Last modified: 2014-05-09 20:50:51 UTC
"Esperanto magical conversion" is a feature that automatically converts some character combinations, such as cx, jx and a few others to Esperanto letters such as ĉ and ĵ. This feature was useful in the first years of Wikipedia when there were no smart and generic typing solutions, but by 2014 the input method functionality in the Universal Language Selector can do the same in a way that is more robust technically and more flexible to the user as well. I already brought up the topic of replacing the magical conversion with ULS in conversations with several Esperanto Wikipedia editors, and there seemed to be general agreement to the step. What is needed currently: 1. More formal agreement of Esperanto wiki communities to doing this. Discussion pages in eo.wiki* projects should probably be used for that. The discussions can be held in Esperanto - Brion and I can read it. 2. A technical approval from somebody who is familiar with the feature. For example, is it OK to just disable it, or should some conversion run on the the current data? There may also be other technical points that I am not thinking of now. 3. ULS must be re-enabled by default, at least on these wikis. 4. The community members should choose what should be the default keyboard layout. We have "h-f", "h", "plena", "q", "transliteration", "vi" and "x". If I'm not mistaken, the "x" system is the closest to the current "magical conversion", but the communities may prefer something different. (The will be able to choose another system, or to disable it altogether.) Please add any other notes that I forgot. (Related: Bug 21781.)
There won't be any conversion required; the way the old system worked was to convert on-the-fly when shipping data out to be edited, and convert it back when saving, so the database contains "regular" data with the real characters. Disabling it should be a simple matter of removing languages/classes/LanguageEo.php -- there's nothing left in it other than the old conversion support, so with that removed it should fall back to standard behavior. But yeah, need to confirm that ULS will be back on and either a conversion enabled by default or make sure people are comfortable turning it on manually.
I also just want to say how excited I am that one of my earlier MediaWiki features is being replaced with a better, more modern system. :D Yay!
(In reply to comment #0) > 4. The community members should choose what should be the default keyboard > layout. We have "h-f", "h", "plena", "q", "transliteration", "vi" and "x". If > I'm not mistaken, the "x" system is the closest to the current "magical > conversion", but the communities may prefer something different. (The will be > able to choose another system, or to disable it altogether.) I meant to write "The ^user^ will be able to choose another system, or to disable it altogether."
(In reply to comment #2) > I also just want to say how excited I am that one of my earlier MediaWiki > features is being replaced with a better, more modern system. :D Yay! Brion, thank you for the compliment, and for the technical clarifications!
Change 110589 had a related patch set uploaded by Brion VIBBER: Remove old Esperanto character conversion support https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/110589
What about editors who disable JavaScript? Does the ULS extension convert server-side?
