Topic on VisualEditor/Feedback

Updated special character inserter tool

23
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

The new design for the special character tool is available here at mediawiki.org. You can test it by going to http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?veaction=edit and choosing the "Ω" button in the main toolbar.

This wiki (currently) only has a small, basic set of characters. The list can be expanded and customized at each wiki. Follow the instructions at VisualEditor/Special characters to add more characters. However, the method for customizing the tool will probably change during the coming months.

Please test this out and let the devs know what you think about it. Is this new, full-width tool better than the old floating palette in VisualEditor? How could it be improved?

Stryn (talkcontribs)

Far better than the old one. Especially I like that this does not get closed after clicking a character. Maybe box size of characters could be a bit smaller, idk, but at least it's easier now to choose correct character on mobile version.

NicoV (talkcontribs)

Seems a lot better than the one I tried a long time ago. I also like the fact that it stays visible after adding one character, so you can keep adding other characters.

First suggestions for improvements:

  • Loosing less space: reducing line height for titles ; smaller boxes around charaters ; less space between boxes ; smaller font (same size as the rest of the menus ?)
  • Ability to resize vertically the special characters area
  • Behavior for quotes is not intuitive when text is already selected: I expected the quotes to go around the selected text (which is the current behavior on the French Wikipedia for the special characters tools that appears below the wikitext editing zone ; which is also the behavior for the tool that is available in the toolbar above the wikitext editing zone in this wiki) not to replace the selected text
  • I also prefer the behavior of the wikitext characters tool when text is selected: the selected text is not deleted
Danmichaelo (talkcontribs)

Agree very much with these points. Resize would definitely be nice. Smaller boxes would also be great so you don't have to scroll so much when more characters are added (perhaps the box borders could be removed altogether?) Overall a great improvement already!

Simulo~mediawikiwiki (talkcontribs)

It seems far better than the old one. Like previous commenters I think that the quotation marks as well as some other tools would benefit from wrap-in instead of overwrite behaviour and that fitting more characters in the same space would make sense. One idea was to make the characters itself smaller. In addition I would suggest to reduce the space that is taken by the navigation to character categories: There is the sidebar with the TOC and the headlines above each section. This takes about 1/3 of the space. Shrinking the sidebar and rotating the headlines by 90° or getting rid of the headlines altogether or somehow integrating the headlines into the symbols grid (start of the row or so) would be worth trying.

This post was posted by Simulo~mediawikiwiki, but signed as Simulo.

Simulo~mediawikiwiki (talkcontribs)
Nnemo (talkcontribs)

This new character tool is much better designed.

At first sight, it is great ! There is just a tiny defect : the tool does not work ! It does not insert any character.

The categories being one above another are a nice idea. Being able to scroll from one to another would be even better. The previous category is visible above. It is inconsistent that I cannot scroll up to it.

The name of the category "Lettres accentuées" is not correct. In this cat, some characters are not accented letters (œ, ø...). I suggest to name this cat "Lettres".

I have Safari on iOS 7 on an iPad mini.

Thank you for the improvements !

Cheers,

Nnemo (talkcontribs)

In english, this is even worse.

The cat is named "Accents". I suggest to name it "Letters". And another cat is named "Mathematical". Some word is missing. I suggest to name this cat "Mathematics" or "Maths". It will be simpler.

Thank you.

NemesisIII (talkcontribs)

Hi,

Following your suggestion, I replaced "Lettres accentuées" by "Lettres". However I don't know when the translation will be available on the French Wikipedia. The translation for special characters currently in use is very old.

Spinningspark (talkcontribs)

Are the existing local symbols going to be automatically imported? If not that is bad news. They have already had to be re-entered by hand once because they were lost when vised was first implemented. Having to do it a second time is just make work for someone else.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

It's using the old JSON format for now. Eventually, a better system will be added.

Smihael (talkcontribs)

It is much better than the old one, yet I would still prefer if it was located below the actual editing box and not above it. I think the common paradigm (also seen on mobile phones) is to have input tool placed on the bottom.

Salix alba (talkcontribs)

I agree with the size issue. VE always tends to make things bigger than needed. For the maths symbols I didn't think much of the initial selection, use of the special superscript character is discouraged for maths articles its better to use the sup tag 1234567890 compared to superscript chars ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰. The ²³ have some use for doing units like m² but the other have very limited use.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I think that whether it's bigger than needed depends upon your computer set up as well as your vision. We have more than one user who zooms in to be able to see things comfortably in VisualEditor. (The toolbar, in particular, needs to be re-designed to behave better when zoomed. Right now, it wraps and covers a lot of the screen.)

Gnom1 (talkcontribs)

Hi, the new special character insertion tool is a lot better than the previous one: It now takes two clicks to insert a special character instead of four. However, that is still twice as many clicks as in the Wikitext editor, where inserting a special character only takes one click, thanks to the extended editing toolbar.

Quotation marks that wrap around selected text (as they do in the existing Wikitext editor) would be really cool. To highlight the importance of this feature, please note that, for example, the German-language community will have to insert each and every quotation mark using this tool because German uses different quotation marks than English ("" vs. „“). The same, as far as I know, goes for French ("" vs. «»).

Thanks,

Elitre (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Hey User:Gnom1, by "extended editing toolbar" do you mean the Sonderzeichen one inside the toolbar, or the one at the bottom of the page? Thanks,

NemesisIII (talkcontribs)

Hi, I totally agree with the users above. The new tool is much better than the previous one. I also think the tool should a bit smaller because it takes a lot of space on small screens. Otherwise, it is much more practical and easier to use. You did a good job with this. Thanks,

NemesisIII (talkcontribs)

Unfortunately the new special character inserter tool doesn't work in the reference editor.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Or for typing in the names of templates or categories, or several other issues. Those items are on the list as necessary improvements for the future.

Klipe (talkcontribs)

This is an immense improvement over initial attempts. Good job!

I would welcome some improvements mentioned by other people above, such as the behaviour for quotation marks and the ability to resize... but these are more nice-to-have details. The only major issue that I see now is that it works only in the main text zone, not in references and other templates.

George Orwell III (talkcontribs)

Two quick points...

First, a technical one: the padding-top:0.5em imposed by some .css definition somewhere in that class-name orgy probably should be nullified somehow imho. This would shrink the h3 headings rendered in the right panel (i.e Latin, IPA, Symbols & the like) enough to always show 3 complete corresponding rows of the "button" (character) set instead of the 2.7849643 rows I'm seeing now (Win 8.1 / IE 11).

Second, a plea: for the love of God, please give us a way to pick the sets we want loaded (note: I damn well know how to (display:none) hide something after the fact; that's not any sort of solution). In short, duplicating WikiEditor's deficiencies in this aspect would not be any sort of added value in the end.

Сунприат (talkcontribs)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): It is "heavy". Why the right shows all the blocks of symbols - scroll so long and terrible. I want to see to see the whole block at once, a hard limit - it is again "look through the keyhole" - I want the opportunity to expand the box to see all separate characters block.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Having all the characters in a long list enables easier browsing, if someone doesn't know which section a particular character is in. Otherwise, we have to click on each individual section-name in order to see the list.

Regarding the height (vertical size) of the box with all the characters, I believe it is currently set to a size that will work on the majority of common screen sizes. It is more difficult (adding code complexity) to automatically change the height based on browser-window size, and even more difficult to add a manual "click and drag to expand" re-size control.

However, we can individually override the size with user.css using something like this (adjust as needed if you have a very large monitor, and keep in mind that it may break in unexpected ways - I am not a dev!)

.ve-ui-toolbarDialog.oo-ui-window-ready {
   max-height: 350px !important;
}
.ve-ui-specialCharacterDialog .oo-ui-bookletLayout {
   height: 350px !important;
}

(defaults are 150px)

Hope that helps.