Help talk:Text editor support

message: Is there also a solution for "UltraEdit-32"??? --C167
*It works with "It's all Text", but you have to install UE so that it has no spaces in its name (i.e. not in "Program Files"). I've asked IDM to provide textbox editing in the next release. Bazj (talk) 08:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misc 

message: An emergency security release may currently be blocking access to existing bots and tools like editors. "Additional protections have been added against off-site form submissions hijacking user credentials. Authors of bot tools may need to update their code to include additional fields". To get started, you'll have to fetch the wpEditToken value from an edit form after you login, and provide that with your save form submissions. The new release is live on all Wikimedia hosted sites and is a recommended security update for all MediaWiki sites. See the release notes for more details of what you need to do to modify a bot or tool to deal with this. Please also take the opportunity to add rate limiting based on how long the last response took. It's also important that any page saves/updates are single threaded (one edit at a time) and vital that they do not retry after a timeout of less than 3 minutes, or when they see a database error, since those actions amount to a denial of service attack on the site when it is overloaded. Jamesday 20:20, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Security update may block some bots/tools

message: *:Image:Vim_syntax_highlighting_sample.html
*:Image:wikipedia.vim
If I put the text of the example in the edit box it gives
link External link [editorial remark]
* Bullet
; Definition
# Numbered list
::::**::*: Excessive indenting
This: # is not a numbered list
HTML formattingbold-italicbold
<a href="Hello">Absence of HTML formatting</a>
 preformatted
italic bold bold-italic
bold links are not very bold
\left\langle Not-A\right\rangle
:=H1=
:==H2==
:This is meant to be at the start of the line: ===H3===
:====H4====
:=====H5=====
:======H6=====
:-----
This looks rather messy and contains an error message. Is the example not supposed to be a colored version of what is in the edit box? - Patrick 12:09 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:It's meant to be a compact demostration of the features of the syntax file, not a demonstration of the ideal way to write an article. The error is unfortunate, it looked like valid TeX to me (and to Vim). It could be fixed, I guess. But it is a coloured version of what's in the edit box, isn't it? -- Tim Starling 12:30 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Okay, now it is already better:
link External link [editorial remark]
* Bullet
; Definition
# Numbered list
::::**::*: Excessive indenting
This: # is not a numbered list
HTML formattingbold-italicbold
<a href="Hello">Absence of HTML formatting</a>
 preformatted
italic bold bold-italic
bold links are not very bold
\left(Not-A\right)
:=H1=
:==H2==
:This is meant to be at the start of the line: ===H3===
:====H4====
:=====H5=====
:======H6=====
:-----
Note that bold italics should have 5 dashes, not 4. - Patrick 13:35 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:Why on earth do you want to put the result shown by the browser on the actual page? -- Tim Starling 14:53 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
::You can then compare, and see e,g, that bold is already shown bold by Vim, but headers are not shown big. Vim gives an intermediate representation. Also the example of absence of HTML formatting that is included, is demonstrated. - Patrick 15:30 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:::But it's so ugly :P  You're assuming the readers of this page don't know how wiki-markup works. And it's too long now, the idea was to have one section per editor. I'm sure it won't be long before someone writes one for Emacs. I was even thinking about leaving the sample split off, because it was getting long before. -- Tim Starling 16:28 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
::::It seems natural, when constructing something intermediate between two things, to show all three. Here one is not needed, the edit box form, because it is identical to the Vim form without the colors and fonts, so that leaves two. The ugliness is partly due to the example, it can be improved. If it is too long the article can be split. - Patrick 17:11 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
If you're going to show "how syntax highlighting looks in vim", shouldn't you use an actual screenshot? —Paul A 01:12, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: The HTML version is very realistic (generated by 2html.vim), and takes less time to download. How it looks depends on your OS and your colour scheme, anyway. Do you think it's a problem? -- Tim Starling 00:19, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)
The Wikipedia.vim file seems to be in dos format, and generated errors on my system. It is probably self-evident, but converting it with :set fileformat=unix :wq fixes that. --Kornelis 20:34, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links for maintenance 

message: Probably many non-nerd-people who would like to use an wikipedia-enhanced text editor do not use any of the text editors mentioned on the page. Therefore they have to select one. I think we should provide some help about that on the page.
I got criticized, because the text below contains only arguments in favor of Eclipse. It would be great if the users of other text editors could add their arguments. Then we could eventually put a not biased version on the page.
 Proposed content 
Section title: For the less experienced: Help on selecting a text editor 
This is a collection of hints which help the less computer experienced to choose a external text editor for editing Wikipedia-articles. See below for more info on specific editors.
* The Eclipse plugin displays an automatically updating outline of the article and supports collapsing sections. This is extremely useful for improving the outline of big articles.
* Learning Emacs or Vim can be extremely useful for you, but do that only if you are looking for a good text editor for the rest of your life. If you want a quick solution just to get a little help with editing Wikipedia-articles, look for something different. Emacs and Vim are extremely powerful, but take considerable time to getting used working with them. --HelgeHan (signed by Oleg Alexandrov)
:: First of all, please sign your posts.
::The problem is that people will never agree on what a good editor is. If you check the edit history, there was a lengthy paragraph before you on how to use Microsoft Word and how it should be the first choice of people or so. 
:: I think people are smart enough to realize for themselves what their favorite editor is. And please understand, the point of this page is not about which editor to use, it is about how to get a bunch of known editors to work with Wikipedia. Let's keep focused. Oleg Alexandrov 16:00, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I will not mind if you create a page explaining the differences between various editors. You can of course link to that from this page. However, I strongly suspect that such a page would not be considered encyclopedic, and somebody (not me) might submit it for deletion. Good luck. :)  Oleg Alexandrov 19:27, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  On "For the less experienced: Help on selecting a text editor" 

message: It would be nice to have guidance on preserving the Wikipedia character set while editing in external editors.  (SEWilco 14:40, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the issue is with the text editors. For example, XEmacs, my favorite editor, will ruin Unicode. I think Emacs, and surely Vim do not have a problem with that. Don't know what else to say. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:24, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not sure about Vim being safe.  I'm also not sure about it being unsafe.  I've seen some odd hints.  (SEWilco 15:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It depends on your 'encoding' and possibly your 'fileencodings'/'fileencoding' option.  If your 'encoding' option is set to "utf-8" you'll likely be okay. -- Heptite 01:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yup, that's a Vim option.  Suggestions for any other editors?  (SEWilco 19:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Character set issues 

message: This page says all pages are in UTF-8, and my Firefox browser is defaulting its encoding to UTF-8, yet when I edit some pages, I mess up the characters, such as with this edit.  Does anyone know of a solution to this that allows me to continue using Firefox.  Perhaps I just need to download some language pack?--Paraphelion 15:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The question marks--it is probably something to do with your fontset. What are you currently using? //Ae:æ 13:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Firefox on Windows 

message: I reverted Sharcho's change of .wiki to .mwiki in the Vim section because it breaks compatibility with things like ee.pl.  In truth someone needs to fix up the Wikipedia.vim syntax file and submit it to be officially included in the next release of Vim, along with a patch to filetype.vim to allow people to configure what type of wiki syntax to use for *.wiki files, like what's done for *.asm files (see ":help asm"). -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 07:43, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vim--.wiki vs .mwiki 

message: I edited the following:
:*Note that though you may see question marks in an edit textbox unrelated to the edits you are making (for those other language wiki things at the bottom, for example), your edits may not be destroying the characters when using Firefox (this seems to be the case with Firefox 1.5.0.3)--Paraphelion 05:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Note that though you may see question marks in an edit textbox unrelated to the edits you are making (for example, the Unicode grapheme and other glyphs at the bottom), your edits may not be destroying the characters when using Firefox (this seems to be the case with Firefox 1.5.0.3).
I may have swung the pendulum the other way, but I'd rather be too accurate than too informal. --Charles Gaudette 00:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Firefox special note 

message: So I tried all the given firefox extensions, combined with emacs+wikipedia-mode.el as well as notepad++. I can't figure out how I'm supposed to edit Wikipedia articles with this setup. Here's the problem: I go to an article, I click on "edit this page", then I go to the text box, right-click and choose the external editing command. The editor opens. I edit in the editor. After a while I'm satisfied, so I save, then go back to the textbox and click in it: my changes are there. Now I preview. I find a mistake. I go back to the editor, fix the mistake, save. Click back into the textbox, but it won't take the fixes. So what am I supposed to do, completely close the editor after each round, then open it again after previewing? Are other people having the same problem? How are you handling the edit-preview cycle? Thanks, AxelBoldt 06:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you tried to press "Back" in your browser after you hit Preview? I think that could work. In fact, I just tried it with ViewSourceWith and it works.  Grue  07:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! That does it. The issue seems to be that the URL of the page you get after previewing is different from the URL you started out with. So another solution is to do hit "edit this page", then hit "preview" right away, then start the external editor. Then you can do as many saves and previews as you want, without a need for intermediate Back's. I'll add that information to the page. Cheers, AxelBoldt 15:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How does this work? 

message: BabelPad allows you to hover over special characters and see what they are in the status bar.  I'm wondering if it would be possible, using javascript, to do a similar effect for textareas on Wikipedia.  You could hover over characters or press a certain key combination with the cursor behind one, and either in the status bar or in a tooltip, it would show you the codepoint and Unicode name of the character.  This would allow easy identification of the difference between − and –, μ and µ, and so on.  Actually, with the key combination idea, you could hover over a character in the article text or a textarea and see what it is.  That would be quite useful.  The code point list would best be stored externally as an XML file or something, and the parts retrieved when necessary with http requests, since this would be an uncommon operation and we don't want to load all that stuff into memory for each Wikipedia page. — Omegatron 16:03, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Babelpad for textareas? 

message: I like the External editors feature a lot, works great once you get it set up.  But the thing that's driving me nuts is that you have to turn it on and off by going to your preferences, which is a pain.  Sometimes I just want to do a quick edit with the default interface... sometimes I want to do a long edit with an external editor.
Is there a way to use the External Editor feature on an ordinary text page without enabling the "External Editor by default" feature in Preferences?  In other words, is there a way to use the feature when it's not set as the default? MOXFYRE (contrib) 23:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: External editor script  adds an extra edit tab which always invokes external editor. — Alex Smotrov 23:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Alex, that's awesome!  In my opinion, there ought to be a Preference to enable this tab, something like:
[ ] Enable external editing by default
[ ] Enable external editor tab
  Whaddaya think?  Maybe this should be proposed on the MediaWiki site, not wikipedia? MOXFYRE (contrib) 23:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that  this is how it should have been implemented from the start, since most people who use external editing still would like to be able to edit in browser. You can make a request but I don't think now the developers will consider this change a priority: if you can set up ee.pl (and people say it's a bit complicated) then you should be able to add a simple script to your monobook.js. Especially now since I added this info to meta:Help:External_editors ;) — Alex Smotrov 17:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Cool, that definitely would have saved me some time, good addition.  I actually have no idea how MediaWiki development works... would the MediaWiki Bugzilla be the appropriate place to request this feature? MOXFYRE (contrib) 17:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like the right place to me. Check out bugzilla:7092 — Alex Smotrov 18:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  I'll add my "me too" to that.  MOXFYRE (contrib) 20:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using an External Editor when it's NOT set as default 

message: A features comparison table would be very helpful. 
I tried searching to see what programs there were that work with Linux, and found that the OSes weren't given. I've added OS information in brackets for various editors, to make things a bit easier for the reader. 
My impression at the moment is that the only Linux options are fairly primitive... I'm looking into it, but this is where a comparison table would make things far easier. Not everyone comes to this page with a specific favorite editor that they're trying to set up as an external editor. And those that are, are likely to not find that editor here anyway, so this page really needs to assume that people need info about the editors - and preferably laid out clearly, so they don't have to read and analyse a dozen different Wikipedia articles. --Chriswaterguy talk 15:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Features comparison table 

message: How do I underline text? Feedback ☎ 01:50, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Underline

message: just making a comment..  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.77.15.61 (talk) 12:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. And further, it is really geared to vim/gvim, as far as I can tell. Can someone familiar with It's All Text please work on this section, so it can be more understandable? Thanks. Libcub (talk) 02:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. There is far too much talk about vim. There is really nothing vim specific about using It's All Text!. In addition, the section talks about MediaWiki shortcuts and other things not related to It's All Text!.  I could try to clean it up. --PauliKL (talk) 15:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

text: There is even a listing of a script for invoking vim on X-terminal. It should not be here, but before it is deleted, maybe somebody wants to copy it to some other site? (Of course it can be found from History later.) --PauliKL (talk) 07:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Additionally, the Firefox extension "Vimperator" (and probably many other extensions) provide identical external editor functionality. Should they get a mention here? Should the page be made generic with perhaps a list of external-editor plugins? —TedPavlic | (talk) 16:36, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, definitely. I don't know why someone reverted my edit when I added Pentadactyl. It's a more-widely used fork of the same software. I'm adding it back. Please discuss here before reverting my edit. Thanks. Let99 (talk) 03:34, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  reads like an advertisement for It's All Text... 

message: This may be an odd suggestion, but Notepad has long been my Wiki Syntex external editor of choice. I use Internet Explorer with Google Toolbar and IE7Pro, so I have spellcheck and all of that inline on my browser. When I write huge articles, I would copy and paste the text in case of a browser crash.
However, I'd like to do the pure text writing on a very simple program such as Notepad by default. Is this feasible? I hope it is, because it would prove invaluable to my contributing on the database.
--74.184.65.160 (talk) 17:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What About Notepad? 

message: It is not possible to upload a new Wikipedia.vim copy (here, File:Wikipedia.vim), because during the upload process it says that this file is not one of the permitted file types (Permitted file types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg, xcf, pdf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, oga).
Different versions:
* www.vim.org, which is the newest, based on this:
** User:Samsara/Wikipedia.vim, which is based on this:
*** File:Wikipedia.vim
vim.org filetype (.wiki) plugin incorporates in addition suggestions on the Wikipedia:Text editor support#Vim, like augroup and maps.
Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 15:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia.vim 

message: There is too much vim specific stuff in the article. There are even listings of vim specific scripts on the page.
Couldn't you at least put the scripts on some vim specific site and then just give a link here, as it is done with all the other editors. Or, if such site does not exist, create a sub-page for vim.
I already simplified part of the chapter "Use It's All Text! to invoke an external editor" and removed some vim specific stuff. But there are still the chapters "Using vim or another console editor" and "Using vim on Mac OS X" that do not belong here. Those should be removed. If someone needs the information there, please copy it to some vim specific site now.
--PauliKL (talk) 16:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Vim now accounts for more than a quarter of the content, most of that is the misplaced script.  Perhaps that could find a home in wikibooks (it doesn't belong here) Tedickey (talk) 08:59, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much vim 

message: The link "It's All Text and gVim" in section "WikipediaFS" leads to a section with the headline "Use It's All Text! to invoke an external editor".
Shouldn't they be the same?
--Mortense (talk) 23:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange link 

message: There is a stand-alone Mediawiki editor on Sourceforge and it also works with Windows. --Elitre (talk) 13:23, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Should this be added?

message: Hi. Not sure if this is the proper place to ask this. But are there any tips for editing for mobile users (I use Safari on iOS). It's very hard to edit in the iPod's Safari browser. I would like to be able to use an external editor, but the article doesn't say whether that's possible, let alone provide recommendations. Thanks.
--Autocorrelation (talk) 11:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mobile editing? 

message: In section GNU Emacs,
: ... mostly provides syntax highlighting for Wikipedia markup.
Should it be "MediaWiki markup" instead of "Wikipedia markup"?
--Mortense (talk) 12:42, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does "Wikipedia markup" exist? 

message: I have been trying to paste text in a wikipedia text editing window. The text does not "wrap". I have followed the help system and found this text editor support page. The answer is to delete any spaces at the start of paragraphs and to insert a blank line between paragraphs instead.Imageofreality (talk) 01:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  This discussion is too technical..when I paste text it does not wrap. 

message: I like to underline text a lot, will that ever be part of the Wikipedia format so I don't have to continue doing it via HTML? Feedback ☎ 17:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underlining 

message: I tried to download the MediaWiki syntax highlighting plugin for jEdit from the http://www.djini.de/software/mwjed/ URL given on the Wikipedia:Text editor support page (and in numerous other places around the web), only to get a Not Found error message.  Is there anywhere else that might have this plugin?  Was it GPL?  If so, does anyone else here have a copy of it that they'd be willing to share?  -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 22:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  <samp>MwJed</samp> plugin for jEdit -- RIP? 

message: I'm using the official extension WikiEditor, and I have it enabled in my prefs, but this doesn't permit me to launch the editor associated with It's All Text.
Any workaround? DonPaolo (talk) 15:27, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's All Text doesn't work with WikiEditor 

message: How to configure MediaWiki (options -> Internet -> mediawiki) to work with wikipedia, which wikimedia server (URL) should I put in to configuration dialog box? 
--emc (talk) 14:06, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  LibreOffice Wiki Publisher 

message: BBEdit supports syntax highlighting modules. There doesn't seem to be one for MW syntax yet.  This is one of the most-used Mac OS X editors.   I know jack-all about creating such a module, however. Just wondering if anyone else has done so already.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:32, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nothing for BBEdit (TextWrangler)? 

message: Could someone who knows more about this then me check to see if GhostText is actually working and if not remove it? Neither of the browser plugins works. Seraphimsystem (talk) 02:09, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: GhostText

message: This should be a how-to with only the most well-working solutions showing. Can we use the talk page to list the options which work and which don't? For example "It's All Text!" is completely defunct for users of updated Firefox. -Inowen (nlfte) 06:15, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit