Andrew Garrett  
>> wrote:
>>> The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
>>> is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!
>>
>> I think will be good idea to use API internally (not only have
>> possibility to call), as result code will have more testing and
>> coverage.

> Client-side JavaScript UI code can use the API to reach the backend, but
> I don't see much benefit to trying to use the API on the PHP UI end;
> it'll generally just be awkward.
>
> API code should rarely have to do any serious DB or processing work
> itself; it should be calling the backend model/controller-level interface.

I mean, of course, that the back-end business logic interface can be
called internally, not that the API can be called internally.

-- 
Andrew Garrett

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Trevor Parscal]

On 4/24/09 4:38 PM, Alex wrote:
> While backwards compatibility is nice, if it stands in the way of
> improving something that needs improvement, the improvement should take
> priority
Indeed - even Microsoft eventually abandoned Windows 3.1 
compatibility... And more recently compatibility with all software in 
existence.

- Trevor

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Alex]

Brian wrote:
> Whatever happened to object-oriented programming and abstraction? Why can't
> you define and provide a consistent API?
> 

The old preferences system didn't use anything like that, which is why
it needed to be totally rewritten. The old system was basically a
hardcoded form and extensions had to add preferences by appending to the
HTML.

While backwards compatibility is nice, if it stands in the way of
improving something that needs improvement, the improvement should take
priority.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Chad]

APIs change in incompatible ways sometimes. When it's avoidable, that's
great. Andrew seems to indicate that in this case, it wasn't possible to keep
the hooks identical to how they were. That's why its best to keep extensions
in svn so developers can easily spot and fix issues like this when they arise.

-Chad

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Brian  wrote:
> Whatever happened to object-oriented programming and abstraction? Why can't
> you define and provide a consistent API?
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Aryeh Gregor
> 
>> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Brian  wrote:
>> > I am just hoping to prevent a repeat of ParserPP.
>>
>> A *lot* more extensions use parser-related stuff than preferences.  In
>> any event, the upheaval of ParserPP was probably necessary given what
>> it sought to achieve.  That sort of thing happens from time to time --
>> it's not feasible for extensions with access to so many hooks and
>> methods to just work forever.
>>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brian]

Whatever happened to object-oriented programming and abstraction? Why can't
you define and provide a consistent API?

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Aryeh Gregor

> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Brian  wrote:
> > I am just hoping to prevent a repeat of ParserPP.
>
> A *lot* more extensions use parser-related stuff than preferences.  In
> any event, the upheaval of ParserPP was probably necessary given what
> it sought to achieve.  That sort of thing happens from time to time --
> it's not feasible for extensions with access to so many hooks and
> methods to just work forever.
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Platonides]

Alex wrote:
> Extensions can add their own preferences more easily now. Adding a
> default preference to turn off a feature that doesn't yet exist in
> MediaWiki core doesn't make much sense.

A preference name could be reserved to be consistently used by all
alternate editors.
Anyway, IMHO any alternate editor should offer an option to disable it
directly on the edit page, regardless of a preference which would define
"don't appear by default".



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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Brian  wrote:
> I am just hoping to prevent a repeat of ParserPP.

A *lot* more extensions use parser-related stuff than preferences.  In
any event, the upheaval of ParserPP was probably necessary given what
it sought to achieve.  That sort of thing happens from time to time --
it's not feasible for extensions with access to so many hooks and
methods to just work forever.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Soxred93  wrote:
> Keep in mind that when MediaWiki is developed, the best interests of
> Wikimedia are in mind. Wikimedia takes priority on MW development.

Not as a general rule.  If we really didn't care about third-party
users, we'd require the very latest version of PHP (since Wikimedia
uses it), write large chunks of the software in other languages
(Wikipedia has Python installed), and so on.  The suggestion to allow
embedded Lua in templates seems not to be happening primarily because
it would make Wikipedia content unusable by third parties on shared
hosting.

Although development of MediaWiki tends to focus primarily on
Wikimedia's needs, it does *not* do so if that would significantly
hurt MediaWiki's utility to third parties.  Part of Wikimedia's goals
is to make its content as useful as possible to third parties.  That
applies to MediaWiki insofar as it's a Wikimedia project, and doubly
so insofar as it's needed to effectively use content from Wikimedia's
other projects like Wikipedia.

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Brian  wrote:
> What does this have to do with not horribly breaking many extensions at the
> same time? The WMF has cultivated an extension ecosystem and it makes sense
> to protect it.

Do you have evidence that many extensions are, in fact, horribly
broken?  And if so, that they can't be easily fixed?

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brian]

I am just hoping to prevent a repeat of ParserPP.

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Aryeh Gregor

> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Soxred93  wrote:
> > Keep in mind that when MediaWiki is developed, the best interests of
> > Wikimedia are in mind. Wikimedia takes priority on MW development.
>
> Not as a general rule.  If we really didn't care about third-party
> users, we'd require the very latest version of PHP (since Wikimedia
> uses it), write large chunks of the software in other languages
> (Wikipedia has Python installed), and so on.  The suggestion to allow
> embedded Lua in templates seems not to be happening primarily because
> it would make Wikipedia content unusable by third parties on shared
> hosting.
>
> Although development of MediaWiki tends to focus primarily on
> Wikimedia's needs, it does *not* do so if that would significantly
> hurt MediaWiki's utility to third parties.  Part of Wikimedia's goals
> is to make its content as useful as possible to third parties.  That
> applies to MediaWiki insofar as it's a Wikimedia project, and doubly
> so insofar as it's needed to effectively use content from Wikimedia's
> other projects like Wikipedia.
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Brian  wrote:
> > What does this have to do with not horribly breaking many extensions at
> the
> > same time? The WMF has cultivated an extension ecosystem and it makes
> sense
> > to protect it.
>
> Do you have evidence that many extensions are, in fact, horribly
> broken?  And if so, that they can't be easily fixed?
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
How much work do you think it will be to repair an extension that needs
repair ? For someone who knows the code and for someone who just has to
repair his one extension ??
Thanks,
  GerardM

2009/4/24 Brian 

> How many non-WMF extensions will this break?
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Andrew Garrett  >wrote:
>
> > I've branch-merged the new preferences system that I've spent the last
> > few weeks developing.
> >
> > On the outside, you probably won't notice any difference except a few
> > bugfixes, but the internals have undergone a complete rewrite.
> >
> > All of the actual preference definitions and utility functions have
> > been separated out into Preferences.php, which holds all business
> > logic for the new system. The UI and submission logic for the system
> > is done in SpecialPreferences.php, which, now only a hundred lines
> > long, wraps a generic class I've written to encourage separation of
> > business and UI logic called 'HTMLForm'.
> >
> > The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
> > is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!
> >
> > Extensions must now hook GetPreferences instead of the existing hooks
> > (which were too low-level to maintain compatibility with), I've
> > updated all extensions used on Wikimedia. This new hook allows you to
> > put preferences wherever you want, and a new preference can be added
> > in less than ten lines of code, rather than the hundred-line nightmare
> > that was required in the previous iteration.
> >
> > I'd like to look towards trimming some of the existing preferences
> > that are no longer relevant, and adding new preferences as common
> > sense dictates.
> >
> > Feedback, praise and criticism regarding the changes is certainly
> welcome!
> >
> > --
> > Andrew Garrett
> > Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
> >
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> >
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brian]

What does this have to do with not horribly breaking many extensions at the
same time? The WMF has cultivated an extension ecosystem and it makes sense
to protect it.

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Soxred93  wrote:

> Keep in mind that when MediaWiki is developed, the best interests of
> Wikimedia are in mind. Wikimedia takes priority on MW development.
>
> X!
>
>
> On Apr 24, 2009, at 4:02 PM [Apr 24, 2009 ], Jacopo Corbetta wrote:
>
>  Many wikis use MediaWiki beside Wikipedia.
>>
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Soxred93]

Keep in mind that when MediaWiki is developed, the best interests of  
Wikimedia are in mind. Wikimedia takes priority on MW development.


X!

On Apr 24, 2009, at 4:02 PM [Apr 24, 2009 ], Jacopo Corbetta wrote:


Many wikis use MediaWiki beside Wikipedia.




PGP.sig
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Alex]

Jacopo Corbetta wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 19:04, Trevor Parscal  wrote:
>> While from a user's perspective the various editors seen on the page you
>> linked to appear to be drop-in replacements for the current plain text
>> solution, I can assure you that there are many other reasons for not yet
>> deploying them on Wikipedia that go far beyond our ability to provide
>> users with a preference to turn them off.
> 
> Many wikis use MediaWiki beside Wikipedia.
> 
>> An existing example of us providing users with such an option however
>> can be seen in the ability to turn various editing-related gadgets such
>> as wikiEd. I think this shows that should a more visual editing
>> interface become able to be deployed, we certainly would make it optional.
> 
> Exactly. Each editor has its own incompatible setting which allows it
> to be turned on or off. Basically, each extension assumes it is going
> to be the one and only one editor for the wiki. If you install more
> than one, things will break. A unified preference might have been
> useful. Anyway, no big deal.

Extensions can add their own preferences more easily now. Adding a
default preference to turn off a feature that doesn't yet exist in
MediaWiki core doesn't make much sense.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/24 Jacopo Corbetta :
>> An existing example of us providing users with such an option however
>> can be seen in the ability to turn various editing-related gadgets such
>> as wikiEd. I think this shows that should a more visual editing
>> interface become able to be deployed, we certainly would make it optional.
>
> Exactly. Each editor has its own incompatible setting which allows it
> to be turned on or off. Basically, each extension assumes it is going
> to be the one and only one editor for the wiki. If you install more
> than one, things will break. A unified preference might have been
> useful. Anyway, no big deal.

I don't believe any WYSIWYG (or close to) editor that exists for
MediaWiki is good enough that you can completely avoid editing the
wikitext directly (in order to do complicated stuff), that means you
can't use one and only one editor unless that editor is the default
wikitext editor.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Jacopo Corbetta]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 19:04, Trevor Parscal  wrote:
> While from a user's perspective the various editors seen on the page you
> linked to appear to be drop-in replacements for the current plain text
> solution, I can assure you that there are many other reasons for not yet
> deploying them on Wikipedia that go far beyond our ability to provide
> users with a preference to turn them off.

Many wikis use MediaWiki beside Wikipedia.

> An existing example of us providing users with such an option however
> can be seen in the ability to turn various editing-related gadgets such
> as wikiEd. I think this shows that should a more visual editing
> interface become able to be deployed, we certainly would make it optional.

Exactly. Each editor has its own incompatible setting which allows it
to be turned on or off. Basically, each extension assumes it is going
to be the one and only one editor for the wiki. If you install more
than one, things will break. A unified preference might have been
useful. Anyway, no big deal.

Bye,
--
Jacopo Corbetta
j.corbe...@sssup.it
jacopo.corbe...@gmail.com

WYMeditor MediaWiki integration:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MeanEditor

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brion Vibber]

On 4/24/09 10:34 AM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Thomas Dalton  
> wrote:
>> 2009/4/24 Chad:
>>> And the vast vast majority don't use preferences. I don't think it'll
>>> be a huge issue. The extensions that are broken and people use
>>> will quickly be found and fixed.
>> How gracefully will old extensions fail?
>
> I'd assume fatally, but extensions sometimes break when core code
> updates.  That's a fact of life.  One way to avoid this is to ask to
> get it checked into Wikimedia SVN, so a grep can show that there are
> users and they can be fixed by whoever makes the breaking change.

I believe they'll just not have their extended preferences displayed 
until they've updated to work with the non-crappy, actually sanely 
extensible, preferences interface.

Nothing else would be affected.

-- brion

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Andrew Garrett]

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> How much work do you think it will be to repair an extension that needs
> repair ? For someone who knows the code and for someone who just has to
> repair his one extension ??

It's a reasonably simple fix. Here's an example: [1]

Essentially, all you need to do is remove your existing preferences
code, hook GetPreferences, and add your preference to the array. I'll
be posting documentation as to the format of preference entries
tomorrow, but for now you can look at the examples in
includes/Preferences.php.

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/49690

-- 
Andrew Garrett
Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> 2009/4/24 Chad :
>> And the vast vast majority don't use preferences. I don't think it'll
>> be a huge issue. The extensions that are broken and people use
>> will quickly be found and fixed.
>
> How gracefully will old extensions fail?

I'd assume fatally, but extensions sometimes break when core code
updates.  That's a fact of life.  One way to avoid this is to ask to
get it checked into Wikimedia SVN, so a grep can show that there are
users and they can be fixed by whoever makes the breaking change.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brion Vibber]

On 4/24/09 6:36 AM, Eugene Zelenko wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Andrew Garrett  
> wrote:
>> The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
>> is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!
>
> I think will be good idea to use API internally (not only have
> possibility to call), as result code will have more testing and
> coverage.

My general inclination is to structure code into a couple layers:

Backend/internal interface:
* Wraps over direct database, processing, etc

User interface:
* Web UI
* API module

Client-side JavaScript UI code can use the API to reach the backend, but 
I don't see much benefit to trying to use the API on the PHP UI end; 
it'll generally just be awkward.

API code should rarely have to do any serious DB or processing work 
itself; it should be calling the backend model/controller-level interface.

-- brion

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Trevor Parscal]

While from a user's perspective the various editors seen on the page you 
linked to appear to be drop-in replacements for the current plain text 
solution, I can assure you that there are many other reasons for not yet 
deploying them on Wikipedia that go far beyond our ability to provide 
users with a preference to turn them off. Almost all of those visual 
editors require the use of not-yet-stable reverse parsing, and many 
cause articles to change in ways the user did not intend, such as adding 
white-space places the user did not touch, or stripping out HTML 
comments from the code. There are other downsides as well, which are 
represented in an article closely related to the one you linked to, 
which is the results of the extensions chosen for evaluation from the 
list of nominated ones.

http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environment_Survey/MediaWiki_Extensions/Results

An existing example of us providing users with such an option however 
can be seen in the ability to turn various editing-related gadgets such 
as wikiEd. I think this shows that should a more visual editing 
interface become able to be deployed, we certainly would make it optional.

- Trevor Parscal

On 4/24/09 5:30 AM, Jacopo Corbetta wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 05:59, Andrew Garrett  wrote:
>
>> I'd like to look towards trimming some of the existing preferences
>> that are no longer relevant, and adding new preferences as common
>> sense dictates.
>>  
>
> Can I suggest adding a "preferred editor" preference?
> Ideally, it should be a dropdown box (given the variety of existing
> visual 
> editors,
> an admin might wish to install more than one), but a simple "disable
> the visual editor" checkbox is probably enough for most setups (and
> simpler to maintain).
>
> Thanks, bye
> --
> Jacopo Corbetta
> j.corbe...@sssup.it
> jacopo.corbe...@gmail.com
>
> WYMeditor MediaWiki integration:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MeanEditor
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/24 Chad :
> And the vast vast majority don't use preferences. I don't think it'll
> be a huge issue. The extensions that are broken and people use
> will quickly be found and fixed.

How gracefully will old extensions fail?

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Chad]

And the vast vast majority don't use preferences. I don't think it'll
be a huge issue. The extensions that are broken and people use
will quickly be found and fixed.

-Chad

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Brian  wrote:
> Is an autoconverter feasible?
> There are many, many extensions guys!
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Andrew Garrett wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>>  wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > How much work do you think it will be to repair an extension that needs
>> > repair ? For someone who knows the code and for someone who just has to
>> > repair his one extension ??
>>
>> It's a reasonably simple fix. Here's an example: [1]
>>
>> Essentially, all you need to do is remove your existing preferences
>> code, hook GetPreferences, and add your preference to the array. I'll
>> be posting documentation as to the format of preference entries
>> tomorrow, but for now you can look at the examples in
>> includes/Preferences.php.
>>
>> [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/49690
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Garrett
>> Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
>>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brian]

Is an autoconverter feasible?
There are many, many extensions guys!

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Andrew Garrett wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>  wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > How much work do you think it will be to repair an extension that needs
> > repair ? For someone who knows the code and for someone who just has to
> > repair his one extension ??
>
> It's a reasonably simple fix. Here's an example: [1]
>
> Essentially, all you need to do is remove your existing preferences
> code, hook GetPreferences, and add your preference to the array. I'll
> be posting documentation as to the format of preference entries
> tomorrow, but for now you can look at the examples in
> includes/Preferences.php.
>
> [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/49690
>
> --
> Andrew Garrett
> Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Alexandre Emsenhuber]

Le 24 avr. 09 à 16:15, John Doe a écrit :

> thanks, I take this as the first step in creating global preferences?

Global preferences were added with this rewrite. There is just a  
checkbox saying "use these preferences on all projects" at the bottom  
of Special:Preferences.

Alexandre Emsenhuber (ialex)
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Brian]

How many non-WMF extensions will this break?

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Andrew Garrett wrote:

> I've branch-merged the new preferences system that I've spent the last
> few weeks developing.
>
> On the outside, you probably won't notice any difference except a few
> bugfixes, but the internals have undergone a complete rewrite.
>
> All of the actual preference definitions and utility functions have
> been separated out into Preferences.php, which holds all business
> logic for the new system. The UI and submission logic for the system
> is done in SpecialPreferences.php, which, now only a hundred lines
> long, wraps a generic class I've written to encourage separation of
> business and UI logic called 'HTMLForm'.
>
> The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
> is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!
>
> Extensions must now hook GetPreferences instead of the existing hooks
> (which were too low-level to maintain compatibility with), I've
> updated all extensions used on Wikimedia. This new hook allows you to
> put preferences wherever you want, and a new preference can be added
> in less than ten lines of code, rather than the hundred-line nightmare
> that was required in the previous iteration.
>
> I'd like to look towards trimming some of the existing preferences
> that are no longer relevant, and adding new preferences as common
> sense dictates.
>
> Feedback, praise and criticism regarding the changes is certainly welcome!
>
> --
> Andrew Garrett
> Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Mohamed Magdy]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 5:59 AM, Andrew Garrett wrote:

> I've branch-merged the new preferences system that I've spent the last
> few weeks developing.
>
> On the outside, you probably won't notice any difference except a few
> bugfixes, but the internals have undergone a complete rewrite.
>
> All of the actual preference definitions and utility functions have
> been separated out into Preferences.php, which holds all business
> logic for the new system. The UI and submission logic for the system
> is done in SpecialPreferences.php, which, now only a hundred lines
> long, wraps a generic class I've written to encourage separation of
> business and UI logic called 'HTMLForm'.
>
> The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
> is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!
>
> Extensions must now hook GetPreferences instead of the existing hooks
> (which were too low-level to maintain compatibility with), I've
> updated all extensions used on Wikimedia. This new hook allows you to
> put preferences wherever you want, and a new preference can be added
> in less than ten lines of code, rather than the hundred-line nightmare
> that was required in the previous iteration.
>
> I'd like to look towards trimming some of the existing preferences
> that are no longer relevant, and adding new preferences as common
> sense dictates.
>
> Feedback, praise and criticism regarding the changes is certainly welcome!
>
> --
> Andrew Garrett
> Sent from Sydney, Nsw, Australia
>
> ___
>

You are so useful.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[John Doe]

thanks, I take this as the first step in creating global preferences?

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Eugene Zelenko wrote:

> Hi!
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Andrew Garrett 
> wrote:
> > The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
> > is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!
>
> I think will be good idea to use API internally (not only have
> possibility to call), as result code will have more testing and
> coverage.
>
> Eugene.
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Eugene Zelenko]

Hi!

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Andrew Garrett  wrote:
> The advantage of this clear separation is that writing an API module
> is very simple, and it can be called internally, too!

I think will be good idea to use API internally (not only have
possibility to call), as result code will have more testing and
coverage.

Eugene.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] New preferences system

[Jacopo Corbetta]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 05:59, Andrew Garrett  wrote:
> I'd like to look towards trimming some of the existing preferences
> that are no longer relevant, and adding new preferences as common
> sense dictates.

Can I suggest adding a "preferred editor" preference?
Ideally, it should be a dropdown box (given the variety of existing
visual editors 
,
an admin might wish to install more than one), but a simple "disable
the visual editor" checkbox is probably enough for most setups (and
simpler to maintain).

Thanks, bye
--
Jacopo Corbetta
j.corbe...@sssup.it
jacopo.corbe...@gmail.com

WYMeditor MediaWiki integration:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MeanEditor

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