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Input method and the situation at nowiki
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Description

At nowiki it has become quite common to use newer characters to represent certain markup.

For example we use guillemets («») to represent a quote. This pose no problem on a linux machine, but we can't easily type them on a windows machine. Due to that we have added a shortcut in WikiToolbar, but we haven't done that in VisualEditor. We could instead add this as an input method, and replace an ordinary quote (") with correct guillemets. This will only work if we can set a default input method.

There are several other characters that also needs special handling, for example en dash wich is used in some situations.

Note that there are changes to how quotes are handled in Norwegian

Event Timeline

jeblad updated the task description. (Show Details)

I'm probably missing something - you need something that allows this?
How does https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Special_characters not help here?

For one and another quote it might work, but there are several chars and looking up the chars all the time is rather cumbersome.

Anyhow, I can define the entries.

Copy/import an existing one (the German for example) and just remove what you don't need from there - if you want to use a "shortcut",
or collect quick input from your community to see what are the most needed chars to
start the page with those - then any sysop can update it if necessary (it almost never happens for all the languages which needed such a list so far).

No, this is not a good solution. I have set up an example, but it is way to cumbersome. The real solution is to add an updated input method.

Jdforrester-WMF changed the task status from Open to Stalled.May 24 2016, 7:10 PM
Jdforrester-WMF subscribed.

No, this is not a good solution. I have set up an example, but it is way to cumbersome. The real solution is to add an updated input method.

I'm not clear what you mean; could you specify?

  1. We encourage people to use an input method editor (i.e., a piece of software on their computer) that 'corrects' what they type by getting in the way of their typing as they go, prompting them to change typed "s into a « or a ». Does such an input method exist already?
  2. We write and force people to use a new input method editor that we write inside UniversalLanguageSelector that 'corrects' what they type by getting in the way of their typing as they go, prompting them to change typed "s into a « or a ».
  3. Whenever anyone writes a " in either the wikitext or visual editors, it is transformed on save by MediaWiki into a « or a ». This is used by a few languages, normally for ae -> æ and similar transformations, but is pretty aggressive and it makes it impossible to e.g. write articles about punctuation as these characters won't be shown.
  4. Whenever anyone writes a " in the visual editor, it is transformed as they type by some code into a « or a ». If this is what you're asking for, the answer is probably 'no' due to the performance issues; we don't do language-specific hacks in the editor, but such a tool could be written as a gadget (though it'd be quite irritating for users, so I'd caution against it without some serious research on the impact on e.g. how much new users find it disruptive).
  5. A bot goes around correcting these minor annoyances.
  6. Something else.
Deskana moved this task from To Triage to Freezer on the VisualEditor board.

Unfortunately closing this Phabricator task as no further information has been provided to T135092#2324064 and as T155235 has also been declined.