PyAutoWikiBrowser

PyAutoWikiBrowser (PyAWB) is an editing assist tool for Mediawiki similar to AWB, but since it is written in Python, it is intended to be cross-platform. Currently it is under development, but it is available for testing as a command line tool. While in beta please restrict editing to your own userspace, or preferably, sign up at test wikipedia and use that. Enter project test (not Wikipedia) and language test when running make.py to set up the software.

If you are a python developer, please be encouraged to send patches and suggestions. Everyone else, please test the software and submit the best bug reports you can at the project's sourceforge page under the tracker menu.

Rules of use

The rules of use are the same as for AWB and the registration uses AWB's registration for now.

• Check every edit before you save it. Make sure you understand the text and have NOT changed the meaning.
• Don't edit too quickly; consider opening a bot account if you are regularly making more than a few edits a minute.
• Don't do anything controversial with it. If there is a chance that the edits you are considering might be controversial, consider soliciting comment at the appropriate discussion place for your project such as the village pump or similar or the appropriate Wikiproject before proceeding.
• Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links), or something equally trivial. This is because it wastes resources and clogs up watch lists.
• Abide by all Wikipedia guidelines, policies and common practices.

Repeated abuse of these rules could result, without warning, in the software being disabled.

Using this software

(1) Register

Add your name to the appropriate checkpage for your project if you would like to use the software. For security reasons, only registered users are able to use PyAutoWikiBrowser.

Anyone can be registered, but only if an admin approves your registration by placing your name on the check page. As a general rule, only users with more than 500 mainspace edits will be registered. You will probably not be contacted when your registration has been approved, so check the page periodically for your name.

(2) Download and build

The following instructions work for an Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty system. If you have a different platform, you'll have to modify accordingly and please mention on the talk page details of how you got it working.

In the terminal, run the following:

sudo aptitude install build-essential subversion python2.5-dev python2.6-dev idle-python2.6 python-tk swig
cd ~
wget http://www.reportlab.org/daily/pyRXP-1.13-daily-unix.tar.gz
tar xf pyRXP*
cd pyRXP-1.13
python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install
cd ~
svn co https://pyawb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pyawb/trunk pyawb
cd pyawb
python make.py

Answer yes to the checkout questions, enter the required other information, then run

python cli_pyawb.py

and you should be off and running!

Getting help

We share a channel with AutoWikiBrowser on irc.freenode.net, at #autowikibrowser.

External links

• Sourceforge page