Difference between revisions of "Visual editor"

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VisualWikitext
(Updated for 2023)
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{{Feature
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The [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor Visual Editor] for MediaWiki relies on the '''Parsoid''' extension <ref>[https://git.wikimedia.org/tree/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FParsoid Parsoid extension]</ref>.
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|image=Visual Editor (linking).png
 
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|imgdesc=Direct editing
 
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|title=
 
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}}
 
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{{#set:feature description = A reliable rich-text editor for MediaWiki. Allows you to just "edit the page you see" while being aware of all the syntactically rich features of templates, extensions etc.}}
 
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{{#set:feature notes = The Visual Editor is available Here and on Wikipedia.}}
 
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{{#set:feature tests = [[Special:UserLogin|Login]] to the wiki, and make an edit in your [[Special:MyPage/Sandbox|personal sandbox]]. }}
 
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{{#set:feature examples = }}
 
  
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<blockquote>"Parsoid implements a bidirectional wikitext parser and interpreter. It
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converts and interprets wikitext into an annotated HTML DOM, which can then be
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edited with HTML editor tools such as the Visual Editor. It also provides the conversion
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of a (possibly modified) HTML DOM back to wikitext."</blockquote>
  
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[[File:VisualEditor-logo.svg|alt=Visual Editor|frameless|641x641px|Visual Editor logo]]
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Robin Cover would be proud.  It round-trips wiki to HTML and back.
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== Links ==
 
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* [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:VisualEditor/User_guide User Guide]
 
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* [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox Demo] (no account needed)
 
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* [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Portal/Help Portal to Help Content about VE]
 
  
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== Back story ==
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Parsoid brings node.js to mediawiki.  To install the visual editor extension in a webfaction account, you need to first have node installed and working.  You can do this by using the [http://docs.webfaction.com/software/custom.html installer in your webfaction panel] and associating a path with the app for a domain.
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Wiki markup is a sort of shorthand for more complicated HTML markup designed to create nicely formatted web documents.  Although in the beginning wiki markup simplified the process of creating nicely formatted content, that shorthand can get increasingly complex in order to produce complicated layout and content.  The extension of the markup system over time to include a template subsystem and macros inevitably leads to a tension between ease of use, and power.  This tension was one of the primary factors that the Wikimedia Foundation cited as an impediment to new content collaborators for the Wikipedia. <ref>https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/March_2011_Update</ref><ref>http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study</ref> <ref>See this October 2013 article in the MIT Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia</ref>. A visual editor was deemed nearly impossible after many early attempts failed, but with the advent of Node.js technology, it became an idea that was plausible again.
 
  
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Fast-forward to 2016 when VisualEditor was fully working as a Visual WYSIWYG interface for editing MediaWiki content, using a Node.js backend called 'Parsoid' which is a bidirectional runtime wiki parser. This caused a big software architectural problem: there were two parsers to maintain: the 'normal' (now 'legacy') core parser in PHP, and the Visual Editor parser (Parsoid) in JavaScript. So, by the end of 2019, Parsoid was ported to PHP, and distributed with MediaWiki 1.35 as part of the [mw:Parsoid/Parser_Unification|Parser Unification initiative]].
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You'll want to set/update your $NODE_PATH and $PATH environment variables to locate the installed node modules, and to find the node and npm binaries
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<source lang="bash">
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export NODE_PATH="$HOME/webapps/node/lib/node_modules:$NODE_PATH"
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echo 'export NODE_PATH="$HOME/webapps/node/lib/node_modules:$NODE_PATH"' >> $HOME/.bashrc
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which npm
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export PATH="$HOME/webapps/node/bin:$PATH"
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echo 'export PATH="/$HOME/webapps/node/bin:$PATH"' >> $HOME/.bashrc
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</source>
  
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== Intro ==
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Once node (and npm) is available, you of course need to get the parsoid and visual_editor extensions. A quick <code>npm install</code> in the parsoid directory sets up all the node machinery.
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* [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimania_2013_-_VisualEditor_-_The_present_and_future_of_editing_our_wikis.webm VIDEO] Wikimania 2013
 
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* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Ioi1aLAL8 VIDEO] (47 min.) with James Forrester - Product Manager and Roan Kattouw - Sr. Software Engineer presenting Jan 13, 2014 at Linux.conf.au on the contentEditable aspects of the system.
 
  
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The [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor Visual Editor] for MediaWiki relies on [[mw:Parsoid|Parsoid]]
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== API / Developer Documentation ==
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<blockquote>"Parsoid implements a bidirectional wikitext parser and interpreter. It converts and interprets wikitext into an annotated HTML DOM, which can then be edited with HTML editor tools such as the Visual Editor. It also provides the conversion of a (possibly modified) HTML DOM back to wikitext."</blockquote>
 
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[http://xml.coverpages.org/ Robin Cover] would be proud.  It round-trips wiki to HTML + RDFa and back.
 
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== Installation ==
 
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VisualEditor is included with MediaWiki. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor
 
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== Extensions ==
 
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# [[mw:Extension:VisualEditor]]
 
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# [[mw:Extension:Parsoid]]
 
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=== Extensions that hook into VE ===
 
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* https://codesearch-beta.wmcloud.org/things/?q=ve.ui.commandRegistry.register&files=&excludeFiles=&repos=
 
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* https://codesearch-beta.wmcloud.org/extensions/?q=VisualEditorPluginModules&i=nope&files=&repos=
 
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Extension authors should register <code>VisualEditorPluginModules</code>
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Proofread_Page
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeMirror (syntax highlighting)
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Disambiguator
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Kartographer (Open Street Maps)
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LanguageTool
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Score (LillyPond)
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TemplateData
 
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# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiHiero
 
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== Customizing Visual Editor with custom menus, tools, commands ==
 
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* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Gadgets
 
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* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Gadgets/Creating_a_custom_command
 
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* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Gadgets/Add_a_tool
 
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== API / Developer Docs / DevOps ==
 
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* [[mw:Parsoid/Setup]]
 
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* [[mw:Parsoid/Troubleshooting]]
 
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* [[mw:Parsoid/Debugging]]
 
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* [[mw:Parsoid/Packaging]]
 
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* [https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parsoid DevOps] (Wikitech)
 
 
* https://doc.wikimedia.org/VisualEditor/master/ powered by JSDuck
 
* https://doc.wikimedia.org/VisualEditor/master/ powered by JSDuck
 
* http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.wikitext wikitext-l
 
* http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.wikitext wikitext-l
  
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{{References}}
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I [https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/132479/1/api/ParsoidService.js noticed a bug] and it was fixed about 5 minutes after I mentioned it!  (Thanks C. Scott Ananian)
  
 
[[Category:Wiki]]
 
[[Category:Wiki]]
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[[Category:JavaScript]]
 

Revision as of 14:13, 9 May 2014

The Visual Editor for MediaWiki relies on the Parsoid extension [1].

"Parsoid implements a bidirectional wikitext parser and interpreter. It

converts and interprets wikitext into an annotated HTML DOM, which can then be edited with HTML editor tools such as the Visual Editor. It also provides the conversion

of a (possibly modified) HTML DOM back to wikitext."

Robin Cover would be proud. It round-trips wiki to HTML and back.

Parsoid brings node.js to mediawiki. To install the visual editor extension in a webfaction account, you need to first have node installed and working. You can do this by using the installer in your webfaction panel and associating a path with the app for a domain.

You'll want to set/update your $NODE_PATH and $PATH environment variables to locate the installed node modules, and to find the node and npm binaries 

export NODE_PATH="$HOME/webapps/node/lib/node_modules:$NODE_PATH"
echo 'export NODE_PATH="$HOME/webapps/node/lib/node_modules:$NODE_PATH"' >> $HOME/.bashrc
which npm
export PATH="$HOME/webapps/node/bin:$PATH"
echo 'export PATH="/$HOME/webapps/node/bin:$PATH"' >> $HOME/.bashrc

Once node (and npm) is available, you of course need to get the parsoid and visual_editor extensions. A quick npm install in the parsoid directory sets up all the node machinery.

API / Developer Documentation[edit | edit source]

I noticed a bug and it was fixed about 5 minutes after I mentioned it! (Thanks C. Scott Ananian)

  1. ↑ Parsoid extension

HyperText Markup Language = structured text that uses logical links (hyperlinks) between nodes containing text.

Application Programming Interface

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