Last modified: 2009-11-19 20:23:54 UTC
Using elinks or other text browser such as links or lynx to access mediawiki's install script doesn't work very well: try for example, choosing the psotgresql database type, and you see that the superuser form entry does not change from "root" to "postgres" like it does with a gui browser.
Is everybody sure config/index.php should use javascript in the first place? One might have javascript turned off when administrating web sites, especially on forms like this that ask for root passwords. And if there were no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:HiddenStructure like tricks, no "guts (non relevant database questions) would spill out" when stylesheets are disabled. (But maybe that would need another form submit...) P.S. there are two require_once( "$IP/install-utils.inc" ); two install_version_checks(); and maybe not all of the several error_reporting( E_ALL ); need to be repeated. Also in the produced LocalSettings.php should add a comment about what $wgSecretKey is all about, and what tampering with it will cause. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgSecretKey doesn't even say the consequences of tampering with it.
There's nothing wrong about allowing JavaScript as long as pages degrade gracefully for browsers without JS. The installer does its job without JS, though of course you will be unable to gain advantage of all those niceties JS provides.