Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser

AutoWikiBrowser 6.3.0.0

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This is the discussion page for the AWB project. It is also the place to discuss using the AWB program itself (if you need help, or have a question about AWB, etc.). Before asking questions, please read the Frequently asked questions below. Where to make specific types of reports or requests is explained in the Before you post section below...

Before you post

Do you want to ...	Please use
Report a bug in AWB?	Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs
Report an incorrectly fixed typo?	Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos
Request a feature for a future version of AWB?	Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature requests
Request approval to use AWB?	Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/AutoWikiBrowser
Ask a question about AWB or ask for help?	This page

Frequently asked questions

• When I start it up I get one of the following errors:

  "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application.", or

  "To run this application, you must first install one of the following versions of the .NET Framework..."

  This error means your computer does not have the .NET framework version 2 installed properly. You can choose from various versions for download here, or you can run Windows Update and select version 2 of the .Net framework from the "Optional Updates" section, if you want the choice made for you.

• Does AWB run on Linux or Mac?
  • AWB runs reasonably under Wine. See details here

    AWB might also run under Mono.

  • AWB (Windows) with Unix scripts can be done with Cygwin or Virtualbox
  • On the Mac, AWB is not natively available, but an option is to use virtualisation with Parallels Desktop for Mac (subject to meeting supported operating systems requirements) and then run Microsoft Windows virtually with AWB as the Windows instructions above. Note this option is not free, as a license is required for both Parallels Desktop for Mac and Microsoft Windows. An alternative visualization method is to use the free VirtualBox, see also Comparison of platform virtual machines.
• Does AWB work on other projects/languages?

  Many Wikimedia projects and languages are supported, see the "User and project preferences" option in the general menu. Other languages will be added on request, though at the moment the interface is always in English. You are also able to use AWB with third-party wikis: Options > Preferences > Site, you can change the wiki there. The wiki must support the Bot API required by AWB. This means that it should have latest HEAD version of MediaWiki or something close to that. The wmf-deployment branch is also recommended, as this is what is currently live on WMF sites.

• Under Windows 7 (and newer?), AWB is using wrong font size, which results in clipped text and lost buttons and options, (see example here). How to fix it?
  Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T103506
  

  Solution #1: Go to "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display" and switch resizing of the fonts to 100%

  Solution #2: Right click on AutoWikiBrowser.exe --> Properties -> Compatibility (tab) --> enable the "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" option

• What interwiki link order does AWB use?

  The software reads the interwiki sort order from Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/IW, which is generally mirrored to reflect the order at m:Interwiki sorting order.

• AWB puts stubs after categories, though categories are always rendered the last by MediaWiki?

  According to WP:STUB#Categorizing stubs, By convention they are placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last. If your wiki uses another order, please let us know here.

• I don't like or use Internet Explorer; please use Firefox instead.

  AWB does not use Internet Explorer per se. It does, however, use the same web browser control (MSHTML) as Internet Explorer; the equivalent Firefox component does not provide the needed functionality.

• How do I open the page in another browser if I can't use the one in AWB?

  Right click on the edit box in the bottom right side of your screen. Select "Open page in browser".

• How do I edit a page that doesn't exist?

  Uncheck "Ignore non existing pages" in the "Skip articles" box.

• How do I skip certain articles?

  Use the "Skip if contains" and "Skip if doesn't contain" on the "Skip" tab

• Can't you leave up a "stable" version, so I don't have to download new versions?

  It is important to keep people up to date with the latest versions, because their use of the software doesn't just affect them, but the whole of Wikipedia. As any bugs that remain will be trivial, hopefully releases won't be too frequent.

• How can I stop AWB clicking when it changes pages?

  This is a Windows sound theme setting. This page explains how to turn off the clicking sound.

  Alternatively, delete the following key from the Windows registry:

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.Current

• AWB randomly crashes upon page load on my system, and I always use a browser other than Internet Explorer when using Wikipedia.

  You may have installed custom scripts incompatible with IE. Wrap the contents of your monobook.js into conditional:

               //Detect IE5.5+
               if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE")==-1)
               {
                   // Previous contents go here
                   ....
               }

• I get Just In Time Debugger Messages when loading AWB/loading pages.

  In Internet Explorer, go to Tools → Options → Advanced. Make sure 'Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)' and 'Disable Script Debugging (Other)' Are both checked. Press apply and close.

• Why does AWB run very, very slowly if I try to make changes in the edit window on larger pages, especially pages with long lists or tables?

  If running on Windows, exit the Speech Recognition software that is built into some versions of Windows; don't just turn it 'Off', you must 'Exit' the software if you have started up Speech Recognition.

• When I do a clean install of AutoWikiBrowser the application seems to find old setting data somewhere. I'd like to do a really clean install. Any ideas?

  Clean up your registry and remove the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\AutoWikiBrowser" (Windows XP) or "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Local\AutoWikiBrowser\" (Windows 7). Note that the application data folder may be hidden.

• AWB prompts that there is a newer version but won't update

  Check the version number of your AWBUpdater.exe. The current version is 2.0.2.1. If you have an older version, you have to download the latest AWB version and make a clean install.

• Which .NET Framework version do I have?

  You can find your .NET Framework version in Help → About box.

• Where are the default settings stored?

  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\AutoWikiBrowser
  • Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\AutoWikiBrowser\Default.xml

• I cannot copy text from the diff window using the Control+C keyboard shortcut.

  You must have Microsoft.mshtml.dll available for AWB to use for this functionality to work. You can try downloading the file (there are a number of third-party websites offering DLL file downloads) and putting it in the same folder as AutoWikiBrowser.exe. This is reported not to work for all users, presumably due to .NET Framework problems.

• Is there any way to set AWB to not use https? (GFW blocks 443 port)

  In preferences, set project to "custom". Set the left box to http. In the webpage box, type en.wikipedia.org/w/ (English Wikipedia) or zh.wikipedia.org/w/ (Chinese Wikipedia). Note that leaving off the /w/ will result in a "root element missing" error.

Discussion

This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot I. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 28. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

Two questions

Hello. I just started using AWB and it's great! Two questions, please:

1. How can I "explain" to AWB the local names? For example, sort meta data and similar features should know the defaultsort name in our wiki, the category namespace name, the stub and orphan templates names, and so on.
2. In disambiguation dialog manual section you are talking about an image, but I can't find it.

Thank you, IKhitron (talk) 23:32, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Nobody knows the answer? IKhitron (talk) 14:33, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

@IKhitron: about the first one - you can tell Magioladitis about these changes. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:37, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the image is missing. But you'll get that dialog window when fixing DAB links. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Edgars2007. I'll ask him in a couple of days, if he will not see your ping here. About the image - yes, but the text is inconsistent. What's wrong in creating one more screenshot? I would do it by myself, but I don't know how to upload it, with all the cc-by things. IKhitron (talk) 11:36, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, that everyone can edit :) But of course, this should get done. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 05:58, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

List categories of a Wikipedia page into a csv file

I have a list of 10K articles/pages. I need to enable AWB to write every category of a WP page into a text file. Can I do this? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:26, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: I would say, that AWB isn't the best solution for this. If we're talking about all categories (direct and not direct ones (cats, which are placed in article via stub templates etc.)), then querying database would be easier. What pages we're talking about? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:41, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. all bird species. PS I have used AWB (using the CSV Loader plugin) in the past to pick up info in infoboxes and write into a text file. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:53, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

PS But do I remember how I did it?! Old age creeps in... I think I had a script. If a script reads infoboxes and writes their content to a csv file, then it can read cats. Ah well... Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:04, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Just remembered! All done! Thanks... Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

CS1 errors

What's the best config for repairing Category:CS1 errors? I didn't see it built into gen fixes czar 07:43, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I never use genfixes so can't speak to what it can or can't do. Most of the low hanging fruit in the subcategories of Category:CS1 errors has been taken so what is left it the not-so-easy-to-fix problems that require editorial judgement or the creation of rather more complex scripts.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:13, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Help with advance find and replace?

Hi there, I'd like to copy a string from a bunch of images and paste it into the the images' category as a sort key, but I'm having trouble figuring out if that's possible with the advanced find and replace "if" function. As an example: File:West (rear) facade and south side - 1238 Thirty-Fourth Street, Northwest (House), Washington, District of Columbia, DC HABS DC,GEO,211-2.tif is in Category:Georgetown Houses in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) but it has no sort key. In the image description, you can find the line "* Survey number: HABS DC-720". I'd like to copy the string "HABS DC-720" and paste it as the category sort key like so: "HABS DC-720". Is that possible? And if so, how can I do it? Thanks. - 134.76.54.249 (talk) 11:35, 18 May 2016 (UTC)