Visual editor

WMF engineering activity

Visual editor

Initial ideas and prototypes of a visual editor for MediaWiki

Group:	Features
Start:	2011-05-15
End:
Management:	Terry Chay, Trevor Parscal
Team:	Roan Kattouw, Gabriel Wicke, Rob Moen, Inez Korczyński-Wikia, Christian Williams-Wikia, Audrey Tang

The Visual editor project aims to create a reliable rich-text editor for MediaWiki. It is being developed as a MediaWiki extension and currently being tested in the visual editor sandbox.

Rationale

The decline in new contributor growth is the single most serious challenge facing the Wikimedia movement in the year 2011. Removing the avoidable technical impediments associated with Wikimedia's editing interface is a necessary precondition for increasing the number of Wikimedia contributors.

Status

• [edit status] • [add new]
  2012-05-23:

Gabriel has set up a very basic parsoid service.

• browse english wikipedia as parsoid sees it
• POST wikitext -> HTML DOM
• POST HTML DOM -> wikitext.

Note: round-tripping is limited. Does not support preservation of variable whitespace, templates and other complex constructs yet.

Currently 154 parser tests are passing in the new --roundtrip mode that Subbu added last week.

Also the team had a meeting with James

Timeline

Some level of exploration was done in 2010 by the Wikipedia Usability Initiative.

The 2011 product whitepaper published by the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic product team identified rich-text editing as one of the "Great Movement Projects". Work subsequently started in May 2011.

First prototypes are expected in 2011; the final feature is expected to be delivered in late 2012. The Wikimedia annual plan, released July 2011, states a goal for the Visual Editor: "First opt-in user-facing production usage by December 2011, and first small wiki default deployment by June 2012."

Additional documents

• User requirements:
• Specifications:
  • Software design
  • Bidirectional text requirements
  • WikiDom Specification
• Test plan:
• Documentation plan:
• User interface design docs:
• Schedule:
  • Task management
  • Todo list
• Release management plan:
• Communications plan:
• Status updates
• Feedback page for developer prototype

Subpages

Visual editor/Agendas	Visual editor/Agendas/2012-05-23	Visual editor/Bidirectional text requirements
Visual editor/Features	Visual editor/Feedback	Visual editor/Feedback/Archive/2011/12
Visual editor/Feedback/Archive/2012/01	Visual editor/Feedback/Archive/2012/02	Visual editor/Feedback/Archive/2012/03
Visual editor/Feedback/Archive/2012/04	Visual editor/Internationalization requirements	Visual editor/Phase 2
Visual editor/Realtime collaboration	Visual editor/Software design	Visual editor/Task management
Visual editor/Todo List	Visual editor/Todo list	Visual editor/Undo and Redo
Visual editor/WikiDom	Visual editor/WikiDom Specification	Visual editor/software design
Visual editor/status

See also

• Future
• Wikitext.next