Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Multimedia and Commons/Ease the creation of diagrams

Random proposal ►◄ Multimedia and Commons The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Ease the creation of diagrams

Problem: Create a diagram in Wikipedia is tedious. You have to basically create an SVG file. It makes updates on the diagrams difficult. SVG code is quite verbose.
Proposed solution: Use a high-level language for describing diagrams. For instance PGF/TikZ which is the somehow main stream solution for making figures/diagrams in a LaTEX document.
Who would benefit: Any contributor that wants to create/update a diagram/picture for a Wikipedia article.
More comments: Supporting PGF/TikZ language would be in some sense in the same spirit that the already existing support of Lilypond language (for music notation). The benefit of PGF/TikZ over other diagram languages is that it also offers support for LaTEX formulas directly. Of course, we should discuss the choice of the supported language. We could also offer the possibility to describe a diagram in many languages (PGF/TikZ, graphviz, etc.). In case this wish is selected, I would be glad to participate to development.
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: Fschwarzentruber (talk) 18:37, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

There's already a graph extension that uses Vega syntax for a variety of interactive charts and graphs. Is this not enough? Alhadis (talk)
- Thank you for your remark. No, by diagrams, I mean a picture like these ones: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagramme#/media/Fichier:CPT-Databases-ExampleLinkTables.svg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ModelChecking.svg --Fschwarzentruber (talk) 20:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One of the argument against is: 'a feature would add undue complexity to MediaWiki'. I am not sure to completely understand the point. The complexity will be the same than for the extensions for music (Lilypond) and for formulas (LaTEX). --Fschwarzentruber (talk) 20:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See also Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Editing/Extend formula handling to cope with actuarial notation for a similar specialised TeX editor. ~ Seb35 [^_^] 13:40, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is also mw:Extension:Diagrams which I think is more applicable to this request than the other graph extension mentioned above, though it is in beta. TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support I'm not a programmer so I cannot comment on that, but what I do know is that diagrams are as you say. There are loads of articles that would benefit from those and but I never add them because it is so time consuming. Magnoliasouth (talk) 22:19, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support that would be great Boehm (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Anyone should be able to generate a diagram with a simple table, like in Microsoft Excel. Skimel (talk) 00:06, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support PlantUML can be a good option too. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 00:16, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support EijiroSaito (talk) 00:57, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support --NGC 54 (talk｜contribs) 01:48, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support * Pppery * _{it has begun} 03:55, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support EpicPupper (talk) 05:21, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Doktor Züm (talk) 09:27, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ecritures (talk) 11:12, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support דליק כלבלב (talk) 11:16, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support MoreInput (talk) 13:00, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support OwenBlacker (Talk) 15:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support FinixFighter (talk) 15:41, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Radio-Somewhere (talk) 16:55, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Litev (talk) 17:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There's already a graph extension which produces beautiful, interactive graphs and charts, and it uses Wikitext's familiar template syntax. Introducing another language or format just for generating diagrams is going to intimidate users unfamiliar with the technology, and those who *are* familiar likely already have ways to generate diagrams themselves. Moreover, such a feature would add undue complexity to MediaWiki, especially if it involves large, hairy dependencies like TeX. Definitely something we could do without. Alhadis (talk) 21:23, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support There should be easier ways to create diagrams / chart (like the storm / line chart / bar). Thingofme (talk) 03:35, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Betseg (talk) 04:10, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Libcub (talk) 06:07, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Instead, improve the usability of the already mentioned graph extension particularly in the Visual Editor, providing tabular editing support for the target group like in the proposal to Create an easy-to-use editing interface for JSON tabular data. HLFan (talk) 08:33, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support HighVoltage 5576 (talk) 17:05, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Leo067 (talk) 08:42, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per HLFan. The already available graph extension is quite powerful and editing data in Visual Editor is pretty easy. Couldn't we improve it instead, especially including more graph types to be editable in the Visual Editor? Lion-hearted85 (talk) 11:49, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Quiddity (talk) 21:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Laurent Meesseman (talk) 14:56, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tbartovic (talk) 20:27, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support cyrfaw (talk) 12:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support IagoQnsi (talk) 02:12, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support schurdl (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hans5958 (talk) 05:32, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 11:30, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Ferien (talk) 18:36, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support ~ Seb35 [^_^] 16:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Fcastillo (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Althair (talk) 04:12, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Tchoř (talk) 10:42, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wargo (talk) 23:15, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. —— Eric Liu_（Talk） 03:36, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]