CoLab Plug-in

MPDL

 The discussion and the migration information are out of date!

The following list of extensions are currently under discussion for this wikimedia installation. The page Special:Version provides an overview on installed extensions, a complete list of configuration settings is available in the mediawiki documentation.

Please use this page to comment the plug-ins or gather first experiences on the Plug-In Test page. Don't forget to sign your comments with 4 tildes ( ~ ) at the end. This will automatically include your user name and date!

=Notes on Migration of existing Colab Extensions during 1.20.3 Upgrade=

--Bourke 15:19, 30 April 2013 (CEST)

New proposals, not prioritized
Use this section to suggest new extensions to the mediawiki installation.

mvs - a command line MediaWiki client
This is a command line client for a simple offline editing of MediaWiki pages. --Tanja 08:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Special Page for Citing Recommendations: Special:Cite
This is a custom Special Page that is in use at Wikipedia. It offers recommendations for citing an article from Wikipedia. The page is linked from the toolbox ("Cite this page"). After clicking this link the user receives the bibliographic information and recommended citing styles for whatever article he or she was reading. To give our users a similar recommendation for citing CoLab articles we could adopt this Special Page, which is no standard Special Page of MediaWiki (like Special:Recentchanges or Special:Categories.) and therefore needs to be configured by us. The Special:Cite can be seen in action at the English Wikipedia here. The German Wikipedia features other citing formats that might be more suiting for us.--Tanja 13:32, 24 April 2008 (CEST)

Navigation Plug-in
It would be useful to have this Plug-in. Inga and I had this idea, that it might be useful to re-structure the functional specification on CoLab. We could e.g. have one page per UC, use the discussion page for QA and link through this template to the other UCs of the specification. Here (at the buttom of the page) you can see this template in action.

RSS Feeds on Wiki Pages
More or less the opposite of the "RSS Feeds for Articles" extension. Would be nice to arrange the newest posts of all MPDL related blogs on one wiki page. For example http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RSS or http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFeed_-_RSS_Feed_Aggregator. Both seem to be stable. --Tanja 14:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

GeSHi
My suggestion is to add the GeSHi ("Generic Syntax Highlighter") plugin to the Colab Wiki. --Johannes 11:01, 19 December 2007 (CET)
 * You can see GeSHi in action here.
 * Homepage: http://qbnz.com/highlighter/index.php
 * Syntax highlighting environments can be defined as follows:

actionscript, ada, apache, applescript, asm, asp, autoit, bash, blitzbasic, bnf, c, c_mac, caddcl, cadlisp, cfdg, cfm, cpp, cpp-qt, csharp, css, d, delphi, diff, div, dos, eiffel, fortran, freebasic, gml, groovy, html4strict, idl, ini, inno, io, java, java5, javascript, latex, lisp, lua, matlab, mirc, mpasm, mysql, nsis, objc, ocaml, ocaml-brief, oobas, oracle8, pascal, perl, php, php-brief, plsql, python, qbasic, rails, reg, robots, ruby, sas, scheme, sdlbasic, smalltalk, smarty, sql, tcl, text, thinbasic, tsql, vb, vbnet, vhdl, visualfoxpro, winbatch, xml, xpp, z80
 * Supported styles for syntax highlighting:


 * PlugIn is already in the queue, see status below --Inga 15:25, 19 February 2008 (CET)

= Prioritized proposals =

Following extensions should be installed or are already installed, but require some further work (e.g. need additional configuration or need to be further discussed)

Glossary
Might be useful if colab-page contains many words which needs to be explained (suggested by Malte, November 15th, 2007)
 * Status: installed and buggy
 * To Do: check if working, add patch for alternative syntax (shown on the discussion page of the extension)
 * installed and AFAIK working - :-) WikiSysop 09:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The mouse over is working, but we have problems if we want to sort our glossary alphabetically. This is because abbreviation strings that are also part of other abbreviations always have to be listed below the longer abbreviation. In our case we have the abbreviation HTTPS which we have to list above the abbreviation HTTP. If we sort it the other way around, the system will always recognize HTTP and display the HTTP-definition, no matter if there is a following "S" in the same string or not. --Tanja 09:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Running the Glossary may be the source of speed problems that we recently had. So I reset the glossary page to an early version with only a few entries. Now the system is working faster again, but this still might be a coincidence. In case this assumption proves to be right, we should check if we can replace our glossary with the Terminology extension. --Tanja 13:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Group based Access Control
This add-on enables editors of an article to restrict the access to a group of users defined on a special page. By example, the article Faces Normstudy can only be accessed by users belonging to one of the groups "MPDL", "Faces" or "FIZ". This is done by adding the tag &lt;accesscontrol&gt;MPDL,,Faces,,FIZ,,&lt;/accesscontrol&gt; to the top of the page.

Discussion on this plug-in is availabe at Talk:CoLab_Usergroups.--Tanja 14:42, 22 April 2008 (CEST)


 * Status: installed
 * Questions:
 * Is there any possibility to get an overview about existing user groups, e.g. a special page listing all groups defined? I know, you can search for the term usergroup, but this would become more complicated if an article with the name "usergroup" exists. - Inga 12:05, 12 July 2007 (CEST)
 * Comments:
 * Vlad: Please, put &lt;accesscontrol&gt;...&lt;/accesscontrol&gt; in the first line of article, it will not work otherwise
 * not convinced - According to the documentation, only sysops can view the special "Usergroup:.." pages. As an article editor, I would like to have a possibility to check the list of persons belonging to a user group before deciding on access restriction. - Inga 12:17, 12 July 2007 (CEST)
 * Could PageSecurity be an alternative? --62.180.172.6 02:57, 12 September 2007 (CEST)
 * Another inconvenience is that not-logged-in users are redirected to the page No Access. After login, the user needs to selected the requested page again. --Inga 12:35, 7 December 2007 (CET)
 * To Do:
 * Which User groups exist and who is part of should be visible to everyone (priority - high)
 * It would be perfect if its also possible to edit the user group pages to enter special information (e.g. contact person) (priority - high)
 * Would be nice to mark restricted pages with symbol (priority - low)
 * Outcome so far:
 * Edit of usergroup-pages for members of the group not implemented in plugin - may be I can code it myself given enough time to do it properly Bartosch 15:27, 19 October 2007 (CEST)

Group Based Access Control for Files (Image Authorisation)
The Image Authorisation provides a possibility to restrict access to uploaded images (files) in dependence on the Group Based Access Control for articles that we have in use. Recently different people expressed their need for such a restriction possibility. Of course the problem of "never a 100% security" stays the same with this extension. Nevertheless we should try this one because of popular demand. --Tanja 11:28, 7 May 2008 (CEST)

Source
Formatting software/markup code on wiki pages. Could be quite nice for displaying xml snippets as done in the TEI documents --Inga 16:23, 19 October 2007 (CEST)


 * Status: installed, but buggy
 * Comments:
 * I've installed the Generic SyntaxHighlight Plugin, so the source-tag should be working. Bartosch 14:14, 26 October 2007 (CEST)
 * Still buggy... I will research further. Bartosch 14:52, 26 October 2007 (CEST), e.g. try to insert

RSS Feeds for Articles
Provide RSS feeds for changes done for a specific, a selected set of or all articles available in the MediaWiki installation.


 * Status: available, but not for all pages and all readers
 * Comments:
 * Nice to have. Was a suggestion by a member of the PubMan Early Adopter group. --Nicole 21:50, 30 November 2007 (CET)
 * Dears, I just recognized that we already have this functionality. Stumbling across it yesterday at first I could't believe it and today I couldn't retrieve it and already accepted that I must've dreamed it... But it is reality! To get the feed of an article, you have to visit the history-page of the article (history-tab on top of every page) and in the toolbox on the left hand side (sidebar) two links will be offered - one for atom and one for rss feed. Alternatively you can use the icon in the address bar of your browser. Unfortunately there seems to be some xml damage that needs to be fixed, before we can feed it up. --Tanja 15:52, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The feed seems to be working for Google Reader and yahoo pipes but not with Wizz RSS (Mozilla Firefox). Since the feed for Recentchanges was working with Wizz RSS before our update to MediaWiki 1.12 there seems to be some relation. Maybe we can fix this? --Tanja 16:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem seems to be caused by an unexpected line break on the first line of the RSS xml file. I was able to open the file in Firefox after removing the line break manually --Inga 17:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * RSS feed would also be a nice feature for the "watchlist", but this seems to be tricky because the individual watchlist is only available to a logged-in user --Inga 18:00, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Some ideas for this at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Syndication_feeds#Watchlist_feeds --Tanja 07:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Alternative for Category Select

 * Status: not started
 * To Do: Check for alternatives which show all existing categories in the editing modus and don't delete automatically already chosen categories for an article

Table Edit
The creation of tables via wiki syntax looks confusing. The TableEdit plug-in provides a more friendly way to edit simple tables in mediawiki, see #Testing_Table_Edit|test page. Use  to add a new table
 * Status: installed
 * Comments:
 * Natasa The TableEdit Toolbar is not displayed, 17.06.2007
 * install - We should load the pretty table template in addition, until today borders are missing - Inga 17:45, 28 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Vlad: The TableEdit0.5 is installed. Fixed bug in code: it was not possible to create a new table. 2.07.07


 * To Do:
 * Revise css to add table borders (priority - middle)
 * Currently, the edit table plug in can only be installed on pages without access control. This should be possible for all pages. (priority - low)
 * Workaround: Add the table tag before restricting the page
 * Sorting does not work to 100% (priority - middle)

Wikiwyg
This extension provides a formatting toolbar on each wiki edit page.
 * Status: installed, doesn't work properly
 * Comments:
 * neutral - works only with selected browsers (not NS 7 Mac) and the edit bar in the english wikipedia provides much more options - Inga 21:03, 13 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Scheint unstabil, wahrscheinlich brauchen wir ein anderes Plug In --Kristina 11:04, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
 * To Do: Check installation (priority - middle)

BreadCrumbs
An extension to display and link up to five pages visited before, see http://wiki.ljackson.us/MediaWiki_BreadCrumbs
 * Status: not started
 * Comments:
 * neutral: I do not need it, but it's also not bothering me - Inga 14:55, 29 June 2007 (CEST)
 * To Do: Install. (priority - low)

Contact Page

 * Status: installed
 * To Do: Not required. Should be deinstalled.

PDFlink

 * Status: not started
 * Nice to have. Displays a PDF icon for uploaded PDFs. --Nicole 15:01, 16 November 2007 (CET)

= Postponed proposals =

The installation of following extensions has been postponed, they may become relevant at a later stage...

Confirm Edit
Adding captcha functionality to mediawiki. Just in case the spam bots hit ...

Status: postponed until we notice spam attacks --Inga 10:56, 4 September 2007 (CEST)

Hierarchy
This plug-in can be used to create sequential and hierarchical structures on article pages. An example can be found on the test page.
 * Status: installed, but usage postponed. Navigational templates may by an alternative
 * Comments:
 * neutral - I'm not sure on how many organizing possibilities we would like to offer in parallel. While testing, I ran into some problems and produced a few white pages. The categories handling seem to be more stable - Inga 17:25, 28 June 2007 (CEST)
 * install - Its a better way to organize hierarchical structures then with categories, although it seams a bit difficult to implement - Kristina 14:22, 2 July 2007 (CEST)

| PDFGenerator
A project at sourceforge found on Wiki Books. Not necessary now but might be of use later, when content gets more detailed and mature. -- Rkiefl 22:04, 25 July 2007 (CEST)
 * Postponed --Inga 10:56, 4 September 2007 (CEST)

An alternative might be: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Pdf_Book --Tanja 15:38, 29 April 2008 (CEST)

Category Select
shows an "select categories" box on each wiki edit page
 * Status: deinstalled
 * Comments:
 * de-install - not my favorite! The plug-in prevents the wiki software to display the actual wiki code in the edit view. Therefore, the creation of "new" categories is quite cumbersome because you don't see the code required - Inga 21:05, 13 June 2007 (CEST)
 * To Do: Let's check if we can use the SelectCategoryTagCloud instead. --Tanja 07:46, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

= Installed =

This list includes those plug-ins we are very happy with.

Tag Cloud
Displays a tag cloud for the categories in use, the size of the tag is determined by the number of articles on that category. Example:


 * Status: installed
 * Comments:
 * install: it's a nice feature, and does not cost anything - Inga 14:27, 29 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Bugs:
 * Problem with excluding selected categories from the cloud. According to the documentation of this plug-in this can be done by adding the parameter "exclude". When I tried to exclude the category "Main Topics" with this parameter, I produced a Database Error: A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ') NOT IN ('main_topics') GROUP BY cl_to HAVING count >= 3 ORDER BY cl_to ASC' at line 1 (localhost)". Can we solve this? --Tanja 14:58, 17 April 2008 (CEST)
 * Problem solved. After updating CoLab to MediaWiki 1.12 the parameter "exclude" is working. --Tanja 09:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Problem with CamelCase article title. The cloud refers to "escidoc" as a tag because various pages use the category "ESciDoc". By clicking on it, the user is forwarded to the page Category:Escidoc which is empty, because Category:ESciDoc is the one in use - Inga 16:15, 28 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Patch available, see http://orangedino.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1 - Malte 18:36, 28 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Bug resolved by Vlad - Malte 14:10, 29 June 2007 (CEST)


 * Check if event tags can be hidden in tag cloud (priority - middle)
 * Problem solved: according to the documentation of this plug-in, the cloud can exclude all categories that have less than a defined number of articles (with the parameter "min_count"). Seems to work well for us.

Calendar
Please use following categories to add event pages to the calender: "Events" and "YYYY/MM/DD". Please check the article about the Calendar feature for more details.


 * Status: installed
 * Comments:
 * Shall be kept -- Kristina 11:18, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
 * To do: see Talk:Calendar

Cite
Extension for handling references, e.g. for automatic generation of reference lists and footnotes as well as COinS support, see the Wikipedia article on "Sickle-cell disease" for an example
 * Status: installed
 * Comments:
 * install - As an librarian, I love it... and it already could be of very good use in Service_Oriented_Architecture --Inga 14:00, 19 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Plug-in is installed, not clear how to use it together with Wikipedia:Citation templates --Vlad 15:16, 02.07.07


 * To Do: Make citation templates and all other templates work. (priority - high)
 * Problem: The dynamic parts stored in the templates (e.g. #ifeq:... ) are not interpreted. Please check for http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:ParserFunctions --Inga 15:53, 8 October 2007 (CEST)


 * Solved: I have installed the missing ParserFunctions (extension:Character_Escapes & extension:Control Structure Functions) now most of the dynamic expressions should work (there is may be a little problem remaining with #expr, #time, and #rel2abs). --Lars 12:35, 9 October 2007 (CEST)

Category Tree

 * Status: installed, see Special:CategoryTree as entry page. The plugin also provides the nice "browse up/down" options on each Category page with subcategories, see Category:ArticleContent
 * Comments:
 * install - First I thought that the category tree is very uncomfortable to use, but meanwhile I noticed that the functionality is also available via the "default" category display. Therefore I changed my vote to "install" - Inga 21:26, 13 June 2007 (CEST)

FreeMind
Displays mindmaps generated with FreeMind, see
 * Status: installed
 * Comments:
 * neutral - not required by myself, but might be helpful - Inga 21:05, 13 June 2007 (CEST)

Image/File upload
A list of uploaded files/images is available under Special:Imagelist, images can be displayed inline a wiki page by linking to them, e.g. . Please use the Special:Upload to submit further files. Documentation is provided here and here.
 * Status: installed. doc and pdf upload files are added, upload limit is 10M now - Vlad, 2.07.2007
 * Comments:
 * neutral - upload works fine, but we might consider some policies before opening file upload to the public - Inga 11:53, 19 June 2007 (CEST)
 * Bugs:
 * Could not upload an image - Natasa, 17.06.2007
 * Solved by Vlad


 * To do: Extend list of file formats, adapt file size to 20 (priority - high)
 * extension list completed with office-types (except *.mdb), Maximum filesize set to 20MB, see Special:Upload Lars on 2007-09-06

Newest Pages
Creates a special page containing all wiki pages newly added.


 * Status: installed, see Special:Newestpages
 * Comments:
 * install - I like it! The page is much more comprehensive than Special:Newpages - Inga 21:03, 13 June 2007 (CEST)

= Not- or De-Installed =

This list includes those plug-ins which we considered, but decided not to install.

Who is online
"shows the number of guests and the number of registered users online". After installation of the plug-in, the tag &lt;whosonline&gt;&lt;/whosonline&gt; should be replaced by a list of logged in users. From the plugin's homepage: "The time period is presently set to 3600 seconds (1 hour), thus it will show how many unique users have accessed the site within the last hour." Is this what we want?
 * Status: not installed
 * Comments:
 * install - would be one of my preferred ones... - Uat 20:31, 25 June 2007 (CEST)
 * neutral - i do not see many use cases in which i would like to check who was "online" within the last hour - Inga 11:53, 12 July 2007 (CEST)
 * To Do: Should be deinstalled (priority - low)