Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Editing/Autocomplete summaries in VisualEditor

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Autocomplete summaries in VisualEditor

  • Problem: In Wikitext editor the summary field automatically drops down an autocomplete suggestion field with possibilities already used in a history. But in VE there is no such autocomplete option.
  • Who would benefit: Every VE user (and NWE in the future as well)
  • Proposed solution: Add some dropdown under or over VE summary field with some autocomplete suggested values
  • More comments:

Discussion

  • @Dvorapa: This is an interesting suggestion! Can you elaborate, a bit? Where would you envision these autocomplete suggestions come from? You mention 'history' -- is that where we'd pick them up, from the user's recently used summary text? Or from the recently used summaries for the x amount of revisions in the specific article? Also, I don't see a drop-down for the edit summary in the wikitext editor; is that a gadget, or am I looking at the wrong place? Mooeypoo (talk) 01:02, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    In wikitext editor the summary field autocompletion is a feature of every browser. It can autocomplete from any summary used in the browser ever. In VE this feature is completely missing. For us who are really used to use it, this is really a blocker not to use VE (or NWE in the future). --Dvorapa (talk) 06:46, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    The one is a single line field, and browsers keep automatically keep history for that. VE uses a textarea, for which the browsers don't keep history and for which support for autocomplete and autofill is also quite shaky. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 09:31, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Since browser support can be spotty, I'd recommend that this be a server-side feature (recent summaries from x amount of revisions by that particular editor). --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE
    ) 16:25, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    The browser support is not good, I know. But there already are some simple hacks online, like the one using contenteditable field. Or the one breaking input filed into multiple lines. But the server-side option would do as well. --Dvorapa (talk) 14:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, okay, thank you, I wasn't sure if this was a gadget that uses some specific guesses or not. As was mentioned, the difference is likely textarea vs input; browsers give you an autofill for "simliar" fields you've used for inputs, not for textareas. We could do something here, though, even as a gadget or extension to VE (or generally,actually) to display some suggested values to prefill into that box. The question of where those values will be taken from will have to be answered, but we can discuss and hash that out, as long as you don't expect this to be some smart(sy?) Artificial Intelligent machine ;) MSchottlender-WMF (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I just miss the original 2010 wikitext editor behavior. I can just type first one-two letters, press Arrow-down and finally Enter. Routine edit saved with reused summary within 4 keys pressed. In VE I always have to write the whole thing, then press Shift+Enter, not such fast job here. --Dvorapa (talk) 21:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that the AI version is phab:T54859. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the idea. Gryllida 22:18, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I really miss this in WTE2017 whenever I get dropped into one of the old interfaces. --Izno (talk) 03:44, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would appreciate such a possibility too. --Peter Gröbner (talk) 08:59, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a Wiktionarian, I would like to have this working, and it can be with some buttons to click to indicate if it was about a definition change, etymology change, addition of a picture, addition of an example, addition of a synonym, etc. It could be very useful Noé (talk) 10:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Noé: There already is an existing gadget that adds buttons/dropdowns with pre-defined/adjustable summaries to click - on cswiki, enwiki, huwiki and skwiki I think. But the purpose of this wish is an autocomplete field (summaries already used in history). --Dvorapa (talk) 14:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I've ported and improved the huwiki gadget to cswiki, therefore I have some experiences with these if you would be interested. --Dvorapa (talk) 14:30, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree remembering the history is quite useful. On the other hand, the browser default feature never worked well with section edits so even if a Javascript-simulated dropdown is probably not going to be as clever in some aspects, it will be a fair tradeoff IMO. --Tgr (talk) 22:37, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Voting