Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 10:53, 3 October 2014

• WP:VEF

VisualEditor is available here at the English Misplaced Pages alongside the original wikitext editor if you opt-in, by changing your preferences. VisualEditor is not available to unregistered users here at the English Misplaced Pages, or to users of Internet Explorer 9 or 10 at any Misplaced Pages. The developers are working on support for IE9 and IE10.

This page is a place for you to tell the Wikimedia developers about issues that you encounter when using the VisualEditor here on Misplaced Pages. It is still a test version and has a number of known issues and missing features. We do welcome your feedback and ideas, especially on some of the user interface decisions we are making and the priorities for adding new functions. All comments are read, but personal replies are not guaranteed. If you have encountered a problem or have found a bug, then please include your web browser, computer operating system, and Misplaced Pages skin (usually Vector, sometimes Monobook).

A VisualEditor User Guide is at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/User_guide.

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Join the IRC channel: #mediawiki-visualeditor – Test VisualEditor! (no account required)

Archives: (generated by MiszaBot II)

• 2012: 1
• 2013: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
• 2014: 1, 2, 3, 4

Stub (and other) tags

In VE, I have no idea how to remove a tag that indicates an article is a stub. I tried clicking on the text, which then turns blue. But delete, backspace, and ctrl delete do nothing. And there is no error message or tip. If I right click, one promising option comes up, but if I click on that (I can't remember what it's called, and I don't want to go there again), my entire screen gets messed up with meta-text scattered all over it, and I can't get out of it with-out leaving Misplaced Pages entirely. Kdammers (talk) 10:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Kdammers, this should be very easy: select the template and backspace. I've done it several times (example). Can you tell me which article you were trying to fix? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't recall what the article was, but I now have a similar problem at Gross Lengden. I copied a photograph from the commons but mis-understood the labeling instructions with the near invisible box borders. So, I put what I thought was the caption in the wrong place. When I went back to fix it (after I had submitted the edit: I couldn't see the picture in the preview), I couldn't figure out how to get back into editing the picture's associated text. So, I uploaded another copy of the photo and properly labeled it. I thought I would then delete the original picture. However, that was not to be. I'm not sure what you mean by "select" - I don't see a button with that name. I can highlight the picture by mousing over it. But then none of my keys do any-thing. I just gave up and saved the mess, went over to the regular editor and in a second or two made the deletion. Kdammers (talk) 05:57, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Kdammers, it sounds like you were having pretty serious problems.

When you added the image, you should have seen something like the image here. Did the dialog look significatly different? Would it help to make the lines around the boxes be darker?

I'm not sure why the image didn't display for you. Did you change anything in the Advanced tab? (Something there might have moved it to an unexpected position.) Is this a consistent problem for you?

"Highlight" and "select" are the same thing, but "hover" is different. If you click one time on an image with your mouse, or if you use arrow keys to move the cursor over it, the image should be selected (and turn light blue on most people's computers). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Problems and minor issues

Categories; the dropdown doesn't work properly. When you are adding a category and you are unlucky enough that there is enough space to the right of the last category, you get a much too small drop down menu, where most of the category names is "..." (strangely, some suggested cats get a "..." in the middle and one at the end of the cat). The box isn't resizable. Worse is that the scroll bar doesn't work, when you click it the dropdown simply closes again. You can use the up- and down arrows, but that's far from optimal. The scroll bar problem has been mentioned already some months ago.

New categories stil are added after stuc templates and so on. It would be nice if they were added with the other categories.

Categories can't be reordered.

You can add a sortkey to individual categories, but it isn't recorded (not when adding a category and not afterwards)

Advanced settings. The first two, "Let this page be indexed by search engines" and "Show a tab on this page to add a new section" are as far as I know never used on articles. Can these be namespace-specific so that they aren't shown on articles (the main target of VE).

Page settings vs. advanced settings: Page settings should be the common three "redirect", "disambiguate", and "displaytitle"; all the others are very rarely used and should be "advanced" or not displayed at all (as mentioned above).

Categories should be the first among the options as it is the most commonly used of these options

As mentioned before; it makes no sense to have a dropdown with "options", "page settings", and so on, if the options then simply list the others ("page settings" and so on) again. Either remove options and only keep the other ones (in the order as described above), or only have "options" and "switch to source editing" and discard the rest in this dropdown.

Why do the dropdown menus on the left have a dropdown arrow, but not those on the right?

When I open a template, I can select the template name (in "show options" mode) and remove it (trash can icon). But I can't apply the change. Seems strange, this is a nice way to remove templates (e.g. hidden ones). Fram (talk) 13:21, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The sort key problem needs a new bug report.

The scrollbar problem is a design problem: You can scroll with your fingers (on a laptop trackpad), mouse wheel, or with the arrow keys. If you click on it, it closes without adding a category. Design problem: if "click on it" is repurposed to become the third way to "scroll", then how would you close the search list without adding a category? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:36, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Don't most modern systems show different behaviour when you click on the scroll bar (or its arrows on top and bottom) compared to anywhere else in the box? Thta's rather basic... How would I close the box? With an X in a top corner, or a "close" button, or something else? I know, revolutionary ideas, wil take some time for the WMF devs to get around to them probably. A bit like a special character inserter that let's you add more than one character probably. I'm willing to discuss design issues, but I don't think that "using the scroll bar as a close button" is really a design issue, it's a clear bug. No priority, not assigned... Fram (talk) 08:09, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

More problems and issues

More? Add a "basic cite" (or open an existing one), drop-down the "use this group", and you get the upper half of the text "general references". If you get multiple groups, like on William Shakespeare (be patient when opening this page please), then you can't even see the other groups. I then tried to open the references section in VE, but then the script just kept hanging.

Lakeland School District, Pennsylvania. Open in VE, scroll to "Eight grade", PSSA results. Change the results? You get a template box, with a lot of col templates. Go through them on the left (click "col-begin", "content", and so on), and you see the cursor move down on the right side. Go through all the fields in this way. What do you get? Nothing! Is the content missing? No, it is only invisible, you need to actually click inside the right-side content boxes. Try it with the first one! Oh, right, that one's empty... Only if you are persistent enough to also try it with the second or third one will you notice that the contents are there and editable. What percentage of users will have given up before this? Your guess is as good as mine... Fram (talk) 08:01, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikitext in TemplateData descriptions doesn't work, see e.g. the description of reflist (used in 65% of the articles, I guess you'll be able to find an example easily...) Fram (talk) 08:10, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing bugzillas

Apparently, no bugzillas have been made for the following problems above (some may have already existed in Bugzilla but just not been noted here, e.g. it isn't clear to me whether bug 54705 (created: September 2013, status: NEW) is related to any of this; but I certainly couldn't find anything in Bugzilla for the bugs among the below list):

1. Categories: a much too small drop down menu
2. box isn't resizable (general problem, mentioned here in conjunction with the previous one
3. You can add a sortkey to individual categories, but it isn't recorded (not when adding a category and not afterwards)
4. Advanced settings. The first two, "Let this page be indexed by search engines" and "Show a tab on this page to add a new section" are as far as I know never used on articles. Can these be namespace-specific so that they aren't shown on articles (the main target of VE)?
5. Page settings vs. advanced settings: Page settings should be the common three "redirect", "disambiguate", and "displaytitle"; all the others are very rarely used and should be "advanced" or not displayed at all (as mentioned above).
6. Categories should be the first among the options as it is the most commonly used of these options
7. it makes no sense to have a dropdown with "options", "page settings", and so on, if the options then simply list the others ("page settings" and so on) again. Either remove options and only keep the other ones (in the order as described above), or only have "options" and "switch to source editing" and discard the rest in this dropdown.
8. Why do the dropdown menus on the left have a dropdown arrow, but not those on the right?
9. When I open a template, I can select the template name (in "show options" mode) and remove it (trash can icon). But I can't apply the change. Seems strange, this is a nice way to remove templates (e.g. hidden ones).
10. Add a "basic cite" (or open an existing one), drop-down the "use this group", and you get the upper half of the text "general references". If you get multiple groups, like on William Shakespeare, then you can't even see the other groups.
11. William Shakespeare: I tried to open the references section in VE, but then the script just kept hanging.
12. Lakeland School District, Pennsylvania. Open in VE, scroll to "Eight grade", PSSA results. Change the results? You get a template box, with a lot of col templates. Go through them on the left (click "col-begin", "content", and so on), and you see the cursor move down on the right side. Go through all the fields in this way. What do you get? Nothing! Is the content missing? No, it is only invisible, you need to actually click inside the right-side content boxes. Try it with the first one! Oh, right, that one's empty...
13. Wikitext in TemplateData descriptions doesn't work, see e.g. the description of reflist

Thirteen nicely numbered suggestions (a few) and errors (also a few). Perhaps some nice soul with Bugzilla access will add these there? Some will disappear in the black hole, but perhaps some will get picked up. Otherwise this feedback page becomes even more of a waste of time than it usually is. Adding me in CC in Bugzilla would be a nice exra, but isn't mandatory... Fram (talk) 10:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Use positional parameters for templates with no parameter name chosen?

This is more a suggestion than feedback. I was helping someone edit Tarzan (1999 film) and they wanted to add the {{Main}} template using the visual editor. I didn't know how to do it, so we guessed. We selected Main from the templates then (as I would with a template edited in source) pasted in Tarzan (Disney franchise), what we got was {{Main|Tarzan (Disney franchise)=}} which renders as "Main article: <Whatever the current page name is>" (that specific quirk is due to how Module:Main falls back when parameters aren't supplied). After looking at the template field again I noticed that the first step after selecting a template is to post a parameter name, then the value. Strictly speaking this is PEBKAC, but if I know the value I want for the first parameter is there any benefit to inserting {{Main|1=value}}where the parameter name isn't in the template data?

Alternately, for templates with relatively few parameters (e.g. 1-4), there should be a way to specify in template data the parameter names which can be preffilled. So instead of having a dropdown list based on the user typing the parameter names, they can be rendered as a input fields with the parameter name on the left and a space to add the value on the right (with a little button saying "add" or something). This wouldn't work for large templates, but for smaller ones (where the template authors explicitly provide the prefill instructions in template data) a user can quickly get to adding the value that they want without typing out the parameter name. Protonk (talk) 14:16, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Protonk, there's TemplateData on that template. When you Insert > Template for "Main", then you should get a list of parameters (the first says "Page 1, The name of the first page that you want to link to..." The idea is that you click on the parameters you want and fill them in. Would it be helpful enough to make the obvious one (people almost always want to add only the one) already appear in the list, so that instead of "Field" (for the parameter name) you're presented with "Page 1" and a blank for the article name? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:00, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Awesome

This is a very easy way to edit a page & extremely useful for non professional users. TrueOfficer (talk) 07:13, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, TrueOfficer. I'm glad that you had a good experience. There are still some things that need a lot of work, and I hope that you'll let us know if you run into any problems or have ideas for making it easier to use. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Up and down arrow keys

Lfstevens (talk) 08:05, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Lfstevens. I don't have Chrome or Windows 8 installed, but Safari's similar to Chrome (both WebKit browsers). The window/view jumping every second or third time I pressed an up or down arrow key was annoying. However, I kept careful count, and it moved the cursor to a new line each time. Could you check this for me, and let me know if the cursor moves every time for you, too? I want to make sure the details are correct for the bug report. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:51, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

AFAICT the cursor does change lines each time. At the edge of the view area, an arrow key triggers the the view area to move and the cursor is no longer displayed. Lfstevens (talk) 01:56, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Unexpected behaviour editing a link

Suppose I want to insert a link to Foobar but mistype it as Barfoo. I spot the error and edit the text, which is now a red Barfoo, so that it says Foobar. What I get is now ] which is certainly not what I intended. This seems counter-inituitive. Deltahedron (talk) 08:19, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you. How exactly to make this clear is a design challenge.

One of the recent proposals was to ask people. Imagine that you type "Barfoo" and make a link to it (or that you open a page that already has a link to Barfoo). Then you change the visible text (the link label) to something (anything) else, e.g., "Foobar". VisualEditor would ask, "Did you want to repoint this link from <Barfoo> to <something else>?"

This might get annoying, though: If you had a link to ] and you wanted to make a grammar correction, i.e., ], then it would ask you if you wanted to repoint the link to the {{r from plural}} redirect apples. What do people think? Would it be worth it? Do you have other ideas that might be less annoying? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I am surprised this "challenge" was not thought of and met a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I cannot support development resources for some of the design problems you've presented due to other large-scale priorities and resources. I will simply not be able to say yes to all requests. That is part of the process. This being said, for your suggestions for development ideas, this is an ongoing process, and you are welcome to present your ideas for how we include and involve all users in working on product development together in general. Deltahedron (talk) 06:48, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I hadn't realized that this problem occurs in other situations than has been described last week. It makes me lean toward the conclusion that use of VE, creates sufficient errors, even by skilled editors, that it should not be allowed on en.Misplaced Pages (or any website which allows piped links) until the "challenge" is resolved. I don't know what the resolution should be. I can only see the present situation is intolerable.

My best guess as to acceptable solution would be to require a separate confirmation for creating a piped link, with no default option, if "status quo ante" cannot be determined. In other words, if no specific answer is given, the entire edit session needs to be cancelled. (In other words, cancels the edit session, if there is no input as to which of ] or ] (or possibly ]) is intended.

A possible alternative is to violate the "visual" aspect by displaying a piped link as a piped link. At least, that way, the editor can see what is going on. In other words, displaying ] as foo|bar, or something like that. (Note that what I wrote is not valid HTML 5.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:43, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not clear why this is a problem. I just tried editing Ten Story Fantasy, which has a link to The Sentinel (short story), piped from visible text of "Sentinel from Eternity". When I place the cursor there to start editing, it says "Sentinel (short story)" right underneath my cursor, showing me that it's a piped link. If I edit a link that isn't piped, such as BBC, a few words later, again it shows "BBC" right underneath my cursor, and it continues to say that after I change the text of the link, indicating that it's going to be piped. What more is needed? Perhaps mark the pop-up in some way to mark it harder to miss the fact that it's piped? E.g. change " BBC" to " Note link goes to: BBC". The sudden change in the pop-up as the user types over the link would make this hard to miss. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:38, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

On wikis where VE has been activated by default, like frwiki, everyday there are many examples of actual edits performed by newbies or experienced editors, where this problem does happen. It's frequent enough that we even discussed adding a specific detection in Check Wiki project for this problem, but we could only catch basic errors like ]. This problem has been reported several times, and each time the answer seems like the VE team simply doesn't want to handle it... --NicoV 13:34, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Do you think the approach I suggest above would reduce the frequency of the errors you're seeing? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:46, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As suggested (and ignored) several times, the best solution would probably be to limit the "visual" approach here. A Wiki-link consists of two separate elements: the actual link and its visual representation. Both elements need to be displayed clearly and distinct from each other. Anything else leads to confusion and the mentioned errors. Admittedly such an approach will be slightly slower to edit, but it will be more user-friendly and less prone to errors. Another point: Separating redirect and direct links in the selection list is another bad idea, redirects are valid links and should not be listed separately. GermanJoe (talk) 13:52, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It has been suggested (quite a while ago, and a few times since) to have a link interface with "link to this article" and "display this text" fields (actual text to be decided, and the second by default the same as the first), to make it clear to editors what the link is, and what the displayed text. This hasn't been adopted (AFAICR, it has been rejected by Jdforrester, but I haven't checked so this may be an incorrect memory on my part). Fram (talk) 14:00, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree; something like that would be a good idea. However, the errors that NicoV is reporting don't appear to be made by interacting with the link dialog, which is where the changes you suggest would be; they seem to be caused by editing the text on the page directly without going to the link dialog. I haven't found this confusing myself, but if others have (as is evidently the case) then I think the popup that shows up when you click on a link is what needs to be modified. Users who never get to the dialog won't be helped if the dialog is improved. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:11, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree it's difficult to find a good solution here, the only thing I'm sure of is that the current design is bad. My first suggestion would be to modify the current link dialog to have both fields (destination and displayed text). My second suggestion would be to automatically display the link dialog when typing text inside a link so that users would really see what they are doing. --NicoV 15:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

What I would do is make the popup box for links have two fields, one for the actual link target (A) and one for the text displayed (B). B could be auto-filled with the text selected and need not be changed. This is clear, intuitive, and controllable.--Salix alba (talk): 16:09, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The user interaction least likely to cause errors is to have link dialog that show both what will be displayed to readers and where the link goes to. (In Microsoft Word, the fields are labeled "Display" and "Link to"; I'll used that terminology.) The "Display" field should be on top, so it doesn't get in the way of the link-to search functionality.

When creating a link, the "Display" field should "echo" what is being typed into the "link to" field, unless (a) the user started by highlighting some text (in which case, the display field should contain that text until edited directly), or (b) the location being linked to begins with "http" (in which case, the display field should stay blank until edited directly).

The user should be able to edit an existing link only through a link dialog, one that shows both fields. Yes, that's slightly slower, and slightly less WYSIWYG. But, as pointed out many times before by developers, VE isn't explicitly intended to be a WYSIWYG editor. And, as the above comments note, letting an editor directly edit the display text of a link is a significant, recurring cause of errors. By forcing the user into a link dialog, we guarantee that he/she understands exactly what the link does, and exactly how it displays to readers. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:53, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

John, can you give me a clearer idea of how MS Word handles this?

Here's what I did in Google docs, which is very similar to how VisualEditor handles it:

1. Type a "Display" label: Foo
2. Make a link to a URL: Select Foo, press Command-K, see two-field link dialog, add http://example.com for the URL. (Close the dialog; go off and edit other parts of the document if you want.)
3. Place cursor inside the "Display" label (e.g., in between the two o's of Foo), and change the text to say anything other than Foo.

It's that last step that's causing this particular problem. What does MS Word do there? Does it pop the link dialog open again, or just let you change the displayed label directly? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

Suport the two field approach. Lfstevens (talk) 00:25, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Various VE errors in the recent changes

Hi, I've just checked what problems are visible in the last edits with VE on frwiki. Here's a list of problematic edits, a lot of them have already been reported several times, and still nothing has been done to fix them:

• Totally unnecessary nowiki tag added in Alphagel
• Empty lines starting with one or several "*" or ":" in Matériau composite, Les Fleurs du mal, Pont Neuf, Système dynamique, Mésange bleue, David Tennant
• Incorrect modification of links (cf. previous discussion) in FIFA 15, Viguier d'Andorre, Yannick Choirat, Philippe Ramette, Dr. Bériz, Dr. Bériz, Pseudo-Geber, Total (entreprise), 1665, Hypothèse
• Space after link included in the link in Steven Moffat
• Italic formatting with only a nowiki tag inside in Stromae
• Pawns in Marquis Surcouf
• Poor formatting with sup tags added around whitespace characters in Henri Vackier
• Damaged internal link (solution for previous discussion would help on this also) in Plonéour-Lanvern, Plomodiern, Plogonnec, Plogoff, Plogastel-Saint-Germain, Rosetta (sonde spatiale)
• Empty title in Accordéon
• Damaged table in Liste des conseillers généraux du Calvados, Power Rangers : Dino Charge
• Paragraphs turned into titles in Charles Antoine Manhès, Lettres à une disparue
• Categories and DEFAULTSORT deleted in Roger Nicolet, Roger Nicolet
• Table formatting modified in Liste des personnages de Resident Evil
• Text converted to in Démographie de la Champagne
• Internal link with only a nowiki as text in Thomas Edison

That's only in less than 500 edits done with VE, and I didn't report the numerous acts of vandalism which seem more frequent than with the wikitext editor. --NicoV 19:36, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the list, NicoV. Elitre and I spent a long while trying to reproduce the Steven Moffat "linked space" error earlier this month, and we made no progress. Would you mind asking that user for browser and OS information, and if s/he has any idea what he might have done there? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:46, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I asked the user. I tried editing Steven Moffat with VE, that's just awful:

• Go 2 pages down using "page down" key: the display is scrolled to the left, the beginning of the lines becoming invisible
• Go 1 more page down using "page down" key, move the cursor above the references (blue area is displayed above the references), go 1 more page down: the blue area has changed into a reversed L shape covering both the references and the chapters after
• Go to the end of the article using Ctrl+End, go 1 more page down using "page down" key, go 1 page up using "page up" key: the display is scrolled again to the left, the beginning of the lines becoming invisible. If the mouse cursor is over the palette templates, the blue area is shifted to the right

Win 7, Chrome. --NicoV 20:15, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

A way of reproducing the "linked space" is described at frwiki: using backspace to remove characters after an existing space. --NicoV 22:07, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• The "unnecessary" nowiki tag was added in Alphagel because l'''Alphagel'' is a mismatched number of single quotation marks.

  There was no nowiki tag before and it was working correctly, so the nowiki is unnecessary. And as discussed before, if it was necessary, it should be added around the single quote not around a part of the paragraph. --NicoV 09:37, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

  NicoV, Quote handing is complex, and how a sequence of quotes are parsed involves a whole bunch of heuristics that requires lookahead to end of line, and is influenced by what else is seen on the line. When converting HTML back to wikitext, where a nowiki is needed is not a simple matter of examining content nearby. So, in order to avoid writing complex/unmaintainable code, we occasionally insert defensive/conservative nowikis to prevent changing semantics of wikitext. That said, we'll do another pass over over nowiki handling sometime soon and see what else we can cleanup. We think it is more important to preserve rendering/parse semantics of wikitext over some excess nowikis that we end up adding (and dirtying). I am not trying to minimize your concern and revulsion of seeing the unnecessary nowikis, just trying to clarify that this is a difficult problem and that we have made some tradeoffs which we will revisit again. Thanks for your understanding.SSastry (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

• Empty list items in Matériau composite and similar are due to the user leaving an empty bullet item on the screen. This can't be fixed in software, or you could never create a list with blank placeholder items (which might not be wanted in encyclopedia articles, but is wanted in other types of documents).

  Wrong again, many editing sofwares are able to deal with this without keeping unnecessary formatting in the end result. By the way, an empty list item is incorrect, and you can see in the result produced by MW that empty list items are discarded. --NicoV 09:37, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

  NicoV, Parsoid does not strip empty tags in top-level content, because then it can never be edited in clients (and either removed/or content added to it). It is always left behind. We considered hiding it with CSS, but that runs into the same issue of not being editable. We do strip them from template content since those are not directly editable. So, this part is likely going to be incompatible with PHP parser unless we find a reasonable way of dealing with this. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

• Incorrect modification of links — I agree with your comment in the previous discussion: it's difficult, but we need to find a way to improve it.
• Italic formatting with only a nowiki tag inside in Stromae will be due to blanking everything, but retaining the character formatting. This is probably "works as intended", because if you remove a word or line, people expect the character formatting to be retained.
• Pawns in Marquis Surcouf are an attempt to retain the character formatting.
• Poor formatting with sup tags added around whitespace characters in Henri Vackier is "working as designed"; it's irritating as an editor to have someone select everything, including the space, change the format, and then select only part of it and undo the format. However, the alternative is to forbid people from producing valid wikitext markup just because it might be a mistake, rather than, e.g., an effort to shrink the size of the space (which is done, although people shouldn't do that).

  I disagree: it's possible to handle this properly as it is done in many editors. Retaining formatting while editing without polluting the end result is possible. --NicoV 09:37, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

  Please give me an example of an editor that allows you to set a character format on spaces, and then silently discards that formatting upon save. I might be able to save you some time: Google docs doesn't; Apple Pages doesn't; Apple Mail and Gmail don't; MS Word didn't the last time I used it; WordPerfect was famous for bloating file size by never doing that; no Adobe page layout software has ever done that. This is easily checked: type a words, two spaces, and another word. Select both spaces and set the character formatting to bold (or superscript or green or whatever you want). Save the page. Open it again, place your cursor btween the two, abd see what happens when you type. (The point behind using two spaces is to find out the formatting of the spaces themselves; different programs have different rules about taking formatting from the characters that precede or follow the cursor.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

(More later.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your answers seems to be as usual "It's not VE's fault but the users fault" while my opinion is clearly "It's VE's fault". Every time your answer is "working as desgined", I'm thinking that the design is bad because it's not working as it should. I disagree with you when you say that some problems can't be fixed in software, that's just that you don't want to fix them. Every problem I reported above needs an other editor to fix VE errors, that's a loss of our time. As usual, reporting problems seems useless. --NicoV 06:50, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree that there are some bad designs here. However, in several of these cases, we have to choose between the least-bad of several limited designs, because there isn't a good solution that works for every project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Pawns? still

I am very surprised to see that VE is inserting pawns into articles, still, in Q4 2014..?? Whatamidoing (WMF), what do you mean by "Pawns in Marquis Surcouf are an attempt to retain the character formatting." I had assumed from upbeat VE IRC office hours that these types of problems had been fixed. Are these pawns regressions, or have the issues causing pawn insertion not been fixed yet? I see a few existing bugs, some with quite low bug id. Are they all still valid bugs? What is the priority of this and other pawn problems. John Vandenberg 03:17, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Have VE list all cite templates?

Currently, VE only lists the most commonly used citation templates. There should be a way to access a list of all cite templates from the citation menu (i.e., a "more" button). You technically search for other cite templates from the "Template" option, but most of these don't have the documentation brought over, so they are effectively useless.--¿3family6 _contribs 23:34, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

You first go to Cite > Basic, and then to Insert > Template.

The Cite menu does the same thing in the end; it is just letting you do this in one click instead of two, and it only displays the template dialog. If someone had added a citation template to the Cite menu without first adding TemplateData documentation, then you would still have the same "effectively useless" problem.

I believe that the more common citation templates usually have the TemplateData (e.g., {{Cite press release}}), but that most of the less popular ones (e.g., all of the Vancouver templates) don't. Which ones in particular did you want to use? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I did try adding the template that way, so I think it's a documentation issue. I was trying to insert a {{Cite AV media}} tag. I ended up switching to source text.--¿3family6 _contribs 01:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I've added it to the list at Misplaced Pages:TemplateData#Used_in_main-space_(>5000_uses), so hopefully someone will finish the description there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

References

I thought this was solved a while back, but either I imagined it or it has regressed a bit. When you open a page like Bearden Waterworks, the refs switch position (what is ref 1 in the standard view becomes ref 2 in the VE mode and vice versa), but only in the text. The numbering in the infobox stays the same, which is totally confusing of course. Furthermore, you now get the "stop, no access" icon when you click on "ref 2" in the text, but you can open the "basic" ref anyway: you don't get to see it though, you get an empty screen.

Now, if you type something into that empty ref box, you create a ref with the text you just typed, but with the same ref name as the one in the infobox.

All this is very counterintuitive and confusing. This is not something happening on one or two pages only, things like Round Church (Richmond, Vermont) have this but also major articles like United States. Fram (talk) 08:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

TemplateData autovalue and VE

Hi, I'm trying to use the new "autovalue" attribute for TemplateData, and I don't understand how it works with VE. I tried adding an autovalue to template "Admissibilité à vérifier" on frwiki for parameter "date"

• First attempt with an autovalue of {{safesubst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{safesubst:CURRENTYEAR}}: when I try to insert the template with VE, the dialog automatically adds parameter date with the correct value. If I then click insert, the template is inserted, but without the autovalue: the date parameter is empty.
• Same test, but if I change the value proposed for date, the template is correctly inserted with the value. Apparently, the value is only taken into account if I modify it, which can of defeats the purpose of autovalue...
• Other attempt with an autovalue of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}: when I try to insert the template with VE, the dialog automatically adds parameter date but without any value.

--NicoV 10:10, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

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