Syntax highlighting in Edit window

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Dmitry Brant

4 Jun 2014 4 Jun '14

9:21 a.m.

Hi all, This is something I've been tinkering with for a bit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9svwrlvf839z9f/device-2014-06-04-085320.png IMHO, the Wiki markup syntax can be quite daunting for new editors, and when editing articles with a lot of markup, the edit window can look like a cacophony of symbols. In lieu of a full-blown VE interface, I propose implementing a minimal form of "syntax highlighting" that will at least guide new editors on the usage of Wiki markup, and might even help experienced editors double-check what they're adding without requiring a preview. What does everyone think of this? -Dmitry

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Yuvi Panda

4 Jun 4 Jun

9:24 a.m.

Yuri Astrakhan

10:52 a.m.

I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup. On Jun 4, 2014 9:25 AM, "Yuvi Panda" <yuvipanda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Wooo, that is quite awesome! :D Simple subtle highlighting would be quite awesome. And assuming you are doing some amount of wikitext parsing (rather than regexing) that would be useful for other operations too, I think (popping up link inspectors and stuff). I greatly approve! -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Arthur Richards

12:47 p.m.

I like this idea a lot - particularly if syntax highlighting can be leveraged to show incomplete markup - eg I'm editing some markup and forget to close a } or a ]] or whatever. On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 2:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan <yastrakhan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup. On Jun 4, 2014 9:25 AM, "Yuvi Panda" <yuvipanda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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-- Arthur Richards Software Engineer, Mobile [[User:Awjrichards]] IRC: awjr +1-415-839-6885 x6687

Yuvi Panda

12:52 p.m.

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan <yastrakhan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup.

Brion Vibber

12:54 p.m.

Yeah, Ace has some bad touch support too, and it's got serious problems with RTL and variable-width characters. If we do syntax highlighting, staying in the native editor widget is probably best for performance and consistency of behavior on both Android and iOS. (Text edit widgets support annotated text with some styling, which should be enough for our needs.) -- brion On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Yuvi Panda <yuvipanda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan <yastrakhan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup.

Possibly, although ACE (the one we use on desktop) has somewhat terrible perf on Mobile the last time I checked (a few months ago). Lots of cursor placement issues as well. If we do it on Android, it'll most likely just use Android Spannables in a regular EditText - should be much faster and bug free, I think. -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Dmitry Brant

12:57 p.m.

That's exactly how I'm implementing it (Spannable strings in the native EditText view). It's pretty simple and fast to do it this way; and I would think that any amount of syntax highlighting is better than none? This might serve well until we get around to a more complete VE for mobile. On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Yuri Astrakhan <yastrakhan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

I wonder if the code editor extension can be adapted to work for wiki markup.

_______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Brion Vibber

12:53 p.m.

Hmm, I wonder if we can do something crazy like embed Parsoid for consistent parsing? :D It might also make sense to explore a 'partial' VE that displays links like links, bold like bold, shows placeholders for images etc. For us programmers syntax highlighting is great but it's still scary markup. :) Whether it makes more sense to use attributed strings / rich strings in the system text editor widget or to use a webview as a VE or partial-VE may take some experimenting... depends how deep down the rabbit hole we're willing to go. :D -- brion On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 6:24 AM, Yuvi Panda <yuvipanda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Dan Garry

1:09 p.m.

Great idea! I've added a card <https://trello.com/c/eTHky2v3/509-as-a-new-editor-i-d-like-some-form-of-syntax-highlighting-so-that-i-find-editing-using-wikicode-less-confusing> to our backlog for this. It'll need design refinement and it's not clear to me where it fits in with our current priorities, but it's a pretty nifty proof of concept! Thanks, Dan On 4 June 2014 06:21, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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-- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation

Jon Robson

1:43 p.m.

I've always thought something like this would be useful for wikitext editing, I even tinkered with this on an older project (it's fricking hard problem on the web!). Alas, the textarea element on the web doesn't help this sort of thing... you have to basically maintain a textarea and a div with identical styling and keep them in sync with one another. If it's easier on apps you should definitely do this! On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Great idea! I've added a card to our backlog for this. It'll need design refinement and it's not clear to me where it fits in with our current priorities, but it's a pretty nifty proof of concept! Thanks, Dan On 4 June 2014 06:21, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

-- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform and Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Tomasz Finc

5:34 p.m.

Excellent job Dmitry this looks very promising. Dan, thanks for getting in on the board so that we can prioritize and allocate resources accordingly. --tomasz On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Vibha Bamba

5:42 p.m.

This is solid progress. Does this mean preview will also carry highlighting very soon? :) Of course we will want to treat colors etc so the markup doesn't feel like a link. ---- Vibha Bamba Senior Designer | WMF Design On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Tomasz Finc <tfinc(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Great idea! I've added a card to our backlog for this. It'll need design refinement and it's not clear to me where it fits in

with

our current priorities, but it's a pretty nifty proof of concept! Thanks, Dan On 4 June 2014 06:21, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > > Hi all, > > This is something I've been tinkering with for a bit: > https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9svwrlvf839z9f/device-2014-06-04-085320.png > > IMHO, the Wiki markup syntax can be quite daunting for new editors, and > when editing articles with a lot of markup, the edit window can look

like a

> cacophony of symbols. > > In lieu of a full-blown VE interface, I propose implementing a minimal > form of "syntax highlighting" that will at least guide new editors on

the

> usage of Wiki markup, and might even help experienced editors

double-check

what they're adding without requiring a preview. What does everyone think of this? -Dmitry _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

_______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Yuvi Panda

5:45 p.m.

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:42 PM, Vibha Bamba <vbamba(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

This is solid progress. Does this mean preview will also carry highlighting very soon? :) Of course we will want to treat colors etc so the markup doesn't feel like a link.

Preview highlighting is another can of worms but solveable. It requires HTML Diffs, which apps are well suited to be able to do (since we have the HTML structure before and after). Slightly complicated algorithmy problem, though. - Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog

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participants (9)

Arthur Richards
Brion Vibber
Dan Garry
Dmitry Brant
Jon Robson
Tomasz Finc
Vibha Bamba
Yuri Astrakhan
Yuvi Panda