IRC office hours/Office hours 2014-08-14

VisualEditor

Log

<poem style="font-family:monospace,Courier;background:#F2F2F2"> Time: 09:00-10:00 UTC Channel: #wikimedia-office Timestamps are in UTC.

[09:00:20] <Elitre> Hello everybody, and welcome to the VisualEditor office hour for August with James Forrester (Product Manager). [09:00:30] <James_F> (Hey.) [09:01:06] <Elitre> James is still in Europe after Wikimania, we hope we chose a good time for this office hour. [09:01:38] <Elitre> So, does anybody have questions for him? [09:02:53] <Elitre> While you think about questions, James can probably tell us something about the roadmap. [09:03:00] <James_F> Elitre: Sure! We have two main on-wiki places people can find out what's planned. [09:03:27] <James_F> First off there's the goals for this fiscal year for the Editing team: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals#Editing [09:03:49] <James_F> (The fiscal year goes from 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015, so we're currently in "Q1".) [09:04:30] <James_F> From that, you can see our big areas of work are on Internet Explorer browser support, a neat way for entering citations with much less work, and working with communities to re-enable VisualEditor there. [09:04:49] <James_F> That's nominally due by the end of the quarter – i.e., in 7 weeks' time. [09:05:09] <James_F> Alongside that over-arching document, there's also https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Roadmap [09:05:47] <James_F> This gives lots more details about what we're working on on a day-to-day basis. [09:06:29] <Elitre> Thanks, James_F [09:06:57] <Elitre> I was wondering if any of the people in this channel were at Wikimania last week? [09:07:06] * James_F was. :-) [09:07:59] <Elitre> James_F: I noticed that! [09:08:11] <Cookies52> I was planning to go, but other rl issues got in the way... [09:08:27] <Elitre> So, here is the link to James_F slideshow, in case you missed it:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Wikimania_2014_-_VisualEditor_%E2%80%94_helping_users_edit_more_easily.pdf [09:08:59] <Elitre> Cookies52: sorry to hear that: maybe next year in Mexico :) [09:09:35] <James_F> That's the main talk I gave about VisualEditor. [09:10:10] <Elitre> James_F: yes! Packed room. Are there slides from the other talk VE devs gave? [09:10:16] <James_F> There was also a talk from the developers about the issues related to VisualEditor. [09:10:22] <James_F> I don't think those are up yet, sadly. [09:10:37] <Cookies52> Elitre, I doubt I could go out that far :P [09:10:39] <James_F> (And it's 02:10 in the morning for the developer whose computer the slides sit on.) [09:10:41] <Elitre> oh. OK. we can talk about yours then. [09:11:14] <James_F>  :-) [09:11:25] <Elitre> James_F: you mention tablet editing at page 21 of that document. can you give us more details? [09:11:34] <James_F> Sure. [09:12:02] <James_F> So, as of a bit later today, all visitors to the mobile versions of Wikipedia using a tablet will have the option to use VisualEditor. [09:12:18] <James_F> Previously this was only available to people who opted in as beta testers. [09:13:03] <James_F> So when you are on an article, you still click the "pencil" icon to open the editor. [09:13:30] <James_F> However, you will now have a "switcher" cog icon available in the top right corner (top left in RTL) which lets you switch to VisualEditor instead. [09:13:55] <James_F> The preference is "sticky", so if you used VisualEditor last time, that will load for you next time you click edit (but you can still switch away). [09:14:24] <James_F> The default for the preference on all wikis (English, French, etc.) is that the wikitext editor is what first-time editors get. [09:14:32] <James_F> Maybe in future we'll change that. [09:14:56] <James_F> And one thing to note is that having a single entry point for edits – rather than two edit tabs – is clearly much better, less cluttered, and less confusing for users. [09:15:48] <Cookies52> James_F, quick question (haven't seen this anywhere yet...) will there be template and image caption editing added sometime? That's the one reason why I don't use it at the moment... [09:15:49] <James_F> So we'll try to do the same for desktop users of VisualEditor as well at some point. [09:16:12] <James_F> Cookies52: Hey! Those are actually available now. [09:16:19] <Cookies52> wait... really? [09:16:25] <James_F> Cookies52: Are they too hidden? [09:16:28] <James_F> Yeah. :-) [09:16:56] <Cookies52> Yeah... I've got it open in front of me, and taping on the template has no visible effect showing I can edit it [09:17:04] <Cookies52> It just highlights [09:17:11] <Cookies52> (Using experimental version) [09:17:12] <James_F> Is this on a tablet? [09:17:15] <James_F> Aha. [09:17:19] <James_F> Yeah, that's coming soon. [09:17:30] <Cookies52> ah ok [09:17:36] <James_F> The desktop site already has that, which is what confused me. [09:17:58] <James_F> That shouldn't be too much work, but we didn't want to delay the initial release for it. [09:17:59] <Cookies52> Yeah, I find the version on the desktop site brilliant for templates, especially with TD :) [09:18:09] <Cookies52> Much easier than digging out the documentation [09:18:11] <James_F> Thanks! Glad that you're happy. [09:18:15] <Elitre> The tablet version is slightly different ATM I think, with less features, but as James_F said that's gonna change. [09:18:33] <James_F> Of course, it only "works" because of the brilliant work by the community to write out the TemplateData. [09:18:43] <James_F> So it's not like VisualEditor can take all the credit. :-) [09:18:59] <Cookies52> heh... many hours of my time have been spent doing that :P [09:19:14] <James_F> Speaking of that, for desktop we've started deploying a GUI editor for TemplateData blocks. [09:19:19] <Elitre> Cookies52: thanks a lot for that. [09:19:34] <James_F> It's currently deployed on English, German, French, Italian, Polish, Russian and other Wikipedias. [09:19:50] <Elitre> Cookies52: have you tested this new TD editor yet? [09:20:07] <James_F> It's a little ugly, but it lets you create and edit TemplateData blocks for a template without having to learn (and type perfectly) JSON. [09:20:41] <Cookies52> Elitre, I have. All that time wasted learning how to do JSON ;) [09:20:46] <James_F> Ha. :-) [09:20:58] <Elitre> Cookies52: time to learn anything is never wasted! [09:20:59] <James_F> Cookies52: Skills learnt are never wasted, they just are unused. [09:21:50] <Cookies52> The one bit of feedback I have is that some users (1 or 2 I have found, so a minority) use it to try and create the template, rather than just the TD, but I guess there's nothing we can do to stop that... [09:22:02] * James_F nods. [09:22:28] <James_F> We've got some very vague thoughts about being able to make a template using VisualEditor (rather than using it) but nothing concrete. [09:23:01] <Elitre> James_F: that would be huge... [09:23:07] <James_F> Cookies52: Beyond what we currently support in VisualEditor (desktop or tablet), is there anything in particular that would be useful for us to focus on? [09:23:37] <James_F> One of the things we're scheduled to work on is table structure editing, for example (adding/deleting rows/columns). [09:23:47] <Cookies52> hmm.. not that I can think of. In terms of the template creation, it would be handy for parser expression, especially if it allows you to test them... although I guess that's going to be something at a much later date [09:23:51] <Cookies52> Tables are a good idea too [09:24:09] <Elitre> quick link to mockups for tables: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Design/Table_editor [09:24:20] <James_F> In fact, whilst we were at Wikimania we worked with a group who had already started working on this and had made some great progress. [09:24:37] <James_F> So we're going to fold that work in to VisualEditor for all users. [09:24:41] <Elitre> if anybody has feedback about this, please use the talk page for that page. [09:24:58] <James_F> Cookies52: Parser function support isn't great right now, you're right. [09:25:45] <James_F> I have some ideas about how we could make that neat, and though I agree that it's not much of a priority in terms of regular users, I think it would prove useful to a lot of more seasoned editors who can't quite remember the syntax to be guided through using them. [09:26:32] <James_F> (Showing a list of available parser functions; showing the result of the current invocation as you edit it; splitting each field into its own box with a label; showing hints about how to use the fields; etc.) [09:26:57] <James_F> There are other non-template Transclusions that might be worthwhile to make easy to edit, too. [09:27:37] <James_F> Magic words (like 2024), Wikidata references (like ) and more. [09:27:48] <James_F> So there's scope for lots of fun. :-) [09:28:38] <James_F> Another area of templates we're looking to improve is that right now each of the parameters is exposed as Wikitext to us by Parsoid. [09:29:12] <James_F> Soon Parsoid will give it to us as HTML, so you'll be able to richly edit template parameters. [09:30:00] <Elitre> (completely OT note, I was so happy to meet Parsoid guys at Wikimania. they're such a nice crew.) [09:31:10] <Elitre> Not so OT instead, the VisualEditor Translation Sprint at Wikimania went well. I'm particularly happy about it. [09:31:20] <James_F> Oh, yeah. [09:31:28] <Elitre> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Translathon [09:31:50] <James_F> We got two languages of the interface of VisualEditor from nothing to 100% translated during Wikimania [09:32:11] <James_F> And loads more improved up to 100% (or just up generally). [09:33:00] <Cookies52> Yeah.. that's another thing I like... When i go over to fr (or whatever), I can still use the english version without having to use my bad french :P [09:33:01] <Elitre> Several messages were reviewed, and at least 600 new messages were created. [09:33:06] <James_F> Cookies52: :-) [09:33:51] <James_F> Cookies52: And vice versa – people who mostly speak (say) Cantonese can use the VisualEditor interface in seamless Cantonese whilst editing English Wikipedia (or Dutch or French or…). [09:33:53] <Elitre> Some of that work is still in progress, because well, there is really no point in declaring an online activity closed :) [09:34:20] <James_F> All thanks to our amazing community of software translators, to whom I continue to be very grateful. [09:35:17] <Elitre> Yes, many many thanks :) [09:35:51] <Cookies52> Another quick suggsestion - would it be possible for image galleries to get a better UI - ie - like what Wikia has? [09:36:08] <Cookies52> Just the existing interface seems a bit clunky... [09:36:25] <James_F> Yes, definitely. [09:36:44] <James_F> In fact, VisualEditor was initially built jointly with Wikia [09:37:05] <James_F> They're now working independently on bits that are particularly important to them, and one of them is gallery editing. [09:37:30] <James_F> We've talked about us taking their gallery editor and using it ourselves, but it lacks some of the features that MediaWiki galleries support. [09:37:50] <James_F> (Wikia galleries are a different breed than MediaWiki galleries as they've extended them in one direction and we've gone in another.) [09:37:53] <Cookies52> ah, didn't realise that they were linked... I always thought they were strangely similar :D [09:37:58] * James_F grins. [09:38:31] <James_F> Right now we've got a really simple wikitext-like editor for galleries which isn't very good, as you say. [09:38:45] <James_F> It was brought in as a stop-gap measure until the "real" gallery editor could be constructed. [09:38:54] <James_F> Something visual would certainly make a lot more sense. [09:39:17] <James_F> We've got ideas for it to be an extension of the image editor, but nothing's locked down yet. [09:39:46] <Elitre> Anybody else has questions for James? [09:40:24] <ryuch> I would like to know IME things for example for Korean [09:40:34] <James_F> Hey ryuch. [09:40:48] <James_F> IME support is a complicated picture. [09:41:08] <James_F> We've got a very major change coming that will definitely improve the situation for IMEs. [09:41:39] <James_F> But until it's finished we won't know enough about whether specific IMEs will now work perfectly or if they'll still have issues. [09:42:00] <James_F> Until the IMEs work, obviously we won't make VisualEditor available by default in those wikis. [09:42:35] <James_F> (There are currently 127 language editions of Wikipedia where VisualEditor isn't available by default, including Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Bengali, etc.) [09:42:45] <ryuch> You do have priorities for supporting IMEs with languages? [09:43:07] <James_F> One of the things that we will need is real-world feedback. We can only test so many IMEs, and there are hundreds. [09:43:10] <ryuch> You can't solve the problem of 127 languages at once, i think. [09:43:17] <James_F> Probably not, no. [09:43:30] <James_F> We're working on the big issues first that affects very many IMEs. [09:43:49] <ryuch> So I mean prioritization would be required. [09:43:50] <James_F> Once we've got this landed, we'll start focussing on individual languages to test those IMEs. [09:44:02] <Elitre> James_F: what can users like ryuch do to help you? [09:44:16] <James_F> We hope that most IMEs will work out of the door without the need for changes. [09:44:41] <James_F> But individually testing IMEs exhaustively is slow work. [09:44:56] <James_F> We will prioritise "big" languages (lots of articles). [09:45:18] <ryuch> great! [09:45:32] <James_F> So ko, fa, ar etc. [09:46:17] <ryuch> May I know the major change you are trying? is it related to jqeury.ime? [09:46:20] <James_F> And ryuch, you may be able to help us. We will have tools around that let you log exactly how your IME works (and doesn't work) with VisualEditor, which we can use to fix it. [09:46:33] <James_F> The major change is around "pawning", which we're replacing. [09:46:34] <ryuch> Right. I hope so. [09:46:59] <ryuch> pawning? [09:47:28] <James_F> Pawning is a technology that we invented for VisualEditor a few years ago to try to get around browser inconsistencies and lack of support for basic operations like extending a piece of bold text. [09:48:03] <James_F> VisualEditor inserts a pawn inside the tag which lets the browser tell us where it is, so we can then replace that (now bold) character with what you type. [09:48:36] <James_F> This is great for basic typing, because it seamlessly becomes bold without you noticing (as you would expect), but is a little messy. [09:48:41] <James_F> There are also two big problems: [09:49:13] <James_F> Firstly, it can go wrong if the browser changes its mind during the typing, which is why people sometimes get pawn characters inserted in their edits (which is bad). [09:49:33] <James_F> Secondly, inserting a character outside of an IME whilst the editor is using it causes IMEs to close prematurely. [09:49:46] <James_F> Which is very very bad for IME users, because they haven't finished typing yet. [09:50:13] <ryuch> ok. Thanks. [09:50:23] <James_F> So we're replacing this technology with a new technology we've invented called "unicorning", where we insert images (rather than characters). [09:50:44] <James_F> Which is more complicated but less fragile, and more importantly shouldn't break IMEs at all. [09:50:52] <Elitre> We have ten minutes to go, so I'd encourage you to post your questions now! Rather than waiting for the September office hour. [09:50:59] <James_F> Once that technology lands, we will see where we are. [09:51:24] <ryuch> Ok. I would help for testing. [09:51:40] <James_F> That would be great, thank you. :-) [09:52:24] <James_F> If you post on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Feedback I can make sure we ping you when there's stuff to test. [09:52:27] <Elitre> (I'm pretty sure people will appreciate the change. Who doesn't love unicorns?) [09:53:35] <James_F> We call them unicorns because the ♘ character is the one up from the â™™ character. [09:54:11] <James_F> And ♘ + an accent ` looks a bit like a unicorn. [09:54:56] <James_F> If this technology doesn't work well, enough, the next will clearly need to be based on the bishop â™— character. [09:54:56] <Elitre> (In the meantime, I'm reading https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Wikimania_2014_-_VisualEditor_%E2%80%94_helping_users_edit_more_easily.pdf again. There are a couple of things I find really amazing - this "Auto-save local-only drafts if your browser crashes/disconnects mid-edit" thing that everybody will certainly appreciate, and the fact that you'll help the Math volunteers’ plans.) [09:55:42] <James_F> Thanks Elitre. Yeah, drafts if your computer loses Internet connexion is a useful one. [09:56:07] <James_F> And the volunteers working on Maths support have some good plans that we're going to help them make reality. [09:56:28] <Elitre> James_F: will I be able to publish that draft from a different device? I guess so :D [09:56:46] <James_F> Elitre: No, they're going to be client-side only for legal reasons, sadly. [09:57:48] <Elitre> James_F: I guess I can't have everything I want in life... [09:58:05] <James_F> Such is life. [09:58:07] <James_F>  ;-) [09:58:26] <Elitre> If there are other questions, please feel free to post them and we'll make sure to get back to you soon. [09:59:21] <Elitre> Before we leave, I need James_F to note that there's high demand for VE t-shirts, based on the number of people who stopped me at Wikimania begging for one. [09:59:25] <Cookies52> The only ones I have are ones that are just to help me be lazy, so nothing that is any use ;) [09:59:35] * James_F nods. [09:59:39] <Cookies52> Wait... I want one as well now :P [09:59:59] <James_F> I'll definitely speak to the Shop people to ask if maybe we could carry such merchandise, then. :-) [10:00:10] <Elitre> So thanks everybody for coming and asking questions, thanks James for answering. [10:00:35] * James_F waves. [10:00:37] <ryuch> Thank you, Elitre for leading. [10:00:38] <James_F> Thank you everyone. :-) [10:00:53] <James_F> Hope to make VisualEditor even better for you by next month! [10:01:02] <Elitre> We'll be back here on September 18th, 16:00 UTC. [10:01:08] <James_F> See you then. [10:01:09] <Cookies52> Thank you for the effort put into it as well :) [10:02:04] <Elitre> Logs will be posted soon on Meta.