MediaWiki talk:Edittools/Archive 4

Rewording
Right now, in the "Please note" section, it says: I would propose a change, because some people just read it, see "public domain", don't understand it, and ignore it. I would write — M e ts 501 (talk) 00:42, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Only public domain resources can be copied without permission—this does not include most web pages.
 * Any work that does not say explicitely that it is released under a specific license or is in the public domain, including if it is released on the web, is copyrighted work, and cannot be copied to Wikipedia.

Layout of the "insert characters box"
I suggest a change in the layout of the box with special characters that appears when editing an article because the chars used for editing are mixed up with all the others. both the swedish and portuguese wikipedia have decent versions. The first row should be dedicated to editing symbols only. Benkeboy 14:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It sounds like a good idea. -- S iva1979 Talk to me  18:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I strongly agree.
 * I currently use user-css to hide this box, partially because the bottom 2 rows are almost all appearing as just little squares (or question marks) for me (i dont know what font/character-set/character-encoding(?) i'm missing... I've tried forcing everything i can think of, from utf-8 to various webcorefonts. What are those symbols that i'm missing?). see:




 * good examples mentioned above: Portugese, and Swedish.
 * I like either of those. Especially the moving of the redirect button, down from the button-toolbar into this box. I would suggest we move the " " button down too, so that the "signature" button is on the end of the button-toolbar, unless i'm missing a common usage for horizontal dividing lines (help:editing seems to imply deprecating their use). Thanks. -Quiddity 20:07, 13 May 2006 (UTC) (cleaned up 20:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC))


 * Those missing symbols are the IPA pronunciation symbols. I just needed to install a modern unicode font. TITUS Cyberbit Basic works well. (the mentioned code2000 was vastly larger and more interesting, but also made firefox crash constantly (i blame windows98 for that part)).--Quiddity 17:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Too many characters
When I go to edit a page, I mostly want to write text using the characters on my keyboard. Occassionally, I want to enter other characters, which I find in the little box under the edit box. Mostly, the characters I need are these:

€ £ ¥ $ ¢ © ® ™ « » — – | … ~ # @ § ¶ • ¡ ¿ \ ≈ ± − × ÷ °

Just a few common symbols. Right now, I can't find many of those, and the ones that are there are way too small to find in a list of so many characters. I propose that we put common symbols (like those listed above) at the top of the character box in normal sized font, and then below those put the others that we have now, in a smaller font. — M e ts 501 (talk) 00:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Strong support - I often end up with my nose pressed against the screen trying to spot the degrees symbol. We should discuss exactly what symbols should be included - but that looks like a good start to me. Megapixie 04:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong support - this and the Layout of the "insert characters box" section just above. -Quiddity 04:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to just change the program, so that instead of having ÁáĆć... ÀàÈè... ÂâĈĉ... ÄäËë... and so forth, we could just have a function to click that adds the appropriate accent to whatever letter has been highlighted? Being able to pick just the accent (e.g. ′^ ~ - etc.) instead of the accent combined with the letter would cut the board in half. Also, at the moment, we have Đ and Ð in two different spots (I can't tell any difference), and bunch of letters that appear perfectly normal, for which no special provision would seem necessary (Α, Β, Ε, Ζ, Η, Ι, Κ, Μ, Ν, Ο, Ρ, Τ, Υ are in the Greek letters). bd2412 T 05:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I doubt that we could do that, because I don't think there is any WP markup code for that, but I'm not certain. Perhaps even a "show/hide" button to show or hide all of the characters, but by default show a few selected ones at the top. — M e ts 501  (talk) 11:51, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be quite possible. You would use Unicode combining characters instead of the current preformed characters; browser support for these appears to be good in the case of character-accent combinations for which preformed characters exist.  Unicode combining characters are mostly in the code range U+300 to U+36F; there are also some more exotic ones in U+20D0 to U+20EB, U+1DC0 to U+1DC3, and U+FE20 to U+FE23.  Samples (top row is preformed, bottom is combining):

The T with vertical line below looks very slightly off for me (Firefox on Windows XP), and the L with solidus is hopeless, but the rest look identical. The same is true for IE, except that both the T and L are totally worthless (the combining character displays as a box). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:46, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * No, combining diacritics do not work for several reasons: you can't put them between the charinsert tags (at least, it doesn't result in something "clickable"). Even if this would work they cause a lot of redering problems (only few font/browser/OS combinations give acceptable results). For this reasons MediaWiki usualy normalizes characters as it did with most in your table above, expcept for Ţ and Ł (which don't display correctly over here). —Ruud 22:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Combining diacritics may be a problem with the charinsert tags, but a pretty easily fixable one. As for lack of browser support, you may be correct; I didn't realize MediaWiki converts to the combined form on save (quite clever).  However, that's an advantage: if a combined form exists, it will be converted to exactly the same form as is used now, but the diacritic characters will take up much less space.  All that's needed is for charinsert to accept alternative displays for input characters, or even automatically generate them. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That's exactly our problem: charinsert does not accept alternative displays for input characters. I've tried quite a bit in my sandbox and nothing works. — M e ts 501  (talk) 11:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, "pretty easily fixable" does mean "probably, from what I know, but only if you have SVN access", yes. :)  I've voted for 3821; this idea will now have to be dropped until it's fixed. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, we can give up on combining diacritical marks for now but let's not give up on this whole proposal! — M e ts 501 (talk) 01:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I see, I know what you're talking about now. I suppose that would be possible (great if it works well) — M e ts 501  (talk) 21:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * After testing in my sandbox, I'm not sure how that would work. The unicode diacritical marks don't display on their own, so I don't know how we'd get them to display in the edittools box so that users can click on them. — M e ts 501  (talk) 21:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I have faith in the power of modern technology to make it possible for me to pick a diacritic to put atop a letter! bd2412  T 21:33, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

What if users could add or remove symbols to a "favourite symbols" box that would be in a normal-sized font, with all the symbols below it in a smaller font? --Doradus 12:53, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Redesign
What do you think of this? (see User:Mets501/Edittools) — M e ts 501 (talk) 21:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * That's pretty good! I'd like to see the common fraction symbols there, but I suppose everyone would have a different set of symbols they want.  In a perfect world, you could drag symbols to/from the collapsible area and your choices would persist.  --Doradus 22:20, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd say "symbols/characters" (even though all letter characters are essentially symbols). bd2412  T 23:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * &larr; and &rarr; are used quite a lot for internal wikiwork, and they'd be good to keep. -Splash - tk 23:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I say drop the Greek characters; they are clutter, people can readily configure a Greek keyboard layout and change to it with a click or a keystroke. Instead, I would really appreciate some underdot characters: those of IAST: I need these all the time for articles connected with India, and some of them double for Arabic and Hebrew. Hundreds (or thousands) of articles need them, I daresay they are more urgently needed than the breves even. Not only is it a bother to have to copy paste them, but clueless editors tend to use ogonek characters instead because those are in the template, and we have to clean up after them. dab (&#5839;) 22:57, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Concur. —Ruud 23:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Only 'fing is that it relies on javascript whereas the current version does not. I removed the edit protected tag for now. Changing Mediawiki interface pages should be done delicately. -Splash - tk 22:51, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Uhh... charinsert requires javascript in the first place? I do object to the selection of symbols proposed though. I would not use (or even discourage using) most of them. On the en-, em-dash and degree symbols seem useful. —Ruud 22:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, right you are. The set on the (quite nice) proposal looks near identical to that in the current, and it's a good solution, I think. We can't really cut it back to the en, em and degree only! People do actually use it (in edit wars over naming non-Englished cities, for example). -Splash - tk 23:02, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I was referening to this "€ £ ¥ $ ¢ © ® ™ « » — – | … ~ # @ § ¶ • ¡ ¿ \ ≈ ± − × ÷ °" set of symbols. Currency symbols are usually written out in letters, copyright-related symbols omitted, foreign puntuation almost never used, ...
 * Hey, I need § for articles on statutes (and court cases interpreting same). bd2412  T 23:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, ok... just wanted to point out that we need to come up with a good selection of symbols before changing this page. —Ruud 23:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm sorry for rushing with the edit protected tag. We should choose a good set of symbols first. So let's organize this. — M e ts 501  (talk) 00:06, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * As was suggested in the section above, we should seperate the code from the symbols, something close to the Portugese (pt:MediaWiki:Edittools) or Swedish (sv:MediaWiki:Edittools) examples.
 * Yes, definitely. I updated my proposal here. — M e ts 501  (talk) 02:42, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks really good :)
 * Just for reference: The best full list i can find is at Help:Wiki markup examples, but it is missing some obvious things like ½. There are a handful more in this list. -Quiddity 09:14, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm also in favour of moving the redirect code here, instead of the large toolbar button. (and removing the horizontal-line toolbar button also, as it is deprecated and shouldnt be there). If anyone supports that, i'll inquire at VillagePumptech about it. --Quiddity 02:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I added a few more symbols at User:Mets501/Edittools, and sorted the groups apart. Hope that looks good to all. -Quiddity 02:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. If nobody raises any objections in a couple of days I guess we can implement it. — M e ts 501  (talk) 20:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't like the title "code". Can we pick something less technical like "wiki syntax"?  --Doradus 10:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Sure, that's fine with me. I'll change it at User:Mets501/Edittools — M e ts 501  (talk) 12:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, how about "Wiki markup", because that's what I've heard more people call it. — M e ts 501 (talk) 12:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, I was just thinking: if we already have the less-used characters in "show/hide" boxes, do we still need to keep them so small? They're so hard to read. — M e ts 501 (talk) 12:05, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. I sure can't make out most of them! -Quiddity 17:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I've removed the bold from the hidden-bits' headers. They didnt need the further highlighting. --Quiddity 02:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me! — Mets 501 (talk) 03:15, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Symbol list
Symbols that should be at the top (feel free to add to this):
 * – (en-dash)
 * — (em-dash)
 * § (for legal articles)
 * … (for many different articles, including math articles about repeating decimals)
 * ° (degree sign)
 * ≈ ± − × ÷ (I use these all the time for math articles)
 * ← and → (many internal usages)
 * · (middot, internal usage)

As per the consensus above, replace MediaWiki:Edittools with User:Mets501/Edittools — Mets 501 (talk) 12:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I second that. (in case a vote of confidence is needed to spur action ;) -Quiddity 03:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know what it is, admins just don't seem to want to take action. :) — Mets 501 (talk) 12:31, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

As the Greek characters are the only ones in the box that I use, and I use them all the time, I will have to crush anyone who tries to remove them :) &mdash; BRIAN 0918 • 2006-06-22 15:18
 * Yay! It's implemented.  Thanks so much Brian!  (I removed the editprotected template because the edit has been made) — Mets 501  (talk) 15:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, don't you think that should go in also, if  is included? — Mets 501  (talk) 15:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I already went through all this in January. This is what we used to have in the template. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2006-06-22 15:48
 * Wow! That's like...every possible symbol! We really didn't need all of those. — Mets 501  (talk) 15:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't work

 * Um, this no longer works for me, under the classic skin. I see a line:

Insert: – — … ° ≈ ± − × ÷ ← → · §  Sign your name: --~


 * then two other lines:

Other Characters/Symbols Wiki markup


 * Where have the characters gone? -- ALoan (Talk) 17:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It breaks Classic, Nostalgia, MySkin, Cologne Blue, Chick and Simple, and breaks God-Mode Light. Can someone revert, or at least get rid of the [show] things? --Rory096 17:40, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, and it's currently not working in my monobook, at least, though I think it was before. --Rory096 17:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Ya, I'm having this issue as well as many people on #vandalism-en-wp. I'd like this reverted too.--digital_m e (TalkˑContribs) 18:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Any admin, please change to the current layout at User:Mets501/Edittools, which does not use the special formatting. — Mets 501 (talk) 18:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * My best guess would be that the CSS classes used to implement the show-buttons are only available in Monobook. They should probably be added to Common.css first. —Ruud 18:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Correct. It works now. --Rory096 18:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The curly brackets/braces are displaying incorrectly (Only in use. it looks fine in the wikicode...?). The line reads for me: Wiki markup: []    [[Category:]] .... I don't know what's going wrong there.. -Quiddity 21:43, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It probably needs the same &lt;nowiki> stuff as on IPA and Polytonic --teb728 22:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, we need an admin to change to &lt;nowiki>&lt;/nowiki>. — Mets 501  (talk) 22:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * All fixed again, I asked Pilotguy to do it — Mets 501 (talk) 22:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh good - seems to be working now. Thanks. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

This has been done wrong. Now we just have a huge box of characters at the bottom of the screen with no script hiding them as in the proposal. What happened? I thought the point was to reduce the glaring clutter that this page produced? -Splash - tk 15:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * If you read above you will see that the show/hide feature worked only on on the Monobook and Cologne Blue skins. As I understand it users of other skins were able to see only the first line and had no way to show the hidden parts. So where you see above comments that it works again, that means only that the show/hide feature was (temporarily?) removed. I wonder, however, if it would work on all skins if show/hide were restored with everything in the show state by default? --teb728 18:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see now: MediaWiki:Cologneblue.js is not activated even though it contains support for show/hide. Does anyone know if this means that show/hide will never work on all skins? --teb728 19:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It should work if we put it in MediaWiki:Common.js, right? Maybe we can get an admin to put it in (it can't hurt if nothing calls it) and then test the show/hide in the sandbox with all the different skins. Thoughts? — Mets 501  (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, there's no MediaWiki:Common.js. Does anyone know if there is a global javascript?  If we create  MediaWiki:Common.js will it apply to all skins? — Mets 501  (talk) 19:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * See Catalogue of CSS classes --teb728 19:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

A user complained at VPT of malformed HTML, that the P and SMALL tags are not correctly nested in: … --teb728 19:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Reorder Characters
I propose a variation of the Too many characters proposition, in which instead of showing common characters that do not appear on the keyboard, we rearrange the characters partially in order of commonality while still grouping some characters by type. This will increase visibility of commonly used characters without it looking like a confusing jumble yet retaining all the characters in one box. If there is enough support for this I will draft a possible new character order. Thanks! Mwhorn 01:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Did you see the current proposal here? We've grouped the characters into common symbols at the top, characters, IPA, other symbols, and wikicode.  Are you suggesting more groups?
 * Oh sorry, when I looked at that earlier it only showed

Insert:    Sign your name:
 * And all the other characters were hidden or something. But yeah the current box is exactly what I had in mind. Sorry for not paying attention and good job! --Mwhorn 23:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Latin Extended B range
Whoever is responsible for assigning the IPA special characters to class IPA, thank you, thank you, Thank You! Now how about assigning the Latin Extended B range special characters to class latinx? Include as a minimum ȲȳǢǣǪǫ, which appear as boxes on my browser. But it shouldn't hurt to include all the “Characters.” It might be good also to include a shortcut for Latinx. --teb728 23:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

This change is needed to display the characters ȲȳǢǣǪǫ in the special characters box for Internet Explorer. A similar change (for IPA characters) proved safe in the 22 June 2006 changes to this file. A change effectively the same as the proposed change has been operating safely and effectively in the Old English section of Wiktionary:Mediawiki:Edittools since 17 June 2006. --teb728 06:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not exactly sure what you want done. Could possibly just give me something to copy and paste?  howch e  ng   {chat} 17:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry. Copy from User:TEB728/My Edittools. What it does is:
 * After
 * insert
 * And after
 * replace  with
 * --teb728 21:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * --teb728 21:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * --teb728 21:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Getting Firefox will help you render those characters, and I highly recommend it. Of couse, if you aren't interested, follow the instructions above. Ingoolemo talk 00:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course, I could get Firefox, but that wouldn't solve the problem for hundreds of other IE users. However, inasmuch as I am not an admin, we need someone else to follow the instructions above. --teb728 01:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Change made. --CBD 15:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you! As far as I am concerned, this section is ready for archiving. --teb728 18:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Bigger font for special chars?
Currently the IPA characters are so minuscule as to be unusable. I have to make the font setting in FireFox absolutely enormous to be able to distinguish ɛ, ɜ, ɝ and ɞ. Would it be possible to have them bigger, and maybe less interline spacing to make up for it?

Also, a vote for grouping characters by language rather than type, if possible. ie: French: àäçéèêëîïôöùûü, rather than grouping all the acutes, all the graves etc. Thanks. Stevage 07:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Re: font size: It's easy if you're using Firefox. Just hold down "Ctrl" and roll your mousewheel down, to increase font size when you need it. --Quiddity 08:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Even better, change the font size of that section (See the top of this page) — Mets 501 (talk) 21:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding grouping options: theoretically that could be done by having a  and a. However, the by language categorisation is actually fairly arbitrary. For example, the vowels with diaereses (äöü) are shared between German and French, along with other languages, so should they go with œ (French), or ß (German). Likewise, æ appears in Danish and Old English, so should we put it with ð and þ, or ø and å? I absolutely sympathise with your opinion, but I just don't think there's a logical way to implement it. Ingoolemo talk 04:44, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

French version
please remove the link to the french version as an alternate language, it makes that little "In other languages" box appear everytime a page is edited.-- A c1983fan(yell at me) 18:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I saw that too, and it is gone. Tito xd (?!?) 00:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Russian characters
I would sort of like an easy insertion tool for Russian/Cyrillic characters. Naturally, I can make the default setting be, but I thought I'd be social and get permission first.

The most obvious objection, of course, is that older browsers don't like the  element; I don't know any way around it, unless someone could come up with a JavaScript that would allow editors to tweak the editools using their JS rather than the main page.

Comments? Ingoolemo talk 04:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I do not think that having older browsers pose a huge objection. It is fairly easy to upgrade one's browser. -- S iva1979 Talk to me  04:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, it just occurred to me: as long as older browsers support CSS, they can still kill stuff they don't like. And since the probably don't support JS at all, they wouldn't use edittools.  (All speculation of course.)  Ingoolemo talk 02:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Redundant additions
[]    #REDIRECT  and the signature are all above the edit box; are they really necessary? --Rory096 18:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking not.--digital_m e (TalkˑContribs) 19:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * A further proposed change, was to remove the #REDIRECT and (horizontal rule) buttons from the button-bar.
 * Particularly the Horizontal Rule button, as they are deprecated per Help:Editing, and i've seen many people mistakenly try to sign their name with that button.
 * Also the button bar apparantly doesnt display in some older browsers, so redundancy might not hurt?
 * I don't know where/who to ask about those changes though. Does anyone agree, and can anyone help? -Quiddity 19:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, they're probably not necessary, but if the button bar is going to be there anyway, they do no harm (except maybe the horizontal rule). I for one use the signature button all the time. I say keep them. --teb728 19:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The signature button is good, I didnt suggest removing that one ;). And it would actually benefit from removing the other two, as it would then be at the end of the row, and hence more useable. -Quiddity 20:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * A computer which I use frequently doesn't have the button bar; the images on that computer from Wikipedia for some reason won't load, and so it just has text in place of the bar...basically it's useless on that computer. S  o  a  P  14:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Templates link
As mentioned in the top thread on this page, it might be a good idea to add a link to Template messages after the wikimarkup list. (eg (templates) like the (polytonic list) link). -Quiddity 21:28, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, it may be a good idea. -- S iva1979 Talk to me  23:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Please include ə
Could I make a request for ə (schwa) to appear among the IPA characters? It's one of the most used phonemes among world languages, and its omission is quite glaring. It should certainly take precedence over ɚ, which may be used to represent certain renderings of schwa in American English, but is by no means as common. Thanks, Blisco 18:59, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * In case you haven't noticed, Schwa is already included in the Characters row, and is one of the last characters. My request is to include the diacritic for dental consonant, extremely important for contrastive phonetic transcription. d̪ (or its diacritic  ̪ ).Cygnus_hansa 13:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The lone symbol was not working, so I requested and got done the diacritic with t and d (dental) IPA : t̪ d̪ from a friend.Cygnus_hansa 13:41, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you know the reason why the symbol was not working? -- S iva1979 Talk to me  03:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Justification
Has someone just switched English Wikipedia from left justification to full justification? If so, this really sucks; please change it back promptly. Badagnani 03:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Why does this "suck"? -- S iva1979 Talk to me  04:03, 29 July 2006 (UTC)