How can we make the Visual Editor as efficient as, or more so than,
wikitext editing when it comes to handling complex tasks like
citations, templates, etc.? I know it's a bit early to talk about
detailed aspects of the editing surface, but this may have some impact
on architectural considerations for plug-ins and such, so I wanted to
raise it on this list.

I don't think it's that much of a stretch goal to be more efficient
than wikitext editing for a lot of common cases. For example, using
complex templates manually is extremely inefficient, usually requiring
a visit to a Template: namespace to read the template documentation,
then apply the correct syntax and hope you're not making a typo in the
process.

A few models:

* Wikia's current-generation visual editor offers panels with access
to templates and categories, autocompleting as you type. If our goal
is to create an editing surface that focuses on the content and gets
out of the way (and IMO it should be), these types of panels add
clutter which is likely unacceptable.

* Most RTE editing surfaces have toolbars, and some also add desktop
application style pulldowns. The pulldown/toolbar combination has many
known usability issues as software complexity increases -- they become
cluttered, and keyboard shortcuts for anything but the stuff you use
all the time become hard to remember.

* Code IDEs use a lot of hinting/autocompletion based on intelligence
gathered from parsing the file you're editing, or any other files.
This works well when what gets rendered in the editing surface is
identical to what the user is typing. It's easy to auto-complete
"myObject.getSomeStuff()", but it's less discoverable that I should
start typing "{{Infobox country" to get a beautiful right-aligned
table.

* vi is the best example of a powerful modal editor which can perform
complex operations by essentially entering an in-editor command-line.
It's also well-known to be very difficult to learn and master, in
large part because its UX is so different from other applications
people commonly use.

What other models ought to be/are being considered?

A couple of ideas:

== Inline menus ==

You could have a menu key, say Ctrl+I or, if we want to be more
radical, a single compose key like "\", which triggers an in-editor
menu structure with associated keyboard hints.

E.g. if the user types <menu key>c, they see an overlay expanding at
cursor position:

   w - cite a website
   b - cite a book
   n - cite a newspaper
   j - cite a journal

So by typing: <menu key>cw, I could enter whichever the appropriate
dialog is for citing a website (which itself could be rendered in-line
if that gives us additional efficiency).

This type of system could intelligently trigger auto-completion where
appropriate. Say "y" is the shortcut for category, and I type:

   <menu key>yChurches in <cursor down><cursor down><cursor down><enter/tab>

to insert the category "Churches in the United Kingdom".

Or say "t" is short for template, so I could type:

   <menu key>tInfobox a<cursor down><cursor down><enter/tab>

to insert the template "Infobox album" and invoke the appropriate dialog.

One could make such a feature discoverable by adding hints to the UI
in appropriate places, e.g. if the most obvious invocation method is
through a tabbed dialog, each dialog could have a small hint
indicating how to quickly invoke it inline.

== Inline markup completion in visual mode ==

Another option would be to just intelligently detect use of existing
markup, e.g. to magically complete "[[Category:Churches in" or "{{Cite
web" or "{{Infobox co" even when in visual mode. This is beneficial
for people who already know wiki markup, but is arguably less
efficient/user-friendly than a menu/command structure that's designed
from scratch to be maximally efficient, discoverable and intuitive. It
also would tie us permanently to wiki markup.

What do you think? How can we make the visual editing surface
maximally efficient for frequent use?

All best,
Erik

--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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