Roadmap/Archive

MediaWiki 1.3 will be released at some time in the future. When in the future we can't say. However, we are absolutely certain it won't be released in the past, unless you are reading this in the future, in which case it depends on how far in the future you are reading it.

New skin
In 1.3, the default MediaWiki interface will be replaced with the new MonoBook skin, which is based on PHPTal. A test installation using this skin is at http://wiki.aulinx.de/Main_Page. You may need to log in and switch skins in your preferences. There are also screenshots.

The three original skins will be kept as user preferences.

Template syntax
Templates, or custom messages, have grown from humble beginnings as an afterthought in a localisation feature. They are now used in almost 10% of pages in the English Wikipedia database. The 1.3 release brings several changes in recognition of this new role:


 * Custom messages are separated from interface text (internal messages). The interface text will remain in the MediaWiki namespace, and the custom messages will be moved to the new Template namespace
 * The syntax will be changed, from   to   . Backwards compatibility is maintained.
 * It will be possible to include text from other namespaces, for example  .
 * The full range of title characters will be allowed, including spaces
 * Any change to a page in the Template namespace automatically clears the cache of any pages which use that template.

All of these changes will be fully automated, with no downtime. Redirects will maintain any external links.

Languages and localisation
In 1.2, language files generally had variables in them such as $wgSiteName (for the local site name) and $wgMetaNamespace. When the data from a language file was loaded into the MediaWiki namespace, these variables were expanded. Hence, any changes to the variables weren't immediately reflected in the site. In 1.3, this is fixed by passing internal messages through a variable expansion phase. A number of syntax elements have been added to make use of this:


 *  : the site name, for example "Wikipedia" or "Wiktionary"
 *  : the server, for example "http://en.wikipedia.org"
 *      : expands to a local namespace name. For example,        or        is expanded to the local name for the talk namespace
 *  </tt> and   </tt>: these tags are used to generate a URL for a given title. An optional query string can be given. For example, the URL to edit the main page is   </tt>

To further enhance portability of language files, the namespace names used on the English Wikipedia will now work everywhere. This should also be a useful feature for users attempting to navigate a wiki in an unfamiliar language.

Edit conflict merging
Users of en:Wikipedia:Votes for deletion know the edit conflict screen only too well. 1.3 brings CVS-style edit conflict merging, courtesy of the diff3 utility. Confirmed to work on both Unix and Windows platforms, this feature will only trigger an edit conflict if users attempt to edit the same few lines.

Other visible changes

 * Special:Import: available only to sysops, this special page gives users the ability to import full histories into a wiki, using the XML output by Special:Export.
 * Prefilled edit summaries will be displayed in grey text, rather than bracketed with "=" signs.
 * RSS syndication available for many special pages, such as Special:Newpages.
 * Preferences page to be rewritten to actually be legible

Technical changes

 * Link table uses IDs in both fields
 * The security risk of global insertion from the query string is eliminated, provided users disable register_globals
 * Lots of PHP notices fixed
 * XHTML-compatible output (or darn close to it)