711244 - Integrate a better wiki-text editor for wiki.mozilla.org

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Websites :: wiki.mozilla.org, defect)

Description

[Soumya Deb [:Debloper]]

WikiEditor [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiEditor] is the best tool for this job IMO. It's also the default editor of WikiMedia projects.

The current default editor is pathetic beyond explanation, and FCKeditor is just not *really* suitable for Wiki-text editing.

Comment 1

[Amir Aharoni]

I support WikiEditor in principle, but it may be problematic, because it's tied quite strongly to MediaWiki's default Vector skin. On Vector WikiEditor is very easy to install. On the Mozilla sking it may require tweaks, but it's worth trying.

Comment 2

[Amir Aharoni]

So... I saw that Mark added himself to CC, and I've been reminded about this little bug here.

Wikimedia is developing the VisualEditor, which is supposed to be the Super-Duper-Real-Thing-O-Matic WYSIWYG editor for MediaWiki. It is developing surprisingly quickly and well in the last few months and it's already being installed on Wikipedia.

I would suggest trying it, but as with WikiEditor, I am really not sure that it will work with Mozilla's skin. It must also be upgraded to 1.21 (currently it's 1.19, which is LTS, but already very outdated).

Comment 3

[Mark A. Hershberger (hexmode)]

Amir is right that the VisualEditor is better.  However, he didn't mention that the not only does VisualEditor requires a wiki upgrade, it also requires node.js server to run.  Mozilla might be able to support this, but I personally think that the node.js requirement should be removed -- i.e. Parsoid should be rewritten in PHP.

From some discussion about this with the VE, I'm not sure how realistic a PHP rewrite is, but I'd like to think it is possible.

(In my fantasy, I rewrite the Parsoid interface -- the bit that requires node.js -- into PHP.)

Comment 4

[Amir Aharoni]

node.js is indeed a requirement, but it should be the easier one to implement. I run my own instance of that node.js server on my laptop for testing, and it's really vanilla: clone from git, write a config file (of about two lines), and run one command. That's it.

Last time I checked there's clean and agreed way to install it as a service; on Wikimedia servers it's done using Puppet, about which I don't know much, but that still shouldn't be that hard.

So upgrading to MediaWiki 1.21 and doing something about the Mozilla skin are the harder parts. (Or you could just switch to the Vector skin...)

Comment 5

[Mark A. Hershberger (hexmode)]

(In reply to Amir Aharoni from comment #4)
> So upgrading to MediaWiki 1.21 and doing something about the Mozilla skin
> are the harder parts. (Or you could just switch to the Vector skin...)

Given that I'm the volunteer supporting wikimo and that I just finished upgrading to the LTS version just a few months ago, that I have no experience with installing and running Visual Editor, and that the whole point of using the LTS is to avoid the upgrade cycle, I don't think it is going to happen.

Of course, if Mozilla decides an upgrade to support VE is what they want to do and Ops is ready to set up node.js to support it, then they should go for it.  I just don't have a lot of help to offer for VE at this point (that may quickly change, though).

Comment 6

[Alison Wheeler [:AlisonW]]

I also queried about moving from the current LTS version a week or two back, but in my case I was wanting new functionality that has been integrated into the mainline. The issue, as hexmode effectively notes, is that wiki.m.o doesn't have assigned support, relying on volunteer action to maintain and improve in a mostly ad hoc approach. 

Whilst I'd love to see us move wiki.m.o to the main trunk version with all the bells and whistles that would require Mozilla to support it in a different manner, effectively as a core program, and that is (from my understanding, ianame) unlikely at the present time, especially without an adequate use case for the time&cash investment compared to the present number of regularly editing users (very small)

Comment 7

[Alison Wheeler [:AlisonW]]

For the present, I'm closing this as "wontfix" pending discussions elsewhere about the support and future roadmap for wiki.m.o