Topic on 2017 wikitext editor/Feedback

One of the most useful features of VE right now is the ability to edit templates and references and tables using a visual form; templates and references use a modal panel and tables are tables.

Maybe it would be nice to be provided an option in the wikitext editor which allows me to edit those as if they were being edited from VE. (A table you could pop up in a modal panel also, if you don't want to hack at displaying the table directly in the WT editor.)

This is along the lines of my comment earlier regarding merging wikitext and visual editor, but is a much more limited scope.

Wow. The VE table editor in NWE. It could be splendid...

You can just switch to VE to edit the table, then switch back again.

That's suboptimal for all of the listed cases--really more of a workaround.

Sounds like wanting to have one's cake and eating it too. If one wants to edit using the source, then one should edit it using text if one wants to edit visually then one should use a Visual Editor.

Anyone who has ever spent more than an hour trying to create a tool to parse wikitext would realize how folly this request is. Wikitext parsing is incredibly problematic and complex because it was designed for humans to create not machines, and this is probably the main reason why VE is an html editor.

Creating such tools would mean not just worrying about regular wikitext for tables, but also hacky tools like <noinclude> <onlyinclude><includeonly> {{{}}} [[foo]s <tag> and parser functions. Not to mention the many nested variations of all of the above. Whatever such tool they develop would never be truly usable.

A better use of time would be MediaWiki developers first having the stones to take a hammer and kill a lot of wikitext misfeatures, and having the nerves of steal to weather the storm.

197: I think maybe you miss the point of why this request comes now: they're already doing the parsing, and now it's using the same engine as VE.

You bet your ass I want my cake and to eat it too.

I don't think of switching between the editors to use them for what they are best at as a "workaround" - that's the software being used exactly as intended.