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Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Editing

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Community Wishlist Survey 2021
Editing
39 proposals, 552 contributors, 1287 support votes
The survey has closed. Thanks for your participation :)



Unbreak selection in the wikitext editor

  • Problem: In the new Wikitext editor, selected text doesn't work with Navigation Popups, so that I can't tell whether a link I just inserted is to the right thing just by selecting it and reading the popup, and when I want to copy and paste text, I can't just select the text and use middle-button paste on Linux: the selected text somehow doesn't get into the primary selection.
  • Who would benefit: Users of Navigation Popups who use the new wikitext editor
  • Proposed solution: I'm not sure what is causing this, so I'm not sure how to fix it.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Slashme (talk) 22:03, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

MusikAnimal (WMF) it's not just about the navigation popups issue: it's also that somehow selected text isn't being seen as selected by the operating system, so that I can't just select text and then middle-button paste it. It would be nice to know whether that's a bug, a feature, or an inevitable side effect of the toolbar. --Slashme (talk) 12:43, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I quite understand what the proposer is describing, but it really is remarkably problematic not to be able to move text around easily. Selection breaking is why I rarely use the Syntax Highlighter; it breaks the middle-click selection pasting in the editing pane. HLHJ (talk) 21:36, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Round brackets

Deutsche: Runde Klammern

  • Problem: Sometimes it takes a long time to put the corresponding words or sections in brackets in long lists. Would be nice if there was a tool to speed up this process.
Deutsche: Manchmal dauert es sehr lange bei langen Listen die ensprechenden Wörter oder Abschnitte in Klammern zu setzen. Wäre schön, wenn es ein Werkzeug geben würde, mit dem man diesen Vorgang beschleunigen könnte.
  • Who would benefit: People who work with brackets a lot.
Deutsche: Leute, die häufig mit Klammern arbeiten.
  • Proposed solution: Similar to curly brackets, link brackets or wikilinks, but just round.
Deutsche: Ähnlich wie Geschweifte Klammern, Linkklammern oder Wikilinks nur halt eben rund.

Discussion

Voting

Allow the usage of talk page specific markup inside the visual editor

  • Problem: Some functionalities that are often used in talk pages are either not present in the visual editor or disabled outside of talk pages and due to that, every article where someone may use either of those features need the wikitext editor. Besides that, regular articles could benefit from more structured listing options and signatures.
  • Who would benefit: Bloggers who use signatures to state when each blog post was created with ~~~. People who wish to have more options for structured lists since currently only "*" (dotted) and "#" (numbered) structured lists are available.
  • Proposed solution: Per the title, create options for ":" and ";" inside the bullet list menu, make it possible to enable signatures on regular articles and enable different signatures such as date only or signature only.
  • More comments: What's above is more important, but I wish it was easier to look for media files with dubious filenames (E.G: 1234567890.jpg) because inputting into the search bar the file name gives a lot of PDF files from commons as a result, but the file in question is nowhere to be found.
  • Phabricator tickets: phab:T39938 Support for creating and editing definition-lists in VisualEditor
  • Proposer: MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 20:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • @MarioSuperstar77: I kind of agree with this, and support it a little bit. Keep it up, and stay safe! MemeGod27
  • Regarding the signature bit, that's already configurable on a wiki level. The $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces config controls what namespaces the signature tool shows up on. Depending on the exact use-case, picking some more namespaces to have it enabled on by default could work (assuming community agreement)... or, more involved, providing some way for a user to override that setting. Choosing the type of signature is a little fiddlier from a visual stance, but we could maybe keep the current "turn it into a preview when you enter the ~~~~" behavior and a single signature menu-item, and then have some options on the signature-preview node that'd let the user toggle the type. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • It could be used a hidden template for this Template:TalkVE or another of the proposed solutions.--BoldLuis (talk) 15:15, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Allow text and table colour to be featured on the visual editor to change

  • Problem: There isn't an option to change the colour of the text or table
  • Who would benefit : Editors who can do tables in one go and people who make user pages
  • Proposed solution : Adding the colour option for text and tables for English Wikipedia, using the colour chooser; with the most common colours, consider that it can just be picked off a preset option.
  • More comments: If there is an option to make text bigger, why can't we have the option to change colour?
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Beetricks (talk) 07:25, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Voting

VE makes partially linked words and adds unnecessary tags to the wikitext

  • Problem: By creating or changing links in VE (=Visual Editor), it often results unlinked word parts. It is language-dependent, but in some languages using unlinked suffix is never correct. Beside of the incorrect appearance, for example [[word]]s becomes [[word]]<nowiki/>s in the wikicode, and the unnecessary <nowiki/> tag just litter the wikitext and makes it unreadable in more complex situations.
  • Who would benefit: both readers and editors
  • Proposed solution: avoid adding <nowiki /> after links (on wikis, where this is required) (We could use a bot which frequently delete all the <nowiki/> syntax from the wikicode, but that increases the edit number (server traffic) and the length of the page histories. Why don't we just solve the problem rather than always making a mistake and then correct it in a second edit.)
  • More comments: this looks an easy to solve problem to me, but there is no real progress since 2015/16. If some language communities asks for having this behavior default, offer an option to be able to choose per wiki base. On the Hungarian Wikipedia VE has a bad reputation because of this kind of (long-time not solved) bugs and many editors think that we should not use VE at all until it generates clear mistake into the wikitext.
  • Phabricator tickets: T128060
  • Proposer: Samat (talk) 12:49, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I see a use case of this feature, specially in languages which combines words together. For example maybe somebody would link wishlist so, that only the wish or list is linked, because there will never be an article about wishlist. Wishlist is easier, but for wishlist VE should still offer a possible way to create I believe. Samat (talk) 12:56, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Predictive edit summaries based on changes to article text

  • Problem: Some edit summaries take longer to write than the edits themselves. Editors write edit summaries in jargony shorthand unfriendly to new editors ("r/re" for reply, "ce" for copyedit, if there is an edit summary at all).
  • Who would benefit: Page history readers and new editors
  • Proposed solution: Identify common types of edits and either offer or default to suggested edit summaries for simple edits: replies (new, indented comments), minor copyedits (a few characters tweaked), resolving an error, adding/removing X parameter in Y citation, all things a computer can identify.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: czar 01:54, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Voting

Request to amend the preview of the "NoteTag" template (请求修正“NoteTag”模板的预览)

  • Problem:{{NoteTag}} is widely used to add notes in articles. But there is a unfixed bug: this template will show a blue subscript (styled as [note 1] or [a] [b]), but the pop-up preview shows an icon of reference (an icon of book and text "Reference"). Footnote does not equal to reference. They are two different concepts, so the display must be made reasonable.
  • Who would benefit: All wikipedia users
  • Proposed solution: Remove the icon of "Reference", or develop another pop-up window to separate explain-notes and ref-notes.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: 蕭漫 (talk) 02:44, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Translator: Steven Sun (talk)

Discussion

Voting

Warn when linking to disambiguation pages

  • Problem: Between 500 and 800 links are added to disambiguation pages each day. This means readers are less likely to get directly to a relevant article when they click on a link and instead are shown a list of possible matches for the term. A recent en RFC to en:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Make links to disambiguation pages orange by default suggested coming to the community wishlist.
  • Who would benefit: Readers - in helping them get to the relevant article and editors in not having to fix bad links.
  • Proposed solution: A warning message appearng on preview or publish when adding a link to a dab page asking whether the editor really wanted to do this.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: T97063
  • Proposer: Rodw (talk) 08:34, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Sure, but if you know enough to install a userscript like that, you're probably already checking for accidental dabs. A warning to newer users along the lines of "are you sure you wanted to link to this page" seems like a good idea IMO, as long as there were an easy way to resolve it (i.e. pop up options linked from the dab page). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
.mw-disambig { background-color:#AFEEEE; }
.mw-redirect { background-color:wheat; }

Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 13:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it's available on all Wikis, it only has to be implemented by the local communities. So there is nothing to do here for the devs, it's an existing gadget. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 16:41, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying this. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 19:02, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ruwiki solution:
    ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-disambiguationLinks.css
    ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-disambiguationLinks.js Carn (talk) 20:13, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Comment I supported this, but only on the assumption that implementation will focus on solving the problem in a modern and user-friendly manner, and not merely implement the disruptive workflow currently hinted at in the comments. I think it'd be a lot simpler and better for everyone if we focus on the act of writing itself. In the visual editor, we can prompt users contextually right as they are creating or inspecting a link, and suggest one of the destinations from the disambiguation page instead, at which point we can have a list of suggestions right there. A similar thing could be done in the 2017 wikitext editor, and even in the 2010 editor when using the dialog to create a link. I don't think this is important enough to distract readers with, nor to inject a primitive warning forcibly into the save workflow. Doing so would, I think, drain considerable amounts of energy and will power from contributors to still continue with their edit, and much more to actually rediscover and address the issue itself. That sounds more like abuse mitigation, and less like contributor education. --Krinkle (talk) 03:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Edit 'macros'

  • Problem: I observe this on en.wikipedia, but it is likely everywhere. On en.wikipedia certain mainspace tags get a date. So if one adds {{fact}}, a bot follows up and changes it in {{fact|date=November 2019}}. That results in a second edit, sometimes conflicting with your follow-up edit.
  • Who would benefit: globally
  • Proposed solution: I suggest to write create the possibility to have 'macros', that result in pre-safe modification of the addition of {{fact}} and automatically adds the |date={{{CURRENTMONTH}}} {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}
    Obviously, it needs to be namespace-limited, and probably be handled by a protected page so that you don't get the vandal-addition of abusive macros. And one could consider to have a pre-save check there as well ('Wikipedia executed the following macro(s) on your written text: <list of macros>. Please [accept] or [reject] the changes made by the macro(s).', upon which the page is really saved).
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Dirk Beetstra T C (en: U, T) 12:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Voting

Allow past edits to be filtered by size

  • Problem: Records of edits, whether in page history, recent changes patrol or user edit history are often crowded by relatively insignificant minor edits, making it difficult to find edits that have made more substantial changes and therefore require greater scrutiny.
  • Who would benefit: Editors interested in reviewing major changes to Wikipedia.
  • Proposed solution: Enable records of edits to be filtered by the size of the change (by specific number characters added or removed).
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Keepcalmandchill (talk) 04:46, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Voting

Make insertable markup customizable

  • Problem: List of markups to insert (insertable wiki markup) is currently limited too much
Currently, there are 36 predefined markups (insertable wiki markup) at the bottom of the page (in the 2010 editor), and you only need to click on one of these to insert it in the article (examples from Wikipedia in French: [[Catégorie:]] [[Fichier:]] [[Media:]] [[Spécial:Diff/]] [[Spécial:Contribs/]] #REDIRECTION [[]] · [[commons:|]] [[m:|]] [[n:|]] [[q:|]] [[s:|]] [[b:|]] [[wikt:|]] [[v:|]] [[d:|]] · <></> <code></code> <math></math> <small></small> <u></u> <ref></ref> <ref name=""></ref> {{Références}} <noinclude>, etc.
For example, I would like to be able to insert with one click the following code, which I would have customized myself, which takes a very long time to write in manual mode:
<ref>{{Ouvrage|auteur=|titre=|année=|éditeur=|tome=|page=|pages totales=|lire en ligne=|consulté le=}}</ref>
  • Who would benefit: Everyone
  • Proposed solution: It would be extremely useful to allow each user to create predefined markups (insertable wiki markup) and make them available in the already existing list in order to be able to insert them with a single click. It would be super fast!
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Tubamirum (talk) 20:36, 17 November 2020 (UTC) (French Wiki)[reply]

Discussion

Sorry, my bad. I support this if you mean something like "own charinsert" Patsagorn Y. (Talk) 01:39, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tubamirum: I've written such script for Ukrainian wikipedia (uk:MediaWiki:Gadget-ImprovedEditTools.js), it has edit dialog and serializes your insertions to this format: uk:User:AS/AStools.js. The only drawback is that it has to use your subpage as data storage, because Mediawiki devs can't add local metadata for years. I think it would make sense to have native solution with proper backend storage and plugins support. AS (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AS: your tool is very intresting. Another option could be saving them on the device via mw.store ValeJappo【〒】 18:35, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Nah, localStorage is not persistent enough for some use cases. AS (talk) 20:01, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This and Tool for easy user buttons should probably be merged. They're essentially same task, the difference is only which controls on page you want to bind with your insertion functions. AS (talk) 20:01, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tubamirum: Try Using AutoHotKey macros to make typing – and life – easier (other, similar, tools are available). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:44, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is basically the same as "Tool for easy user buttons" (below), just without the button. Both are fine. Either one needs to happen yesterday. Don't particularly care which. --Joalbertine (talk) 16:25, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Allow editors to write an edit summary from the edit preview

  • Problem: After making an edit, I view a preview of the newly edited page before I describe what I've changed. Then, in the preview, there is no place to describe what I've changed before publishing unless I go back, which is a bit clumsy.
  • Who would benefit: Page editors and trackers of changes
  • Proposed solution: Add a "Describe what you changed" text box to the top of the preview edit page next to "Publish changes" so that is is easily visible and easily accessed.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: BenJenkins (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This would be useful, I like the idea. I've been keeping notes in a separate editor. A little notebook could even be there while we're editing: done with a chapter, enter changes, continue to the next one. Ponor (talk) 17:01, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'd even go one further: With the addition of this functionality, it would then become desirable if we could choose an alternative workflow: Preview First, Preview Always. (Perhaps selected via an editing preferences checkbox, like "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" or our old, departed friend "Mark all edits minor by default".)
With the option enabled, an edit could progress from the editor interface, directly to Preview (including edit-summary field), and finally submitting the edit directly from the Preview view — never even seeing the redundant, unnecessary "Save your changes" popup.
We're always reminding our fellow editors "WP:TWWPK", and admonishing new Wikipedians whose edits are reverted that they need to Use The Preview™[, Luke?] (There's even a dedicated user warning template for that exact purpose.) The ultimate adherence to that philosophy would be (optionally) telling the system that you want to always preview every edit, automatically, before the option to submit is even presented. -- FeRDNYC 03:13, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Preview first is already an option though.... --Izno (talk) 05:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: How so? "Show preview on first edit" is still a checkbox in the Editing preferences, but as far as I can tell it does nothing for either of the Visual Editor's modes. (Visual editing mode doesn't have a Preview at all, only Review, so I guess it's not really relevant to any of this.) But in the wikitext mode, even with the preference switched on "Publish changes..." still takes you to the "Save your changes" popup, and you have to manually hit "Show preview" to preview the edit. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you don't need a preview in VE. But okay, the context for your comment is good since it wasn't clear you were talking about 2017 WTE. :) --Izno (talk) 23:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I've just lost another Edit Summary after switching between Visual Editor & Source Editor on mobile, again...! RavBol (talk) 23:46, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Huh? Is this specific to the mobile version, or VisualEditor, or ...? I don't have this problem. I load the page to edit, and I already have an "Edit summary:" line. I click "Show preview", and I now have a preview, and the edit window again, and the "Edit summary:" line again. There is no need to go back.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  06:46, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

  • Problem: I frequently add new web citations via firefox extensions such as Markor. apk and haven't found any link capture application that outputs link to Clipboard as wiki-text.
  • Who would benefit: Markdown citeweb user
  • Proposed solution: A new /user.js + /user.css toggle and or extension.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: N/A: If only user-javascript without needing any other than simple documentation.
  • Proposer: Mkouklis(2) (talk) 03:42, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • There's some future where this will be possible directly on the wiki, but of course that day is not today. Would be a neat thing to have a converter today of course, but I'm not sure of the practicality or driving need. --Izno (talk) 18:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can you link the tool you use? It's unclear to me what difficulty you're describing. If you are looking to generate web citations from webpages and convert to wikitext, you can use Zotero, which has many translators for specific websites. Different wikis have tools based on Citoid, which uses Zotero's translators to generate citations for the Visual Editor. Sounds like you're looking for that? (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 17:14, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Include "This is a minor edit" box in mobile editing

  • Problem: When one edits a page in mobile view using the MobileFrontend extension, no checkbox is provided for marking the edit as a minor edit.
  • Who would benefit: Everyone
  • Proposed solution: When editing a page in mobile view, include the "This is a minor edit" box.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: T123694
  • Proposer: GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • Why? I mean, I think there have been more calls to remove the 'minor edit' than to add it to mobile, where it almost never applies anyway just based on how much vandalism happens from mobile. --Izno (talk) 21:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure if not supporting the feature for a subset of mobile users (seems like it's partially supported) is a good approach, though. If it's not being removed from MediaWiki, I think it makes sense to properly support it on mobile (especially given that it's apparently available in the mobile visual editor). Perhaps it could be hidden with CSS on a case-by-case basis, or the ability to mark edits as minor could be a separate user right if it is/becomes a major problem for vandalism. Hazard-SJ (talk) 05:16, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've noticed this missing. Yes, lots of vandalism happens from mobile, but discriminating against users by platform doesn't seem appropriate. I'd like to see this done. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:39, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • As someone who enjoys making gnomic/minor edits, and who sometimes edits on a mobile device, I like this idea. Noahfgodard (talk) 05:10, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
+1 to this! --Slashme (talk) 21:53, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Select templates by categories

  • Problem: When contributors try to add templates to a page in visual editor or wikitext editor, we have to remember the accurate full name or prefix of the template.
  • Who would benefit: Everyone who want to add templates but don't know the accurate templates names.
  • Proposed solution: In most of wikis, templates were classified into categories by purpose and functions. We can add a templates browser to visual editor and wikitext editor, allowing contributors to browse and select templates by categories.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: phab:T55590
  • Proposer: Steven Sun (talk) 01:11, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Discussion

Voting

Pinging discussants about wish selection and other updates

Hello everyone,

This is a ping to let you know that this wish and 3 other requests related to templates have been selected for development.

Secondly there are updates regarding the Wishlist Survey. A mockup of the new wish proposal form is available. There is also an update on changes coming to how participants vote.

Additionally, come let's explore this idea to group wishes into Focus Areas; a Focus Area may be adopted by various movement stakeholders for addressing. The first example is the Template Picker Improvements Project, which groups four related wishes about template improvements (e.g. adding infoboxes and bookmarking templates).

You can read more and join the discussion. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Pinging discussants. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 14:41, 18 May 2024 (UTC) [reply]

List of nested templates

  • Problem: When editing template, I can see on the bottom other templates used by this template, but only these, which are not nested in some {{{#if:}}.
  • Who would benefit: Template editors, and people who want to copy a template to another wiki.
  • Proposed solution: Search template for all{{foo}} which does not begin with # and are not in commonts.
  • More comments: The same for modules (here with require)
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: JAn Dudík (talk) 15:18, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Voting

Add global LaTeX macros for math in math tags

  • Problem: Certain math symbols, such as absolute value and expected value, are very tedious to type and make editing more cumbersome and error-prone.
  • Who would benefit: Anyone who types lots of math equations and uses proper symbols for spacing (ex. not just using pipe character for absolute value).
  • Proposed solution: A community-decided global list of macros enabled for anyone using math tags.
  • More comments: For example, if it is declared globally \DeclarePairedDelimiter\abs{\lvert}{\rvert}, then editors may type \abs{x} instead of \lvert x \rvert. Similarly for expected value, editors would avoid typing \operatorname{E} all the time. I proposed this last year at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_177#Equation_\operatorname_macros%3F where it got some interest and positive reception, though ultimately not implemented.
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Wqwt (talk) 01:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

@Wqwt: you might be interested in joining Wikimedia Community User Group Math. There are several possibilities:

  • MathJax which we use to generate the formulas offers this possibility to define macros [1]. The problem with this is that unfortunately we do not use MathJax out-of-the-box but still have the setup (state-of-the-art 10 years ago), where people get delivered images of equations. Each formula is treated separately, which makes it impossible to have features other websites (like math.stackexchange you mention in village-pump) offer, i.e. macro definitions valid for several equations, cross-referencing equation numbers, automatic line-breaking and for me most annoying: Adjusting the math font properly to the text font.
  • Then, we have a list of global declarations already. They were defined in a pre-processing step called "texvc" which was needed when LaTeX was used to generate the images. Unfortunately some of the (re)definitions done in this pre-processing break any LaTeX document. We try to get rid of them so you can offer a LaTeX packet [2] and a corresponding MathJax packet [3] to render all Wikipedia equations with LaTeX or MathJax without the need for any pre-processing. Those macro definitions unfortunately do not contain useful things currently, e.g. in Wikipedia you can write \isin (like the html entity name) instead of \in or my personal favorite: You can write \varcoppa if you want to print \mbox{\\coppa}
  • I am not entirely against adding unproblematic definitions that are actually useful to this texvc package. However for pretty much all set of macros that people consider generally useful there are existing LaTeX packages. The \abs command you mention is part of the physics package [4] (and possibly others) in LaTeX and for this physics package there is also an equivalent MathJax package [5]. Unfortunately currently we do not include the physics package. Including such a package is very simple you want to do it on your own website. Unfortunately we in Wikipedia still have some remnants of texvc floating around where you have to try to teach it the behavior of all new macros so it does not reject or wrongly modify your code and secondly we are unfortunately not running the current version MathJax3, but the old MathJax2 and I am not entirly sure if the whole functionality of the physics package is also available in the old version.

@Physikerwelt: is of the very few volunteers, if not the only one, maintaining the math extension. There are plans to switch to MathJax3 and HTML rendering, he can probably tell more.--Debenben (talk) 22:04, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Just a side remark. I personally am in favour of keeping the the approach to maintain a whitelist of allowed commands and to automatatically reformat LaTeX code to a standard format, w.r.t, to spacing and standard arguments. Adding new commands is thus independent of MathJax 2/3 which will primarily improve the rendering as described above. This being said, you or someone with basic programming skills can propose new aliases by extending this list:

https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-services-texvcjs/blob/master/lib/texutil.js Note, that this will be availible to all wikis in all languages and all projects. Thus these additions should be very conservative. Moreover, the consensus on the changes by the Wikimedia Community User Group Math is required. --Physikerwelt (talk) 13:39, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Physikerwelt: Thank you for taking the time to answer and I am afraid it sounds ungrateful for all the work you have been doing over all the years, but I feel like can not leave your statement here without answer.
Maybe something changed that I am unaware of, but to my understanding texvcjs still tries to "validate" the expression. Consider e.g. the request for the \middle command task T137788. There is no reason to not support it, it does not need to be defined and would be supported already if texvc would not block it. In the ticket you say "a skilled nodejs programmer with a good understanding of a parser [...] should be able to implement it in two days." Just for this one command! There would be about 96 commands like this in the physics package.
Validating LaTeX without parsing the whole expression is like validating c++ code without compiling it. With the normal definitions "\sigma" is valid, "\color{blue}" is valid, "\color{\sigma}" is not. To determine if "\color{\sigma}" is valid you need to know the definition of \sigma, evaluate it, feed the result to the \color command and see if it can handle the input. This macro expansion is done in Mathjax already, why replicate it? You could simply go through the list of commands [6] and not load the packages and commands you don't want, that needs less than 2 days.
And the argument with spaces I also don't understand: Very often editors put unnecessary spaces and linebreaks in the code on purpose to improve readability. If you really need them removed, you can take MathJax and convert LaTeX->MathML->LaTeX which also takes less than 2 days. Note that the original form is more valuable, it contains the same information as the "validated" expression and additional information to improve readability of the source code which is lost in the conversion.--Debenben (talk) 22:33, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Voting