Talk:2017 wikitext editor

Hi, thanks for your interest in the 2017 wikitext editor. Please post all feedback at 2017 wikitext editor/Feedback, in any language. Thank you!

I have two questions:

• Is it possible to get text highlighting for text that is inside a reference tag?
• Is it possible to fix the bug with images where the text highlighting ends with the first set of ]] instead of where it actually ends?

These are both questions for CodeMirror. The first is a feature request and the second should be filed as a bug. You can write them up yourself, if you'd like.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T334994

At certain screen resolutions, the text box view itself seems to move left and right internally. To reset it, you need to go all the way to the left. It is especially annoying because this incorrect behaviour is default on the standard text width in new Vector. If this could be fixed, it would go a great way toward usability.

Are you still having this problem? (I know that one bug was fixed already.)

I am still having this issue. The issue only occurs when making the width of the window something that isn't a full integer multiple of the monospaced text. In such a case, the internal screen moves to show the remainder by moving to the right.

I'm still getting this issue; for some reason it seems that the internal screen moves when the cursor is near the end of the line rather than when it actually gets beyond the end of the line. I don't know why that is the case.

Regardless, it is annoying because it screws up the carat display and makes text selection inaccurate.

I've not been able to reproduce this. Is there any chance that you could make a short screencast and e-mail it to me? I'll send you a quick e-mail message now that you could reply to.

I've started a bug report at phab:T334994 (you're welcome to edit it; just log in to your regular wiki account), but I don't know if Phabricator accepts videos.

I'm currently at work but I can reproduce the error on my iPad browser too. Uploaded as an unlisted video at https://youtu.be/kUvwP7RsxFs.

I can also reproduce after commenting out everything in my commons.js file.

That looks terrible. I'll ping the devs.

I can't log in to Phabricator and don't receive any emails that it alleges to send. I saw that someone can't reproduce. I have no ability not to reproduce on English Wikipedia; I've disabled every gadget but default, disabled everything in common.js, changed themes (back to Vector 2010 and it still has this issue). I've switched computers from iPad to macOS to Windows.

It's even worse on Firefox, where it double-displays text like this: https://imgur.com/DqLCI4z.

Okay, I disabled the beta feature for discussions after comparing my main account's settings with a puppet account's settings; it seems there is some kind of incompatibility with the Discussion tools beta feature?

Actually I can still reproduce even with Discussion tools disabled. It seems, however, to trigger with much lower sensitivity?

Okay, Ifly6 here on a clean account for testing; I am unable to reproduce in the editor if syntax highlighting is off but it does reproduce if syntax highlighting is enabled.

@DLynch (WMF) is one of the devs on the Editing team.

Does turning off syntax highlighting solve the problem in your regular account? Safemode might be an easier way to test some of this, but you sound like a technically capable person, so do you know how to check for errors in your browser's web console? (No problem if you don't – I ask the devs every time they want me to do this. ;-) )

Turning off syntax highlighting does solve the issue in my normal account; though given how useful syntax highlighting is, this is not really a solution. I tested with safe mode and am able to reproduce the movement when syntax highlighting is turned on. I opened the developer console and saw no errors.

Also, as I checked the ticket in Phabricator, thanks for moving it up the chain and identifying (possibly) the relevant library.

@Ifly6, @MusikAnimal (WMF) wondered whether this problem appeared for you in the 2010 wikitext editor (the most common one in Wikipedias). If it doesn't, he's got an idea about a temporary fix. The (possible) real fix might happen later this year.

It seems that find and replace for a regular expression match doesn't work on English Wikipedia. I've tested this largely on Windows 10 Edge.

Would you please share more information about what exactly you were trying to do? It might be a general problem, but also just a browser-specific problem or a JavaScript limitation.

I ran a regex, I think (?<=\d{3}) (?=BCE?) with replacement value  ; replacement simply didn't work. I exported the text to Sublime Text where it ran fine.

Indeed, that doesn't work for me either. (\d{3}) (BCE?) → $1 $2 does, though.

This issue still isn't fixed. Running a regular expression

<nowiki>\|url=.+?worldcat.+? (?=\|)</nowiki>

yields the same problem.

Reported as phab:T336635.

If I have this editor enabled can I still use 2010 wikicode editor (textarea)? For example let's say I want to open editor for some specific action or gadget.

Or the other way around. Let's say I prefer 2010 wikicode editor for everyday use. But then I want to edit some article in 2017 editor. I actually often do wish that. E.g. to have tools for refs or just for testing.

OK, found a way to use plain textarea editor. Using action=submit works to always show so called 2010 editor.

That's the way that I do it. :-)

The article is outdated and inaccurate, mostly about plans. It seems like the article was never really updated since 2017. Especially in paragraph "Please note that the current phase of deployment is...".

There are serious drawbacks to using VE surface (very specific API to use). Using contenteditable gives some potential to avoid problems with text selection, copy&pasting, undo&redo and such. But also adds a significant overhead as there is no single API that works for all editors for that. I imagine this was the reason this editor didn't ever stick.

Also new features seem to be developed for so called 2010 editor (e.g. syntax highlighting, realtime preview). So the 2017 editor seems to be abandoned. Never even made out of beta to be a standard preference. I think the best option would be to be able to switch to this VE wikicode editing mode. Much like when you switch just one option to get syntax highlighting. Another option would be to integrate features of 2017 editor to syntax highlighting mode of 2010 editor. It would provide best experience for editing sections and at least short articles.

The naming is also very miss leading. I would call this a VE Wikicode Editor or Visual Wikicode Editor. It is a wikicode editor, but it's based on VE components. So called 2010 editor has been updated in many ways and calling it 2010 edit is missleading. I would call the 2010 editor the Standard Wikicode Editor or the Textarea Wikicode Editor.

@Nux, thanks for tagging the page {{outdated}}. The project has been undead for six years. In early 2017 the EnWiki community consensus rejected 2017Editor. One or more staff were unwilling to let go of their goal of somehow someday pushing all editors into the VE-platform, so 2017Editor became yet another zombie/vampire project slowly eating time and money.

I've been considering opening another RFC so the community can push the WMF to face reality. Either the WMF intends to forcibly impose 2017Editor against community consensus, or the project needs to be shut down and removed from beta-options. (Actually they also have the option of opening dialog with the community, hoping to change consensus - but I wouldn't expect success.) I see you're primarily from Polish Wikipedia? Feel free to ping me if you (or anyone else) wants to open this or any similar issues over there. In my experience it can take active rejection from EnWiki plus two other big wikis before top management receive the message that mid/lower management are wasting money because they're unwilling to shut down a known-dead pet project.

Hey guys, I really need a feature from the old editor to be available or at least optional for those who need it.

• The feature was to show me all the used and transcluded pages/templates in any page whenever I view its source.

It's hideous to view the source page without logging in, then log back in to edit from my account.

Example photo.

• Why do I need that?

I usually make style edits and sometimes a transcluded template is triggering an error whose page needs to be found and edited.

• Curretly, I tried all I can to show this transclusion list to no avail.

Thanks. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 06:41, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

This is in the page settings dialog – click the menu icon (), then "Templates used".

Thanks for your response. For others who struggle to find this option, it is found in the editor frame under the burger menu. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 14:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

When using the 2017 wikitext editor and editing an article with an italicized title, it will no longer be italicized when going back to reading the article, both by clicking "read" and when submitting an edit. This isn't the case with the standard wikitext editor.

Does re-loading the page fix this?

It does, but it would be great IF this didn't have to happen. Sorry if the request sounds trivial.

I think this is the same problem as phab:T258589. It manifests in all sorts of ways.

I prefer Skin:Timeless over Vector (legacy or new); is there any plan to bring this editor to Timeless as well?

Edit: I realized that the editor works in Timeless, but the syntax highlight doesn’t. This is quite a deal breaker; I updated the title of this conversation.

It doesn't? It works for me... can you be more specific ?

I guess there was some caching issue on my browser. I restarted it and it works for me.

I like this one better but I miss the edit toolbar.

The 2017 wikitext editor has an edit toolbar. It looks like this:

What do you miss?

The Workboard's "Backlog" column of this Beta feature is getting huger; the tasks are in only one column. There are no other columns at the moment; I think more columns should be created for better organization. Moving all the tasks to another workboard, like regular VisualEditor workboard, would be a huge burden to VisualEditor assignees.

I think most of them are already on the VisualEditor main project workboard?

Anyway, I think you should feel free to categorize using workboard columns. However, most tasks are about the wikitext editor and would make a huge column anyway.

Please do not encourage people to re-organise the work boards of projects that are actively supported by other people without waiting for those owners to comment first.

You're right, the Editing team currently does all its organising in the VE work board. I think it would add huge confusion and no value to create a split-brain approach to task management by also organising them in another place, but that would be something for them to comment on.

I think I have misunderstood here. I thought George was talking about the BetaFeatures project workboard, which has a single column noone cares about and would be more useful split up. For this project, I do not think there would be a problem.

However, if this was about some VisualEditor workboard, I apologize for my misjudgement.

No, you didn't misjudge. This topic is about the (beta) NWE project workboard, consisting of just one column, like you said.

I meant this workboard.

Then you were mistaken. :S