VisualEditor/Testing Non-Latin Characters Input and Behavior



Starting on January 28, 2013 and all week long, we're testing VisualEditor's support of non-Latin characters input and behavior.

The VisualEditor project aims to create a reliable rich-text editor for MediaWiki. It is a top priority for the Wikimedia Foundation and it is available for testing on the English Wikipedia.

You can learn more about exploratory testing and join the MediaWiki Group Features Testing to stay informed about test events like this one.

Setup

 * You need a browser like Firefox or Chrome. Internet Explorer is not supported yet.
 * Enable VisualEditor in your user preferences on the English Wikipedia.
 * Prepare sets of non-latin characters that you can copy/paste and use during your tests. For example, you can find them on Wikipedia articles (such as Brahmic scripts, Hebrew language, List of Unicode characters, Special:Hieroglyphs) or wikis in other languages (like the Hebrew language Wikipedia or the Chinese language Wikipedia).

Uncover bugs
It's usually recommended to conduct tests on your user page, talk page or a user subpage, to avoid defacing actual Wikipedia articles with test edits.

Here's what you can do to try and find bugs:
 * Use VisualEditor to edit pages that already contain non-Latin characters; edit and save a page, adding more non-Latin characters with each edit.
 * Insert non-Latin characters into pages that do not already contain non-Latin characters.
 * Use non-Latin strings from multiple languages when editing, for example both Hebrew and Indic characters. There is no need to be a speaker of any particular language, we are interested only in the effect of non-Latin text on the page.
 * Find non-language Unicode icons and such and edit pages using those also.

Check diffs
Not all bugs may be very visible; some might only be noticed in diffs; when testing, always check the diff and look out for unexpected or unwanted changes in wikitext. We are interested in two areas primarily:
 * How the wikitext of the page is affected upon inserting, deleting, changing, and otherwise manipulating non-latin characters with VisualEditor;
 * How non-Latin characters and strings affect the behavior of the VisualEditor itself.

For example, there is an unsubstantiated report that strings from different non-Latin languages inserted into a page and saved with VisualEditor may cause loss of data elsewhere in the page. Finding and verifying such issues is important.

Change parameters
In order to maximize your chances of finding a bug, try out a variety of parameters while testing non-latin characters in VisualEditor:
 * Change, enable or disable options in your Preferences on the English Wikipedia;
 * Enable or disable gadgets (go to the "Gadgets" tab in your preferences);
 * Change, enable or disable your custom user JavaScript and CSS.
 * Look for inconsistencies when editing logged or logged out.

Report new bugs

 * Check existing bugs for VisualEditor internationalization issues, to see if yours has already been identified.
 * If no one has reported the issue yet, report a new bug.

Collaborate
You can get support and comment on problems on the IRC channel on Freenode: look for users ,  ,. You can also send messages to the mediawiki-i18n mailing list.

Who should join?

 * People using non-Latin character sets routinely e.g. العربية, Ελληνικά, 한국어, हिन्दी, עברית, 日本語, Русский, 中文 and more.
 * People interested in accessibility.
 * People interested in localization.
 * People interested in VisualEditor, the new editor for Wikipedia.