Wikipedia:Software updates

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

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.