Jiabao wu

GSoC / OPW IRC AllHands this week

Hi, you are invited to the GSoC / OPW IRC AllHands meeting on Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 15:00 UTC (8:30pm IST, 8am PDT). We have done our best finding a time that works decently in as many timezones as possibles. Please confirm at qgilwikimedia.org so I can add you to the calendar invitation and I have your preferred email for other occasions. If you can't make it's fine, but let me know as well. Thank you!--Qgil (talk) 18:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Future of mathematics editing

Hello. I'm en:User:Spectral sequence and your name here was given out by en:User:Whatamidoing (WMF) at en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Mathematics_in_VE as being involved in developing the mathematics interface. I thought I would take the opportunity to make some suggestions: here's a compendium of some remarks I've made in other places over the past few days ...

• It would be interesting to know what the developers plans are for the VE mathematics interface, and I'm sure you'll find there's a lot of useful experience and expertise in the mathematics community available for you to tap into if you would share your thinking with us as early as possible.
• I was able to add a formula successfully using the Σ icon but when I went back to the page to edit it again, VE just hangs: with Chrome 27.0.1453.110 and also with Version 26.0.1410.57 and Version 28.0.1500.95.
• LaTeX box is very unforgiving of mistakes: hard to see how to respond to a markup error.
• I certainly support the decision to use LaTeX markup: I had feared that VE was going to try to use a point-and-click interface for mathematics like MS Word, which would have been a huge step backwards. LaTeX markup will be completely familiar to anyone seriously writing mathematics, and the LaTeX engine is far more sophisticated on mathematics layour than anything else. There remain issues over the way LaTeX (or any other form of mathematics) is rendered in browsers, though.
• There is also the issue of whether you want the point-and-click interface to emit LaTeX markup, as $2+2=4$ or wiki markup, as 2+2 = 4, or mixed wiki and HTML as 2+2 = 4. If you mix them up, they look different, and that difference looks odd, as you'll see in this very post.
• Something I wasn't able to test was whether and how VE would handle inline equations and displayed equations.
• Questions of (1) whether VE could or should support point-and-click mathematics (for which you make a case) (2) whether VE should allow access to underlying LaTeX markup (which is presumably planned and which I strongly support) (3) whether access to underlying markup should continue via Edit Source (which has been stated by Jimbo Wales) (4) whether point-and-click interface should translate into LaTeX, Wiki or Wiki+HTML as underlying markup (I support LaTeX) (5) whether underlying mathematical markup should indeed be LaTeX or anything else (I maintain anything else would be very very sub-optimal).

Looking forward to a productive discussion. Spectral sequence (talk) 20:07, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Reply:

Hi, "Spectral sequence", I am Jiabao, glad you are interested in the math project work and give many suggestions.

• I think that's really a good point that some users probably prefer to directly type in LaTeX code instead of using a MS Word like interface. I haven't thought about before. One solution I am thinking now is to offer both choices in VE. I have put the design in my project interface discussion page. Please have a look to see if you like it. =D I will also send an email to my mentors and VE team soon for more community based suggestions.
• For the problem of mixing wiki and HTML text, I think it will be that the user chooses to add a math node, then it will all be LaTeX markup; if they choose to type in directly (i.e. instead of in a math node) then it will be wiki text.
• Thank you for the testing and bug tracking. The math ui is just start, we will work on those problems. About the multiline, we've already started to fix it.

Very welcome to further suggestions. And please check the project interface discussion page and feel free to add stuff there. =D --Jiabao Wu (talk) 01:05, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi its good that your working on maths for VE. I agree with Spectral sequence that being able to edit the latex code is a must. All mathematical editors had had to learn the syntax and not being able to enter this is a major barrier to using VE at the moment. Your demo at VisualEditor:TestMath is nice but current it hangs when trying to edit (chrome on a mac). Also the space to input the latex needs to be bigger, I added some more complex formula at the bottom and there needs to be enough space to see the whole formula.--Salix alba (talk) 17:56, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Wrapping up GSoC

Congratulations for your PASS! Now please wrap up your GSoC project properly:

• Update the related Bugzilla report(s) accordingly, filing reports for known bugs when appropriate.
• Publish your wrap up post at wikitech-l (as en email or a blog post) and then add the URL to Mentorship_programs/status#2013-09-monthly.

Take a break and celebrate. You deserve it! We hope to see you sticking around, extending your project or joining new tasks. If you need advice please check with your mentors or myself. I will be happy to help you in whatever I can!--Qgil (talk) 21:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Google Code-In task and mentorship

Hi Jiabao, I saw that you added "Create a VisualEditor plugin tool to add/edit maths blocks" to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in#Code - would you also be able to mentor this task? If so, could you please register on http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013 ? (More information for mentors can be found on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-In#Mentors.27_corner .) Also, what exactly would a student work on, as you wrote "there is still a lot that can be improved"? I'm asking for clarification because both mentor and student should have clear expectations how much work and which skills are needed. Could you please clarify on the GCI wikipage? Thanks a lot in advance!