Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:14, 16 December 2005

I'm interested

I would love to try out the new AutoWikiBrowser and provide feedback on it. Send an email to floresg2 AT gmail.com. Thank you. Gflores 22:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Me Too

I would like to try this out also it looks a lot friendlier than the pywiki framework --Kaiserb 00:23, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Downloadable

Anyone interested can download it here, bear in mind that it is a development version! Martin 09:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Is that an installer, or a self-contained executable? —Phil | Talk 12:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Self-contained executable. Gflores 16:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

weird edits?

You auto-thingy wasn't just doing a recat in this edit . You can see that it also added a space after the initial asterisk in lists (which is unnecessary), and also doing some other changes that I couldn't figure out what they were (removing spaces?). 22:54, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I removed some white space, and added some spaces to the bullet points to make the wiki text more readable at the same time as re-cating, whats weird about that? Martin 23:05, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Since I'd never seen your edits before yesterday, I decided to look at one today. Instead of the expected re-cat, the dif shows a whole bunch of changes plus the re-cat. That's why it looked weird to me. 23:35, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, among other improvements I am making more descriptive edit summaries easier ;) Also I think I won't bother with the very very minor edits from now on anyway. Martin 23:48, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Works well

The bot works quite well. The only issues I have had is when a blank page loads i.e. image with no tag. The bot carries the information from the previous edit and trys to fill in the blank page. —  KaiserB 23:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't noticed that, I'll try and get it fixed soon. Martin 23:34, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Can you please add me (User:KaiserbBot) to the official users list for this bot software. Thank you, —  KaiserB 16:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Can't see the bottom of the window

I suspect that this is a problem I have encountered before, whereby I can't see the stuff right at the bottom of the AWB window; there's no scroll bar so I simply can't get at it.

My windows toolbar is double-height, to allow more stuff to be displayed in the "clock" area, and to allow more window buttons. You can see a sliver of the top of my toolbar right at the bottom of the screenshot. I suspect that AWB positions its buttons either relative to the top of the window, or based on incorrect information as to where the bottom of the window actually lies.

It's really frustrating, since this looks like an excellent tool…I'd like to see and use all of it Template:;-)

In the meantime, I've a couple of questions:

• There are no access keys: "Make list" could be "Make list" maybe…
• Tools→Options does nothing for me: should it?
• There's a new tab: what does "messaging" do?
• What are the "general fixes"? Can we pick and choose?

HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, in order...

1. It can be resized by "grabbing" the middle horizontal border between the buttons area and the browser, hopefully I'll fix it properly soon.
2. Yup, I still need to add shortcut keys and stuff (admittadly I had forgotten, as I never use them).
3. The "Options" should not do anything, I was fiddling and forgot to remove it ;)
4. Messaging is for appending a message to the bottom of a page, i.e. for spamming user talk pages (someone asked me for this feature). I have tried to make the tooltip text (you know, the popup help text that you get when you hold the pointer over something) as explanatory as possible.
5. General fixes are mainly errors in the "See also" and "External links" sections (e.g. mis-capitalisation, or a non-standard name), removing excess white space, I need to add more to these general fixes.

Let me know if there are other features that I coud add, I have some that I haven't enabled yet as well.

thanks - Martin 11:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

p.s. You'll need the newest version for it to work. Martin 12:23, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

• You beauty, now I can see it in all its glory! Cheers —Phil | Talk 14:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Search limitations?

I came across a user's signature which had been broken by the brief outage of HTML Tidy a while back, and I thought that it would provide an ideal exercise for me to get to know AWB. However, AWB doesn't seem to be able to find the broken text, even here when I can see it right there in the textbox! The text in question is:

[[User_talk:Admrboltz|<sup>=/\=</sup>]]

and I was attempting to replace it with:

]

(note that in the wikitext I have had to double-escape the first version: the second version is actually the broken one which is rendering just fine here :-). Are there some settings I should be tweaking? Should I be double-escaping the HTML entities like I had to just above? —Phil | Talk 14:30, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

hmmm it was because it has an \ in it, which the AWB interpreted as an escape sequence I think, so I escaped the escape sequence by sticking another \ into the "find" and it was OK. I'll work out how to fix it, hopefully it won't be a problem in the mean time. Martin 14:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, on second thought it's pretty good needing to escape some characters; it means the search can be much more advanced. Martin 16:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

More escaping

I just discovered you have to take great care sometimes… I was searching for:

]

which I had just turned into a REDIRECT, so I could short-circuit it. I fetched the list of "links to" articles and told AWB to replace that with:

]

which is the proper article. Imagine my horrified interest when the first article appeared with every single instance of "?]]" replaced with ]: it was obviously treating the like a character range. But I didn't have "Is regex" selected: should it really be doing this? If that option is switched off, shouldn't it treat the string as completely raw? It works fine, BTW, if you use

\]

(which obviously won't work now 'cos I've been and gone and done it :-) HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 16:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I found that as well, I didnt realise that it would treat it like a range, but I guess I could call it a new feature! Martin 16:37, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Whoops, I just realised that what i had done initially was correct (I was starting to get worried), but I was passing the wrong parameter to my find and replace method, and as such regex was permanently on (as you suggested). Its fixed now (simple find and repace really is simple now!) Martin 16:56, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Question

For the option, 'Ignore if contains:', is that only for the title of the page or for anything in the article? Also, is there a way to add several entries (like User: Misplaced Pages: talk:), basically I just want the main article namespace.

Secondly, I think this tool would be great for disambiguating links, but I really don't know how that would function in the program. Perhaps using the what links here option, and somehow getting a list of links from the term's disambiguation page (or the person could just create this in notepad), then the person could enter some link to disambiguate in the search field and AWB will search for it in the small textarea and perhaps highlight it. Upon which, the user will change the link to point to its appropriate location. I don't know that may be difficult to implement. If I'm not being clear, let me know. I'm way too tired right now. BTW, can't wait for the local text file support. Thanks. Gflores 04:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It ignores article text, to seperate main space; sort them alphabetically then remove them from the list. Martin 08:58, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I will add regex to the "ignore if contains" as well so you can search for as much or as little as you like. I am also working on a filter to leave only main space articles, but it is easy to do it manually so its not a big priority. Martin 09:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Previewing manual changes

Is it possible to preview the effect of manual changes? I'm not that confident in my typing to be certain I always get it right first time… HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I initially had a preview, but it caused problems, I'll work on it. Martin 09:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Slow auto-touch

So I haven't a bot account, but I would like to have AWB sit in the background, touching a whole list of articles, fixing "links to" issues for updated templates. Can I set it to go off at 1 minute intervals, just wandering down the list of articles? What's the best way to make sure it just touches, doing nothing substantive at all? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:56, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

turn all the options off. Martin 15:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Regex

I would like to delink solitary years e.g. ]. But I need to avoid years if they are not solitary. I have been searching for 'in ]' and ' of ]' but that is laborious. Presumably I can make use of regex to avoid ']] ]' and ']], ]' etc.

I know that you are not a regex helpdesk but could you let me know how regex find square brackets and how it does ignore? Bobblewik 10:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Add to Watch-list

I would like the option to be able to inhibit adding articles to my watchlist. If it were possible to preserve the current situation (i.e. only "add" them if I am already watching), that would be great. In the meantime, I'm hoping that, despite the abjurations not to click in the browser pane, if I untick "add to watchlist" it will be respected Template:;-) HTH HAND Phil | Talk 10:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Just clicking that wont cause any problems. Martin 15:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Startling drop-out when attempting to cut/paste

I think I just discovered that the editing box doesn't use the standard "Ctrl-X = cut" shortcut: I tried "cutting" out some text to move it down a line and AWB dropped out. What was really disturbing is the fade effect you seem to have applied: for a significant number of seconds it gave the impression that this machine had blown several fuses. Maybe you could put something into those "Options" you left blank, and inhibiting the fade-out could be the first… So what is permissible for editing in that box? —Phil | Talk 11:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll change quit to cntr-q instead, like I said I never use the keyboard shortcuts so I didnt know it was cut as well. thanks Martin 15:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Urgent correction need to bug in auto-fix

The auto-fix of section headings has a bug. See what it did in the following edit . Bobblewik 14:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

That's odd anyway: I wasn't aware that you didn't need an actual newline after a section heading. Looks like AWB is cleaning out the "extraneous" white-space after the "="s but failing to replace it with a newline. Maybe it should always stick a newline in?—Phil | Talk 14:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Erm, I am not responsible for cleaning up after you, go and fix it. The way that page was done is dumb anyway, there is no point in me fixing that problem, as it is extremely rare, and you are actually supposed to check what your saving. Martin 15:21, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

OK. I did not know that it was extremely rare. Now I see that the article originally had a single space character instead of a new line. It seems that Misplaced Pages accepts either a single space character or a newline as an 'end of section heading'. So a possible solution would be to add a single space character. That would be unnecessary in almost all cases. If, as you say, the problem is rarely encountered, then that is ok by me.

Another issue of page blanking cropped up. Any thoughts on what happened? See the diff: . Bobblewik 18:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

No never seen that before. You really should check your changes. Martin 18:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It happened again. See . Are you still inviting feedback on such matters? I know that it is caveat emptor. Regards Bobblewik 00:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I imagine its probably more to do with the wiki server side of things than the program, not that i couldnt do something to avoid it, unfortunately it is impossible to replicate the problem, I'll get around to making it re-load or skip the page if it thinks its blank. But you really should check what you are saving! Martin 00:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Hence my request for a preview option. This is especially important when manual changes are added in the edit box. It would also be helpful to be able to see if someone has been messing with the templates you might be using (grrr!) whilst you're in the middle of using them (GRRRRR!) —Phil | Talk 09:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Bobblewik, if it's happening only to you, maybe you should stop using AutoWikiBrowser until you sort out the problem. :-) -- Mpt 13:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, Ive added security to both potential sides of the problem, available in next release. thanks Martin 01:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Racing to the download link right now Template:;-) Phil | Talk 09:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Affecting other applications

AWB seems to be affecting other applications when it's working. If I send it off to fetch a page for processing, and switch to another application during the pause, I seem to be getting an "enter" keystroke being spontaneously generated which is making my other application do stuff. Is this a side-effect of how AWB works? If so, can it be stopped? Please? —Phil | Talk 09:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

yeah I need to work out a better way of calling the save and diff buttons. Martin 15:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't add duplicate entries to list

If you add more entries to the list of articles, AWB should check whether an entry is already there and not add it twice. (As a side-comment, I've had some interesting phenomena when removing items from the list, but I'm unable to reproduce them: removed items staying put, selections becoming multiple, random stuff. I'll let you know if it recurs.) HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)