Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2018/March

Please test pings in edit summary
1. Read this:
 * "You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. phab:T32750"-- meta:Tech/News/2018/10

2. Sign up at https://en.wikibooks.beta.wmflabs.org/ using a different user name and password (not the one you use here). You may create multiple accounts if you like, just put a note on their user pages.

3. Edit a page and put a username link in edit summary. Confirm that you are receiving the notification correctly.

4. Test at different pages and in different ways.

5. Report bugs to Phabricator.

6. Share this comment with other people on other wikis, in different languages.

--Gryllida (talk) 23:53, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Template for cover page
Do you have a template for cover page which can have contents and cover image in itself. The template should be like these templates but applicable for the first page of the book. I need to translate it for Persian Wikibooks. --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 16:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fwiw, if I understand what you're asking (misunderstandings are easy), I don't know of such a thing. Note, there's no one way that all our books handle covers.  Afaik, some books don't really have a cover image; on some books the main page of the book (the one whose name is the name of the book) has the cover image and the table of contents; on some books, the main page has the cover image while the TOC is on a separate page; on some books, the main page has the TOC while the cover image is on a separate page.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:06, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, today it's made like this: The Cold War/Cover or like that: Inkscape/Print version. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 19:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Too bad. It seems that Wikibooks needs such a template. --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 08:10, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I do not entirely understand what sort of template you are asking for. It's true, as I've mentioned, that we do not have one single format that all books use; but even if you are describing something that only some of our books would want to use, I'm not sure what it is.  Is there an example somewhere of the sort of thing you have in mind?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:27, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As we have some default templates for navigation in middle pages of the book, the first page can have predefined templates too. I don't have a specific algorithm for the fore-page in my mind but something like this can be O.K. It has title, preface for the readers, cover image, printable version, pdf version, chapters, caption for each chapter, other images. Apart from, it has two labels, one for development stage and one as featured badge. --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 13:27, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is where I admit I start getting uncomfortable. The variety of ways a book main page might be formatted is really unbounded.  A favorite of mine (I partly redesigned it myself a few years ago) is this; but even that is just something that worked for the particular book.  And there is always a bit of a learning curve to using a template in the first place, and for overall formatting of a page like this there's a lot of inflexibility implied by a template.  So we'd be saying, put in effort to learn to only be allowed to do it a certain way, instead of designing your own book main page.  I could imagine this as a task for a semi-automated assistant.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:44, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter Did you know? Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?



Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.

If you enable the Beta Feature for "", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.



This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

 * The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools.  The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments.  They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing.  The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January.  Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor.  Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits.  More information will be posted at Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
 * The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor.  When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs.  You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs".  The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges.
 * Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor.
 * The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be a bit tricky to set up.  Your wiki can have this service.  Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.

Let's work together

 * The team will talk about editing tools at an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
 * Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
 * The  block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens.  This makes footnotes easier to read.  You can request multi-column support for your wiki.
 * If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation.

—Elitre (WMF) 20:56, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Notification from edit summary
Greetings,

The ability to notify other users in edit summaries will be available later this week, on 15 March 2018. Other users can be notified if a link to their user page is provided in an edit summary. Some user-made gadgets and scripts that automatically put user names in edit summaries may need to be changed to put a colon in the link, such as User:Example. You can change how you receive these mention notifications in your preferences. This feature was highly requested in the 2017 Community Wishlist survey, and feedback is welcome.

Thanks, happy editing to you. -Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

We need your feedback to improve Lua functions
Hello,

If you’re regularly using Lua modules, creating and improving some of them, we need your feedback! The Wikidata development team would like to provide more Lua functions, in order to improve the experience of people who write Lua scripts to reuse Wikidata's data on the Wikimedia projects. Our goals are to help harmonizing the existing modules across the Wikimedia projects, to make coding in Lua easier for the communities, and to improve the performance of the modules.

We would like to know more about your habits, your needs, and what could help you. We have a few questions for you on this page.

Thanks a lot for your help, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (discuss • contribs) 08:52, 27 March 2018 (UTC)