Wikipedia:Software updates

July 29th, 2003

New features have recently been made to the wikipedia software:

• A table of contents scheme has been implemented after demonstrations on http://test.wikipedia.org/. Turn off the table of contents for a page by inserting __NOTOC__ anywhere on it. You can link to an individual section on a page by using the syntax [[pagename#section title]]. If there are two or more sections with the same name, they can be linked by appending a _2, _3, etc to their name as in [[pagename#section title_2]]
• Individual sections can now be edited. Check your user preferences -- section editing can be turned off, or if you use a modern browser, you can edit sections by right clicking their titles instead of the [edit] links.
• The layout has been slightly modified. Pages with lots of links should save faster. Talk pages now have a "Post a comment" link.
• The title search is currently disabled for performance reasons. Use the "Go" button instead.
• You can now choose your preferred date format.
• The bright yellow color (#FFFFDD) on specified namespace pages (talk, special, wikipedia) has been changed to a less saturated yellow (#ffffec).

Please voice your concerns and suggestions regarding these changes.

Fixed bugs

• Section editing: Edit conflicts lead to text duplication - FIXED.
• Section editing: When saving a text, aborting, and saving it again, only the section is saved, not the whole text - FIXED.
• Section editing: Doesn't work on pages with apostrophes in the title - FIXED.

Open bugs and issues

• Section editing: Headers within <NOWIKI> tags confuse section editing
• Section editing: [edit] links on printable versions
• Section editing: experiment with some alternatives to [edit] links
• Section editing: edited section should be auto-appended to edit summary
• Section editing: arbitrarily sometimes works, sometimes not, if the differences between the current and an old version are displayed
• TOC triggers on very small articles with lots of headlines. Possible solution: additional minimum length requirement.
• __TOCHERE__ to allow arbitrary TOC placement and embedding the TOC in DIV tags for floating
• TOC numbers are part of the link. Solution: Take TOC numbers out of the link
• TOC: Spaces in headings are rendered in the TOC. Solution: Trim headline text before adding it to the TOC.
• Post a comment: Link not shown in bottom navigation bar
• Post a comment: Preview does not show subject

Issues that probably won't be changed

• <math> tags in headers don't work. Won't change - reason: MATH can produce all kinds of stuff (complex images, tables etc.) that won't work in a table of contents
• When right click editing is enabled, you cannot right click a link in a header to open it. Won't change - reasons: 1) It has been a long-standing Manual of Style guideline not to use links in headers. 2) Even if they are used, most browsers allow opening them using some other combination (Mozilla: middle click, ctrl+left click, type ahead find, TAB navigation; IE: shift+left click)
• Example headlines are treated just like any other headline (e.g. Wikipedia:How to edit a page), added to the TOC, with edit links etc. Only way to change this would be to have some flag that these headlines are to be ignored. Won't change: not worth the additional complexity.
• Section editing: Only a single section is edited, not the sections on lower levels that follow it. Won't change - reason: sections should contain a reasonable amount of text, otherwise they should not be created in the first place.