Last modified: 2014-02-28 23:46:40 UTC
I think one nice/needed addition to Visual Editor would be supporting custom wiki defined scripts for fixing text [without interfering with wiki text]. For example on Persian Wikipedia we have an edit tool script [1] [2] that wiki users are very depends on it for fixing article texts and without it Visual Editor would be useless for them. 1. http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%DB%8C%DA%A9%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%D9%BE%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%A7:%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C_%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B4%DB%8C 2.http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-Extra-Editbuttons-Functions.js
I love this idea. Wikipedias in several languages have such tools, and everywhere it's implemented differently. The Hebrew Wikipedia has a fully automatic bot making spelling correction on which there's a wide consensus (with over 700 rules), and it also a gadget that adds a button to make semi-automatic edits when fully automatic edits are not reliable enough. I believe that the tool about which Ebrahim is speaking is similar. If I'm not mistaken, Russian, Belarusian, Portuguese, Catalan and English Wikipedias have such tools, too, though there are definitely differences in implementation. Almost certainly there are more languages that have such tools. It may be challenging to make a tool that would work equally well for all languages. Different languages have very different requirements. However, acknowledging that at least some languages needs some kind a framework for this and that not being able to use it is a regression for many users, and providing some standard baseline to work with it will be a good start. What standard baseline? At least, a standard location for a button that would open such a tool. Another thing that would be useful to everybody would be an agreed API for automated or semi-automated searching and replacing in contentedtiable. A harder thing to do would be to have a standardized format for replacement rules, though this will require at least a bit of research of the current implementations. (A general comment: The standardized way of marking the text's language, which Moriel is developing in her GSoC project, should be helpful for such tools. They shall only need to work on the parts that are written in the appropriate language.)
