[14:57:11] * James_F waves. [14:57:38] hi James_F! [15:00:40] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the VisualEditor office hour for 3/17. :) I just want to remind you that this channel is logged and that these logs will be posted on Meta. [15:01:00] We have with us James_F, aka James Forrester, the product manager for VisualEditor. [15:01:10] (Heya.) [15:01:19] Hi, James_F. :) [15:01:29] Does anyone have any questions for James? [15:02:00] yes! I have a question regarding VisualEditor -> wikidata integration [15:02:05] Hi, Micru. :) [15:02:31] (actually it is more a follow-up of past conversations :)) [15:02:34] Go ahead, please. :) [15:02:39] hi Maggie_Dennis [15:02:40] Hey Micru. :-) [15:03:35] my main question is when is it planned to start working on Wikidata-Infoboxes-Templates? Is it planned for this year? [15:04:01] So, by "Wikidata-Infoboxes-Templates", what do you mean? [15:04:17] I wrote a little dissertation here >> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Micru/Interaction_of_VisualEditor_with_Wikidata [15:04:19] Is it "being able in VE to insert a template that uses Wikidata"? [15:04:25] That should work now. [15:04:35] * James_F scans quickly. [15:04:42] more like "edit Wikidata values from VisualEditor" [15:04:53] Oh, right. Interesting question. [15:05:18] So I've been speaking to some of the Wikidata development team about what we can do in this area. [15:05:45] In general, it's something I'd like to see happen, but we've not got specific plans to work on it. [15:05:54] The most obvious place to start is language links. [15:06:19] I thought language links were already "mastered" by VE? [15:06:20] There are a number of concerns related to community interaction (how do you know to follow the rules of Wikidata if you're editing the German Wikipedia? Etc.) [15:06:33] No, they're read-only in VE. [15:06:40] ahh, ok [15:07:09] So whereas before Wikidata was rolled-out, you could edit language links locally, now you can't, except for the occasional local over-rides. [15:07:29] I was thinking that it could be useful to let each wikipedia decide which template fields connect to Wikidata, like this >> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikidata_infobox.png [15:07:33] Because it's so rare, and the Wikidata cross-project editing workflow wasn't worked out, we didn't want to rush in and disrupt things. [15:07:46] * James_F nods. [15:07:59] but that requires to specify on each template what are the WD equivalent properties... [15:08:12] True, but this is what TemplateData is for. :-) [15:08:19] So my second question was regarding that ;) [15:08:43] I know that in Commons there was a long RFC, but I don't know if there is any decission taken [15:08:57] * James_F nods. [15:09:06] I think the Commons RfC didn't reach a conclusion. [15:09:16] If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected. :-) [15:09:29] There were concerns about TemplateData, right? [15:09:39] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/How_Commons_should_deal_with_TemplateData#Closing_this_RfC [15:09:56] more or less the consensus was "Commons should support moving TemplateData to its own namespace" [15:09:57] Oh, hmm. [15:10:32] Well, I don't really see how that's a useful RfC, unless they're planning to do the work to make MediaWiki support related namespaces. :-) [15:10:47] He, he :) [15:11:06] Certainly it's an outcome I think would be great, but it's a very large amount of complicated work. [15:11:17] So what is going to be the course of action? [15:11:34] And that's going to need at least one technical MW RfC to propose a way to do it, ideally with code attached. [15:12:08] It's not a high development priority for the VE team; if other people want to do it, we may be able to offer support and advice. [15:12:55] Unfortunately I cannot think of anyone with enough knowledge ready to lead the discusion.... [15:13:13] * James_F nods. [15:13:37] James_F, if you could suggest anyone, maybe I could ask? [15:13:55] No idea who was working on that in the past... [15:14:05] It's a hard area to make changes in; it's not really been changed since 2003. [15:15:11] The main benefits seem to be for VE, right? Or are there any parties interested? [15:15:12] I would suggest starting a draft RfC on MediaWiki.org and asking for input? [15:15:43] Multimedia would probably like it for their file metadata work. [15:16:00] (File data:… alongside File:… and File talk:…) [15:16:22] Ok, James_F, I'll try to draft it the best I can... [15:16:26] And it would let us have Template data… and Template… and Template documentation:… maybe. [15:16:36] which points should it address? Template data? Template docu? [15:17:13] The general problem (no way to associate blobs with blobs), and particular examples that would benefit from it. [15:17:20] I'll ask people to help. [15:17:28] * Micru makes a mental note [15:17:54] Ok, I need to think about it and do some research before writing anything [15:17:58] Cool. [15:18:04] * Elitre raises hand for the next question. [15:18:10] Feel free to e-mail me or shout on IRC. :-) [15:18:26] Cool, thanks! :) Elitre, your turn ;) [15:18:36] Thanks, Micru. :) [15:18:47] Hiii :) James, would you please update us about where we are with ULS integration in VisualEditor. [15:18:56] Hey Elitre. :-) [15:19:11] (ULS = Universal Language Selector), for those who were on another planet lately :) [15:19:16] So from the outside perspective integration with ULS hasn't progressed very much. :-( [15:19:27] (I assume you mean ULS's IME, rather than other things?) [15:19:45] yes, I do. [15:19:49] Right. [15:20:07] So, ULS's IME, along with many (but not all) IMEs gets tripped up inside VisualEditor. [15:20:45] David, a member of the Language Engineering team, is spending about half his time trying to re-do big parts of VisualEditor's core so that IMEs – including ULS's IMEs – work in it. [15:21:14] A couple of weeks ago we got his re-write of how pressing "Enter" works. [15:21:47] (No-one should have noticed changes in behaviour except for a few bugs being fixed, but it is now vastly more compatible with IMEs.) [15:22:38] This week we got his re-write of another part, related to re-drawing the surface on changes (which was breaking a lot of IMEs, especially those for pictographic languages like Chinese). [15:22:59] Though each IME has its own special, unique, frustrating way of assuming things work. [15:23:21] Once we've got the next few major changes landed, it will be a case of manually working through IMEs to ensure that they do indeed work. [15:23:30] But this is a slow and laborious process. [15:23:54] Can the community help with this, and how? [15:23:57] Luckily, I think that ULS's IMEs use a shared system, so if one works then hopefully(*) they all will. [15:24:06] (he said) [15:24:09] * James_F grins. [15:24:15] :) [15:24:59] Yes, for testing IMEs we will ask for people to submit examples of how their IME works (we've got a logging framework that we can use to replicate their exact interactions as intended) so that we can check whether they work in VE automatically. [15:25:26] Testing IMEs has been stalled whilst we land the rest of the major changes, however. [15:25:42] I guess there's a list of IMEs somewhere...? [15:27:02] Elitre: Not really; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_input_methods_for_UNIX_platforms only lists for POSIX platforms, for example, and there's no equivalent list I can see for Mac/Windows/etc. [15:27:53] thanks James_F! [15:28:00] Anyone else have a question for James? [15:28:02] Elitre: "A list of IMEs" is like "A list of drawing programs". :-) [15:28:51] James_F: I always choose software I need by reading comparison articles like those! [15:28:57] * James_F grins. [15:29:21] * Elitre adds "free software". [15:35:35] Question for James? The guy here talking about VisualEditor? :) [15:50:25] We have ten more minutes to go, in case there are further questions. If not, James will be back again on March 19 at 0100 UTC. [15:53:24] James_F: I saw a couple of people showing up on IRC, volunteering to do stuff about VisualEditor for Google Summer of Code. [15:53:54] Yeah. [15:54:28] while this is great, this usually happens when San Francisco is asleep :) what's their best way to reach the team about this? [15:54:45] Ha. Good question. [15:55:04] Last year we had three GSoC students for VisualEditor. [15:55:20] This was fun, and we got some great code written, but it was very draining. [15:55:25] (5 minutes to go.) [15:55:45] The level of support we can give from SF for people in very different time zones is hard, and is something we want to avoid. [15:56:31] So for people far away from SF may not be best placed to do VisualEditor work, sadly. :-( [15:56:54] GSoC is meant to be fun and worthwhile but also valuable for the individuals doing it, and we don't want them to get discouraged. [15:57:36] I see. In general, is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2014#VisualEditor_plugins a good guide for them? or https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Annoying_little_bugs#Visual_Editor_and_Parsoid ? [15:57:41] But to answer your question, e-mail works reasonably well. [15:57:54] Yes, those are both good, especially the first. [15:58:16] But there are loads of great teams who aren't based in SF that GSoCers might be interested in - we shouldn't steal all the great ones. :-) [15:59:10] Ok, thanks! [15:59:29] Okay, well, this wraps our hour for today. :) [15:59:39] Thanks, Micru and Elitre and all the people who are silently reading. :) [15:59:51] James will be back on 3/19 at 0100 for our next hour. [15:59:56] The logs for this will be posted in a few minutes. [16:00:02] * James_F waves. [16:00:04] Thank you, James_F. :D [16:00:24] * Elitre waves as well (but more Pope-like, since she's Italian).