Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature requests/Archive

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Copy From Web Browser

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Ability to copy from the web browser control, to be able to then paste into the edit text box


Is added as SVN Rev 601. Just needs shortcut key fixing

Reedy Boy 23:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Re-directs

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Would it be possible to add a option for What re-directs here which would give back the re-directs only .

A few examples below


Restart after "Database locked"

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description restart after "database locked" event, maybe with capped exponential backoff (5s, 10s, 20s, 40s, up to say 5 min). Rich Farmbrough, 13:02 23 February 2007 (GMT). 


                if (HTML.Contains("The Wikipedia database is currently locked, and is not accepting any edits or other modifications."))
                {//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Readonlytext
                    StartDelayedRestartTimer(60);
                    return false;
                }

Added Start();

                if (HTML.Contains("The Wikipedia database is currently locked, and is not accepting any edits or other modifications."))
                {//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Readonlytext
                    StartDelayedRestartTimer(60);
                    Start();
                    return false;
                }

There was an automatic delay timer on 60 seconds, so i have put it to automatically try again after 60 seconds

For the "maybe with capped exponential backoff (5s, 10s, 20s, 40s, up to say 5 min)" - Are you wanting some user option to be able to set your preffered wait time before trying again?


Reedy Boy 14:17, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks good. I think with the capped backoff he meant that the first time it encounters a database lock it will wait 5s, the second time 10s, the third 20s, etc, up to 5 minutes, at which point it would keep waiting 5 min each time. I think that we already have something similar for other events. —METS501 (talk) 14:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Oooh, right, so an increasing wait time if the database is getting back logged. That wouldnt be too difficult. Is it a worthwhile feature? Reedy Boy 14:32, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
It could be shared with the other retry calls (error page, etc.) And there can be a lot of AWBs running at the same time. Rich Farmbrough, 14:36 23 February 2007 (GMT).
Are you saying this was already fixed? The idea of the exponential backoff is not to hammer the servers when they're down (i.e. suffering (as in kicking a man while he's down), not "down"), db locked usually only lasts for a few seconds, if it's still locked (or locked again) give it a bit longer before the retry. Trying every 5 mins should be harmless. Rich Farmbrough, 14:35 23 February 2007 (GMT).
No, i had added the extra automatic restart after a minute. We can add the exponential backoff, i think, it would be a good idea. Anyone else? Reedy Boy 14:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, we have that already, just replace StartDelayedRestartTimer(60) with StartDelayedRestartTimer(). It waits 3 extra seconds each time. —METS501 (talk) 14:44, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Ok, i changed the 3 seconds to 5 seconds in that void. I thought 3 seconds was a bit quick. Also change the lock check to () rather than (60). Reedy Boy 14:51, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Cool. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 23:45 23 February 2007 (GMT).
When Mets501 gets back from his short break, we should be able to get 3.1.2.0 out, fix included. Reedy Boy 23:51, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry :-) I'm back now, and 3.1.2.0 is released. —METS501 (talk) 02:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

New version notice

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description I noticed that AWB gave a warning that a their was a bug in the previous version .Would it be possible to add a message box to tell the user when AWB has been updated , this box would have a tick box so it's only shown once if the user wants (Gnevin 16:05, 24 February 2007 (UTC))


Err, yeah, would be a good idea, then the user is notified. Rather, than not knowing until that version was disabled. Reedy Boy 17:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Mets501 has made some changes to the login/check version routine. So we'll get some testing done, and it should be there in the next version =). More details on how it works when its done Reedy Boy 09:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


Be smarter about "decade" apostrophes

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Sometimes (see ABBA) an apostrophe represents possession of a year. Certainly if it's the beginning of a sentence there's a good chance that it may be correct. Rich Farmbrough, 18:00 3 March 2007 (GMT).


This sounds like a bug , does this happen when you where editing ? If so can you provide a link to the difference (Gnevin 18:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC))

Change Color of inactive rules

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description In the Advanced "Find and replace" rule list, mark disabled rules with a different color. So, I can find which of my 30-40 rules is disabled. —Dispenser 03:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


Err, yeah, i should've thought so
r.enabled_ = RuleEnabledCheckBox.Checked;

Just needs to be worked out how to change the colour on the bits

What 2 colours do you want? Or do you want it say, red if disabled, but stay black if enabled?

Im presuming you mean a colour of the rows/text, in the left hand list where it displays rules and subrules?

Just to make sure, so i dont go looking and changing colours on the wrong thing!

Reedy Boy 09:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Red for disabled and black for enabled in the list would be fine. —Dispenser 22:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Finally got Round to sorting it. Added in SVN Rev 694 Reedy Boy 22:39, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Just realised that this didnt cater for subnodes. SVN Rev 695 includes a recursive technique to colour in the nodes. Reedy Boy 23:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Icelandic language request

Hello, I'd like support for Icelandic language. Is this possible? --Jabbi 13:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you wanting support for the Icelandic Wikipedia? Ie is.wiki? Reedy Boy 17:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, correct. I don't mean icelandic language translation for the user interface hehe --Jabbi 18:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Done. MaxSem 19:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Easier way to remove duplicate wikilinks

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Can't think of an easy way to describe this... Right now, to remove dupes you keep clicking the dupe, and then you manually remove the [[ and ]] around them. If AWB ignored templates for this feature, it can either (a) automatically remove all wikilinks beyond the first or (b) do some kind of popup/preview and ask which one(s) to keep. (The above ignore infoboxes is probably needed.) — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 22:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


I didn't add exactly what you said, but now when a link is selected you can click a "Remove link" button to remove the link. —METS501 (talk) 23:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 01:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Replace Template:DEFAULTSORT

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Replace instances of {{DEFAULTSORT|Sortkey}} and {{defaultsort|Sortkey}} with {{DEFAULTSORT:Sortkey}} as part of general fixes to remove dependence on a template for a magic word. mattbr30 18:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


Hmm, 2 Regex Replaces me thinks

ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, "{{Defaultsort|Sortkey}}", "{{DEFAULTSORT:Sortkey}}");
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, "{{DEFAULTSORT|Sortkey}}", "{{DEFAULTSORT:Sortkey}}");

Just where to put it....??

Reedy Boy 20:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I committed it in the same function that changes an article to use defaultsort. —METS501 (talk) 01:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Cheers Mets =) Reedy Boy 10:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you both, mattbr30 15:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Remove dups

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Could a button be added to the Make list area or to the right-click-popup-menu to quickly eliminate duplicates? I never remember getting duplicates in the "old days", but I always seem to be getting them now and I hate having to go to the filter to get rid of them. --After Midnight 0001 03:25, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


Added along with some interface improvements. —METS501 (talk) 01:06, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

stubs on .pl

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description on .pl we want to keep this sequence as can be seen here [1] (one of the major admin's bot auto-generated article), that shows we want to keep it in that order (stub above categories, examples here [2])

I postulated this here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_13#bugs.2C_suggestions ] in point 2, ie. we would prefer to keep the behavior of AWB 3.0.6.0 (didn't even know why it's changed) --gregul


So you want "PersonData + Disambig + Stub + Categories + Interwikis"? —METS501 (talk) 01:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

  • disambigs are on top on .pl ([3], there is no other contruction), but about the stub sequence yes: stub->categories->interwikis, as 3.0.6.0 version did (with only one empty line between data and stub), that's the most common construction on .pl, other aren't welcome (if they exist they must probably have been done by AWB), for example here [4] admin draw another admin's attention to not doing so again --gregul

Ignore stub/iw/defaultsort only edits

Status This feature is not going to be implemented
Description Could it be possible to add an option to skip an article if the only changes made are to move one or more of the following: stub templates, iw's, DEFAULTSORT? (I don't think this currently exists.) It could be placed in the More of Set options perhaps.... I think that this could be handy, since the instructions (as I've interpreted) for use have always said not to make these edits, and I always click ignore on them. --After Midnight 0001 03:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


All of the specific functions (find and replace, categories, images, etc.) have local Skip if nothing changed options, so if you're running a specific task, just tell it to skip if nothing to do with that task was changed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you checked the local skip checkbox then wouldn't you not need this function? —METS501 (talk) 05:03, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Except sometimes my task is to run general fixes against all the articles in a category. I still want to do the fixes if they are meaningful (like getting rid of a category that appears twice), but skip them if they are insignificant. This is not a high priority request, so just close it if it isn't worth the effort. --After Midnight 0001 10:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
If you want to do that, I recommend turning on typo fixing, and then if no typo is fixed have it skip the article. —METS501 (talk) 17:44, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, Withdrawn. --After Midnight 0001 21:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Open text selection in browser

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Could you add an option to the edit window to "Open selection in browser", and (if possible) to be able to open links that appear under Alerts (would be more useful for above Image implications). This could also help for disambiguating links. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 05:47, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


What exactly do you mean? Right now when you're editing a page you can right click on the edit box and click "open article in browser". —METS501 (talk) 06:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

yes but it opens the article i'm working on. A second option "Open selection in browser" would open whatever i had highlighted (it's merely a matter of adding "http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/" to the beginning of the string:
this could save time for those who wish to follow links within an article, rather than having to load the main page first and then finding the link all over again. Plus i don't think it should be too difficult to incorporate into the edit window? the Alerts window might be more taxing? -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 08:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
So, basically, if its a wikilink, you want the page opening, appended by whichever wiki you are logged onto? If so, this would be fairly easy to do, but without faffing around doing a lot of error handling, it could let you open pages that doesnt exist. If you wanted it basically, if you highlight something, and then 'open selected page in browser', on the context menu in the edit, we can do that. Well, i cant see any reason why not. Reedy Boy 10:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
true, it could let you open pages that don't exist, but it's not like it would crash the person's puter or anything, they'd just get a really weird "create a new page". :) -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 14:08, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, yeah. I think Mets has added something for this... Reedy Boy 15:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I've just added this properly. Ive put a bit of error handling on it, so that you cant open a page if there is no text selected (in the same way you cant copy or cut if there is none selected)
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(Variables.URLLong + "index.php?title=" + txtEdit.SelectedText);

Reedy Boy 21:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Option to reload wiki checkpages on start

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description I often leave AWB running in the background for days on end; whenever I have some free time I pop over to hit save if it is waiting (see my Two stage filtering of list request). It cycles over my watchlist repeatedly. It seems to only re-read wiki-based checkpages (like typofixes) when I restart the program. I would like either (a) an option to reload such pages whenever Start the Process is pushed or (b) an option to reload those pages every n hours automatically. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 12:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


As for a side point. If you ticked, and unticked the typo list, it should reload it. The checklist is done at login. Reedy Boy 15:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanx, that'll do fine. I just tried it, and I guess it reloaded since I got the popup. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 02:55, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
It would be possible to have a menu option, to force reload of Regextypofix, and reload logged in status. As i can see a need for like you said. Reedy Boy 10:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Your call, thanx. What you gave me is good enough for now to run with it. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 11:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Its something i will be able to add easily. Just needs one menu option that can run the check the user status, and if the checkbox for regextypofix is ticked, it will reload the typo's. Reedy Boy 12:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Added a menu option for you for the next release :). Reedy Boy 18:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
As always, tnx! — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 20:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Allow access to list while adding rules

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Allow users to copy and paste from the list of articles while adding new find and replace rules (Gnevin 18:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC))


Due to the .ShowDialog() method used to show the advanced find and replace window, you are unable to anything with any other AWB window but that. That can be fixed by changing it to .Show() - I cant see any reason why we cant do this, so i'll just wait to see if any other developers respond to say no.

It would also make the all of the show/hide code, as below, work. As this wont do anything with the show dialog code

if (!replaceSpecial.Visible)
                replaceSpecial.ShowDialog();
            else
                replaceSpecial.Hide();

Reedy Boy 20:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

But you can't copy from the listbox either way. —METS501 (talk) 21:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I've changed it to .Show() now Reedy Boy 21:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Load articles into list comparer

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Add the 'make list' functionality to the list comparer, so that article lists can be directly loaded into the two list fields from 'what links here' etc. This should reduce the need to make and save two separate lists and then load then both into the comparer. mattbr 13:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


Done, and now ListComparer has a couple new features and a completely redesigned interface as well. —METS501 (talk) 21:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing the results! mattbr 22:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Change watchlist

Status Fixed in the next release
Description Page's edited by AWB are added to watchlist when Add pages I edit to my watchlist is selected under preference but the Add all to watchlist is not selected in AWB

Allow users to toggle on/off with button or possibly a setting items they have set under preferences to automatically watch (Gnevin 16:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC))
To duplicate: Change watchlist perferences to Add pages I edit to my watchlist edit with AWB Add all to watchlist off
Operating system XP
AWB version All before r814
Workaround None


I've discussed this before and don't know if it's a bug or a feature request . If its a bug its ok here if not i'd like to suggest a button to be able to press to toggle my watchlist preference when i use AWB

Definitely a feature request. —METS501 (talk) 03:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
The root of this issue - that AWB adds pages to the watchlist in the situation you decribe above, can be quite easily solved. However, emloying this easier method means that any pages already on the watchlist but edited by the bot are removed, hence there can be problems. The other way to do it is to either change the Wikipedia preferences (somethng I wouldn't really want to do), or add an AWB user setting "Allow AWB to over-ride my MediaWiki watchlist settings". Martinp23 17:05, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Did the latter option - preference added to the prefernces dialog. Martinp23 18:05, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Hey guys i thought you have forgotten about this , cheers for the great work (Gnevin 14:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC))

Option to always filter non-namespace and sort alphabetically

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description I'd like an option to always filter out non-namespace articles from the results list, and always re-sort the list when new articles are added. Thanks Rjwilmsi 11:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


Add to r823. I've changed the toolbar List> option for the filters and alphabetising into checkable menu items, so when selected the list will auto-resort on update. Thanks, Martinp23 17:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Two stage filtering of list

Status This feature is not going to be implemented
Description Similar to the above skip filter, I would like a two phase filtering of the list. AWB would first run thru the entire list like normal, but if it required human input, it would put it back at the bottom of the list. Then when it was done with this first pass, it would beep or something, and the user would run it by hand. This way the user's time is used even more efficiently because they don't have to wait while it goes thru many pages before finding one that actually needed attention. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 14:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


I had previously made such a request about 6 months ago and was told that would waste Wikipedia bandwidth with the extra page loads. I thought it would still be very useful, so I coded it up in my own build which I run when I need to do this. --Thiseye 19:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, i did request somethign similar aswell before... And was suggested to use the DB Scanner with a database dump. Im wondering what the actual drain on resources would be.... Reedy Boy 20:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The DB Scanner is not a tool I am familiar with. I may look into it if I get a chance. Is it something I can plug into AWB - the idea is that I don't know what I'm looking for until it is there (like a typo or any other thing AWB fixes). — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 14:10, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Its already part of AWB. Make From --> Database Dump. You just need to download a large xml dump of wikipedia, then unrar it Reedy Boy 14:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Is there a way then in AWB to filter that DB dump so I only do articles on my watchlist? Or would I need an XML tool to extract that first? — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 14:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
How big is your watchlist...? As downloading a 2GB file is a bit OTT.. And it would probably be out of date (they are done monthly or so) Reedy Boy 16:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I just saw that it is about 2 weeks old all the time, so that seems to be useless. I see you can get an XML extract with a special URL of each, I can use a Perl script (my Python is pathetic) to parse my watchlist and extract the XML to a file - would that be anything useful? It would definitely be less load on the servers (no HTML wrapping needed or images loaded). My full list is 1885 today, but 953 in mainspace. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 18:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Start / stop tags in articles

Status Feature is already exists in AWB
Description Some articles have nasty false hits (like associative array's "char[][char[]] phone_book;"); it would be nice if there was a way to tell AWB to stop processing before that and restart after. A simple HTML comment would probably be best for everyone, something like {{AWB stop}} would likely cause too much extra work for the servers. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 15:16, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


Good idea, but we have a section on the checkpage for pages which are not compatible with AWB's general formatting (such as this one). That should be enough, right? (I've added associative array to that list, if you have any others let me know). —METS501 (talk) 05:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Which checkpage? I'd like other things to still run, just not that section. Another example is .nfo where AWB always wants to turn FILE_ID.DIZ into FILE ID.DIZ. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 10:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Look at the check page. View the Source/Edit it

Look after

* <!--enabledusersends-->

Reedy Boy 15:17, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

OK. I cannot edit (yet) since I just started my RfA. When you get a chance you may want to add Newsgroup to the typo ignore, it tries to capitalize England (and my last run, it started trying Hawaii... looking at the list, I wonder why Harvard and Microsoft aren't in there yet...). — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 02:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Sure someone will, I'm not an admin either, so cant do it. Hehe Reedy Boy 10:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Excess whitespace as a general option

Status This feature is not going to be implemented
Description I was hoping someone could take the "Fix excess whitespace" option that comes up in the edit window and move/duplicate it to be something that can be automatically applied to pages. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 19:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


I thought it does fix most excess whitespace normally??? Reedy Boy 20:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
i had the gen cleanup enabled while i was retagging/cleaning several image pages and had to always right click and select the whitespece option. does the program run the exact same function when applying general fixes as it does when you click the option from the list? -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 18:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
It seems it isnt in the general fixes... I cant remember if some people were getting annoid by removing whitespace.

Needs

articleText = parsers.RemoveAllWhiteSpace(articleText);

Adding around line 831

Will post it on the dev talk page, see if anyone else can see a reason not to!

Reedy Boy 20:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it will work out best for everyone if it is just an option, like "Auto tag" and "Unicodify whole article" -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 21:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I also think it's best as an option. The right click option removes all excess spaces in the text, so for example it will remove spaces where they have been purposely placed to ease editing (eg where they have been used to line up the parameters in an infobox or a cite template). I think it will also remove instances where two spaces are used after a full stop or in table construction. The end result is a diff that shows lots of changed lines, making it harder to identify what the purposeful change was. mattbr 21:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

UI label colour change

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description In Main.cs, wouldn't it be better if lblOnlyBots had its Color property set to ControlLightLight so that it matched the tab colour? Harryboyles 12:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


Set to transparent to match the tab control. Reedy Boy 18:27, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Shared use of RegexTypos

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description For use on wikinews (and other English-language wikis) I'd like to be able to point AWB to the master list of typos on Wikipedia. This is better maintained than our local copy which I periodically duplicate from Wikipedia. Some way to specify a redirect for our list, or within the program specify a different URL for typos would be appreciated.

What I'm looking for (ideally) is replacing our page with something like #SUBSTITUTE:en.wikipedia.org/RegexTypoFixes and it knows to look here.

--Brianmc 10:32, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


This feature actually exists already exits, in a form. Mets added it on my request for custom wiki's. Basically, AWB will use the en.wiki typo list if one doesnt exist on the local wikipedia... Reedy Boy 19:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I added such feature to checkpage. Now you can point AWB to custom RETFs by adding line like <!--Typos:Wikipedia:MyCoolTypoz--> to checkpage if new page is local, and full path to contents of the typos page otherwise, e.g. <!--Typos:http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Википедия:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos&action=raw--> forces us to use Russian typos list. MaxSem 16:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Seems to be asking if you want to use the english wiki ones even if you are on the english wiki. Says no typo's found Reedy Boy 18:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Can someone add <!--Typos:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos--> to our en.wiki checkpage? People at the other wiki's need informing of this - Mets? Reedy Boy 17:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
User:kingboyk has added that to our checkpage. MaxSem: You had missed an index.php from the link to the page in the <!--Typos: -->, so it was falling over, and asking to revert to the default. Fixed that. Reedy Boy 20:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't complain of empty categories

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Empty categories, when they are part of a list of categories used to populate the list, shouldn't be complained about. If the cat doesn't exist, that's a different matter. Rich Farmbrough, 17:40 24 March 2007 (GMT).


Thats an easy change. It was something i suppose, so the user wasnt left wondering why the category didnt bring up any more articles... Maybe have this as a user setting? Reedy Boy 17:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
It's because query.php doesn't distinguish between empty and non-existant categories. —METS501 (talk) 19:03, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with Rich; I find that a nuisance too, although the altered message is at least an improvement. --kingboyk 19:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I We (Steve and I) decided to go with the complain, but not until its loaded all the categories. It will make a list as it goes through of any bad categories, and then display a message box at the end to teh user listing them all. Then the user isnt left wondering what went wrong, and it wont interrupt the page loading from category process. Reedy Boy 21:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Definitely a better idea. Rich Farmbrough, 14:11 31 March 2007 (GMT).

Two requests/suggestions: collapsible (hideable) "parameter panels" (i.e. bottom lefthand corner) and autosave

Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description I often need to make a few manual edits when using AWB, so wonder if anyone else would appreciate a larger editing window. If so, the first possibility that came to mind is to make one or both the "parameter panels" collapsible or otherwise hideable, thereby increasing the width of the editing window. Hopefully this wouldn't be too tricky to implement...


This should be implementable. It just needs some GUI changes adding some panels that can be hidden. Whilst we are doing other GUI changes, i'll look at doing this! Reedy Boy 16:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the followup!  Ideally, my preference would be the autosave below, but I guess that will involve "deeper" coding... Yours, David (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
You wouldnt believe how much faffing this is taking!!! Ive finally got it ported over to a split container, from the 2 panels. Which means i can now easily sort out the expanding edit box. Ie, ive spent ages faffing to get it back to how it was before, but on a new control. The next bit should be the easy bit!! Reedy Boy 21:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Revision 921-927 are the edits for this feature! Its all added now. Its on the edit toolbar atm, i need to add it to a main context menu, and give it a shortcut, but thats that!! Reedy Boy 21:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
rev 928 completes the request!! Reedy Boy 21:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Status Feature Added in Next Release
Description Following on from the above, I sometimes find I've spent some time manually editing a page only to have that work lost due to glitches such as a page reload or power cut during stormy weather. I try to remember to save the amended code as (say) a unicode Notepad file, but if a glitch strikes before I do so, I'm left needing to start from scratch again. So, an "Autosave every N minutes to Path:Filename" option would be much appreciated.

...Have recently been reminded of another reason for such a feature: if an edit conflict occurs, AWB restarts its editing from scratch. If someone has spent time making manual amendments but forgets to make a copy of the page, all that work is lost. David (talk) 18:09, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


AWB is a very useful piece of software – thanks for its continued support!  Best wishes, David Kernow (talk) 06:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


That would also be an easy(ish) feature to implement. Would need a user option for people to choose whether to do it, but a timer is needed, set to whatever time the user option was set to, and just dump it to a text file. See if i can get it done for the next release. Its more getting the time to fiddle to sort it out Reedy Boy 07:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Done in the latest SVN Revision. Added options for it. For ease, i've set it to save to the AWB directory, but if you look in the preferences, you can set the file name. I've used part of the code to add an option to the context menu to save the text to a file. Set a min of every 30 seconds (60s by default), and a max of 5 minutes. Let me know if there are any problems. Reedy Boy 19:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Delinking headings

Status This feature is not going to be implemented
Description {{{description}}}


Could this be reduced to

==section heading==

? Colonies Chris 13:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC) }} rather than make a seperate request, could we tack on changing instances of this:

== Foo in [[bar]] ==

to

== Foo in bar ==

i'm kinda still trying to get the hang of regex and have been having problems getting this MOS guidline implented in my own personal general fixes. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 19:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Im pretty sure AWB used to do this.... Reedy Boy 19:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
AWB use to remove links in headers but it was causing to many problems and was removed (Gnevin 16:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC))
Ah, cheers. I thought it was there. Its therefore no to the second part - sorry. Reedy Boy 16:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Definitely too many problems with the second. —METS501 (talk) 16:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
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