Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 9

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%%key%% in Add New Category

I noticed this feature in the latest version and wanted to comment on it. I edit primarily ship articles, and a feature like this would be extremely useful for me. Is there a way to configure it to do things other than reversing names? If it's not configurable I'd like to suggest that in future versions, it recognize and format common ship article names.

For example, HMS Quadrant (G11) should be categorized as |Quadrant (G11) and USS Enterprise (CVN-65) should be categorized as |Enterprise (CVN-65). For countries other than the US and UK, ship articles generally have titles like this: French battleship Dunkerque. In those cases, they should be categorized as |Dunkerque, French battleship or simply |Dunkerque.

I imagine the latter would be harder to implement, but if a future version of AWB could format HMS and USS in categories, that would be very helpful! TomTheHand 14:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Rules of use

I find myself notifying around a user per week to not use AWB for trivial things. I would suggest that one should make the text at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser#Rules of use a bit more specific when refering to trivial edits. How about:

*Avoid making insignificant minor edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links), or something equally trivial.

(I put my additions in blue for clarity). Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be displayed every time you start AWB =P --mboverload@ 03:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I tried to modify it a while ago. I would like new users to have to make a statement that they agree not to use AWB to just move stub tags. A popup at the start would be great too. It's just retarded, and it's pushing people's edit counts into the 10,000's. Alphachimp ^talk 03:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't explain how annoying this is for me, I work so hard to make the software, then a small number of people just use it for such stupid things. I don't think putting lots of examples of things not to do is a good idea, as it makes it seem like everything else is ok (plus, sometimes just converting html to unicode is ok, when there is a lot of it). When I have warned people not to use it for trivial edits most of them do just change thier behaviour, and on the 2 occasions they haven't I have simply removed their name from the list of users. I was considering a zero tolerance approach, but I thought that might be a bit too tough. Martin 09:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, I was thinking about raising the standard in experience needed to be put on the enabled user list from 500 to 1000 edits. Martin 09:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about the 500-->1000 approach, but I agree something must be done. I think education is the key. I think these users signed up for AWB...and they're not sure what to do with it. I have been thinking of setting up some place, like a job fair, for work that needs AWB. Any user can go there and post their job. An AWB user can select a job, put in Accepted and work at it. I'm not sure how popular this would be, but I like the idea =P. Perhaps then we can implement the 1000 edit thing. Wikipedia needs AWB, and we need to make it easy for people to get work done with it, even if they're not the ones behind the controls. --mboverload@ 10:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that this would be a bit too cumbersone. Decentralization, that is the way things are now, is a good thing.

Having received no objections, I added that blurb in blue to the instructions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree that decentralization is cumbersome, but you've got to realize that people are using AWB like a bot. Like "oooo, let's increase my edit count by moving whitespace on all of Wikipedia." Let's increase the requirement for AWB to 1000 edits, and make them state one (just one) legitimate use they plan (that'd force them to read about AWB, which would force them to read about whitespace moves).

As a side comment, unicoding can actually be very good, particularly in foreign articles. Essjay has approved a couple of AWB assisted bots just for that purpose. Some of the articles were really disastrous to edit. Anyway, those are my $.02. Alphachimp ^talk 16:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, unicodyfing should be done by bots, wherever necessary, not by people doing three edits per second. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:35, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Right. And bots have to go through an approval process. It's not that hard, but it forces them to demonstrate that they're going to be using it for something meaningful. Alphachimp ^talk 16:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think a list tasks needing AWB help is a good idea, I often think of things I need to do but don't have the time, Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Projects would be a great place to list jobs needing help, I will certainly add a few things there over the next days/weeks. Also I made this edit, which will hopefully clarify a few things. Martin 19:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

unhandled exception problem in IRC watcher

I apologize if this has been reported before but clicking on the import watchlist on the IRC watcher app causes an unhandled exception (albeit one that can be ignored) and does not do anything else. Error message only happens when not logged in using IE but a better way for it to be handled would be with a standard error box saying pleae login. The error message is copied below. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 21:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Error message. Select show to expand.

See the end of this message for details on invoking 
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
WikiFunctions.PageDoeNotExistException: Please make sure you are logged into Wikipedia in Internet Explorer so your watch list can be obtained
   at WikiFunctions.GetLists.FromWatchList()
   at IRCMonitor.IRCMonitor.btnImportWatchList_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
IRCMonitor
    Assembly Version: 1.2.0.0
    Win32 Version: 1.2.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/test/My%20Documents/AWB/IRCMonitor.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
WikiFunctions
    Assembly Version: 3.0.1.3
    Win32 Version: 3.0.1.3
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/test/My%20Documents/AWB/WikiFunctions.DLL
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Web
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINNT/assembly/GAC_32/System.Web/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Web.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
    <system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

Ok, thanks for the report. Martin 08:25, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Feature Request

Can we get an option to make find/replace skip wikilinks? It's sort of messing up with people who have unconventionally spelled last names. Alphachimp ^talk 02:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually that was my bad - I removed Grammer before but when I got to adding the "g" section I forgot to remove it again. It's supposed to be 100% accurate, so it shouldn't fix people's names. --mboverload@ 02:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

But still, we should not be replacing any wiki-links. (Unless they are red, I guess). Alphachimp ^talk 02:11, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Memory leak

I know that memory leaks have been raised before, but just thought I should mention that they are still there.

I am in the process of doing a big AWB run to tweak the succession boxes on Category:British MPs, and started watching task-manager as it skipped or ignored lots of pages (it's changing less than one in ten). It's rather alarming watching AWB's memory usage increasing by over 1MB per article; there are still 2700 articles left in its list, so I'll have to restart it several times before it's finished :(

I guess it may be no harm to put a brake on huge AWB runs like this one, but it'd still be nice if the leak could be controlled a bit! --BrownHairedGirl 16:26, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Its not a leak, the IE control is seems to cache all the pages it has visited, and as far as I can see there is no way of controlling it. That said, I have made runs of thousands of edits and memory usage never went above 150 MBs, so I don't exactly know how it is working. Martin 16:43, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Martin. I monitored it for the rest of the run, and what seemed to happen was that it went up to 650MB mem usage, then purged some of its cache or whatever and settled back to about 500MB. When it reached 650 again, it purged again, and so on. Still horrendously greedy, but at least it wasn't growing forever! (I have 1GB of RAM on this PC, so the cacheing thresholds/limits may be related to available memory). --BrownHairedGirl 20:39, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I've had this huge memory consumtion problem before too (>256MB within 2000 pages), would it be feasible to have a routine run to clear this somehow every 500 edits or so? (An automated pause, flush, resume?) נxaosflux ^Talk 23:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The difficulty is that the IE control doesn't seem to have any way to flush it. Martin 23:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

AWB Desks

After googling some bad spellings from WP:RETF using google wikipedia in AWB, i did some edits to some user pages. The user then asked if i could do this for them on all their userpages.

It made me think that an User:Reedy Boy/AWB Desk would be useful - People can request tasks/scans on Articles, categories and similar. If people who are interested in doing this create a desk, can we list it on the AWB Page?

Cheers

Reedy Boy 09:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually this has already been suggested and I have already written part of the page, want me to implement it once I'm done? --mboverload@ 09:58, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I would :D Reedy Boy 10:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to sleep. Feel free to throw one up at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Jobdesk or whatever name you come up with. I'll add on my stuff later. --mboverload@ 10:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Going to use Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User Desks Reedy Boy 10:23, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Surely using a single shared desk would be a better idea? That way it would be much easier to see what's going on, and discuss various issues/problems to solve. It would also be easier to find for someone who wants some help with something. Martin 10:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, i suppose it could/would be... This can always be renamed to account for this. Where does it want adding on the main AWB page? Reedy Boy 10:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this idea should be integrated with Wikipedia:Bot requests? נxaosflux ^Talk 23:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a different perspective, but I feel I should express it. It is my strong opinion that nobody should ever modify my non-article posts in any way (asides from legal and matters of the general community), whether they be my userpage or my talk posts. If I spelled something some way in a post, that's probably the way I meant to say it. Please think first before running around and making spelling corrections to non-mainspace. A lot of people really don't appreciate it. (That's not to undervalue your contributions...just please be careful). alphaChimp ^laudare 21:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Shortcut

Just wanted to point out that the shortcut keys aren't working for me unless the cursor is in the editable text box. —Mets501 (talk) 22:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Other lang's for IRCMonitor

How add other channels to IRCMonitor (e.g. other lang's)? --Swix 23:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Help with settings and regular expressions

I wonder if somebody could help with me settings and regular expressions? (Not necessarily Martin who no doubt is very busy working on this fine piece of software :))

I want to tag talk pages with WikiProject templates so that the articles will be listed in the unassessed categories for Wikipedia 1.0. An example run is on Category:Living people:

• If the talk page has no {{BioWikiProject}} template, or is currently a redlink, add {{BioWikiProject|living=yes|class=|importance==}}
• If the page contains {{BioWikiProject}} or {{BioWikiProject|.*}} but not "living=yes", add the "living=yes" parameter
• If the page contains {{Blp}} remove that template, because {{BioWikiProject|living=yes}} is a replacement for it

The net result would be all Living People articles would have the {{Blp}} warning and would be in Category:Unassessed biography articles from where Mathbot can pick them up. This would be a great help to WikiProject Biography. Can anyone suggest some settings/regexps I could try? Thanks in advance. --kingboyk 19:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

In the same was as RegExTypo Fix

find="{{Blp}}" replacewith="{{BioWikiProject|living=yes}}" /> find="{{BioWikiProject}}" replacewith="{{BioWikiProject|living=yes}}" /> find="{{BioWikiProject|.*}}" replacewith="{{BioWikiProject|living=yes}}" /> Reedy Boy 16:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Something along those lines might work, except the last step needs to filter out living=yes. Now the new version is out I'll run some tests. Cheers. --kingboyk 16:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist issues

I just noticed that articles that I use AWB on (doing a simple replace using "What links here"), the ones that are on my watchlist get removed if I edit them with AWB. Is this a recognized bug? Do I have a setting (I use default) listed on that I shouldn't? It's never happened before, but the last couple times it's removed like 20 to 30 articles all of which were ones that I had just edited with AWB ?? K1Bond007 03:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the report, will be fixed in soon to be released version. The reason for the recent run of bugs is that there have been some major internal changes, but these are mostly done now, so after the next release all should be good. Martin 10:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

ETA on next release? --kingboyk 10:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm a bit busy at the moment, probably release later today (~ 8 hours). Martin 10:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I've released the new version now. Martin 16:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellente monsieur! Thank you. --kingboyk 16:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Filter: Duplicate Articles

Any possibility of getting AWB to filter duplicate articles in a checking list? As sometimes when you add more categories, it may end up with the same article multiple times

Cheers Reedy Boy 16:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Already reported multiple times. See above. alphaChimp ^laudare 16:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, this appears to be fixed in the newest release. alphaChimp ^laudare 16:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Save List to a File - Is there a load list from File?

As Above

If not, could it be added?

Reedy Boy 16:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Make From --> Text File alphaChimp ^laudare 16:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah! Thanks Reedy Boy 16:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

A couple of minor issues

When saving and then loading settings, the Messaging append/prepend option on the "more options" tab doesn't get set.

A really minor thing, and my personal preference may differ from others: could the bot timer count down rather than up?

Cheers. --kingboyk 21:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed loading/saving thing in 3.0.1.9 Martin 21:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Transformed

This thing keeps labeling Transformed as misspelled, when it isn't. What's with that?--KojiDude (talk) 00:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

It's complicated, I remember there's a reason why I had 3 different variables, but I can't remember at the moment. Luckily this doesn't do any damage, it's just useless =D

<Typo find="\b(T|t)ra(nf|nsf)or(m|med|ming)\b" replace="$1ransfor$3" />

It'll be fixed in the next release. --mboverload@ 00:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I've fixed this in 3.0.1.9 Martin 21:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Spelling

I just noticed someone using AWB to replace a British spelling with an American one. Is this normal? Ardric47 20:07, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

As per the wikipedia policies, no it shouldn't. Please provide the evidence, or the word change. Thanks Reedy Boy 20:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, this was my problem! I thought I knew everything about spelling, but it turns out that "humourous" is considered obsolete. To quote the OED: "The English formations, humoured, humourless, humoursome, are here spelt like the n. and vb.; but the derivatives formed on a Latin type, as humoral, humorist, humorous, are spelt humor-..." Ardric47 20:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I noticed one of those edits too, and came to the same (second) conclusion. :) --kingboyk 21:44, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There is another instance where AWB wants to replace an American spelling with a British one. Practiced>>> practised.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 14:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetize category list?

Is this possible or requestable? --Kunzite 02:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

There is an option to alphabetise the list in the list context menu. Martin 09:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I know about that. I want to alphabetize the list of categories inside an article. --Kunzite 12:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

oh right, that is of course possible, but lots of people don't like categories being alphabetised, so I can't really implement it. Martin 12:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It's a shame, really. I liked that. --Kbdank71 17:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Could it be done as an optional setting? And alphabetization is helpful in other instances with lists within articles. Perhaps if there was a feature to alphabetize a selected section? I will often copy a section, paste it into Excel and sort the list. I added a lot of categories to articles this weekend (clearing some backlog from Category:Manga) and I noticed that someone went behind me and re-alphabetized all of the lists. I felt a little guilty for making him do all of that work. Thanks the program though, it makes re-categorization a bit easier. --Kunzite 13:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Keeps telling me to login

Even though I am logged in using IE6, it keeps telling me to login. I do login succesfully again, and it counts down and asks again. I've ensured the .NetFramework is up to date, I did a repair on it, still no luck. --Brat32 05:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Making lists from categories

Another feature request please Martin: ought to be extremely simple to implement and save a lot of clicking: the ability to select multiple categories in the article list and have the "add selected to list from category" menu item available. Category:Dead people has literally thousands of subcategories and adding their contents to the list manually one at a time is going to give me RSI! --kingboyk 17:54, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

If my eyes do not deceive me, the new version has this feature? Now to get it downloaded and see, but if it has you are truly a saint! --kingboyk 11:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, absolutely tremendous, thanks mate. There's one slight issue (probably more of a design feature than a bug) - when selecting multiple categories and then running "Add selected to list from category" the operation gets aborted if one of the selected categories is empty. It would be helpful if AWB could distinguish between an empty category and an unpopulated category, and simply ignore the latter. It's not really an error and it's a bit annoying having to cancel the make list operation and deselect the offending category, then run the operation again. Thanks. --kingboyk 12:12, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Non-English characters in text files

When I use AWB on the Spanish wikipedia, and have articles like Jaroslav Hašek and José Antonio Pascual in the text file, they don't import properly when I try to create the list. Instead, I get Jaroslav Haek and Jos Antonio Pascual, which obviously don't work. Is this a known bug, and can it be fixed? --Spangineer^es (háblame) 01:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Did you edit the text file with another program? That is the only known reason for this to happen. Martin 08:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure all I did was copy/paste the text from CatScan into notepad, delete the irrelevant content, and save the file. Is that acceptable? --Spangineer^es (háblame) 17:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

SVN access

It would totally rock if you had a /build directory in the subversion repo. Extra bonus goodie points if you had an svn:external pointing to Typos.xml . ;) I just hate having the svn capability at my fingertips, but still need to pull up sf.net to download new versions of AWB... the source is useless to me unfortunately. Thanx, keep it up! — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 03:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I have decided to put the typos on a wiki page, which will be loaded up when that option is enabled, see Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos, so svn access is not needed for that any more. Also, I would not recommend using the dev versions to actually edit with, so it is probably best to get the release version off sorceforge anyway. Martin 08:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Any chance of non-dev builds then? A release branch/tag? It it such a PITA to go thru the 3 or so pages to get the latest every time I want to use it, doubly so when when it's a new release so I have to track down which mirrors actually have the file. :( — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 11:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand, why can't you just download the release package? If you want to fiddle with the code then it's probably best to just checkout the whole lot. I used to tag the release versions with CVS, but SVN doesn't seem to do it in the same way, and I haven't had the time to work it out yet. Martin 12:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. I'm just being lazy. ;) But what I meant is, this is the current process I need to follow: 1. Open web browser and type into my address bar w WP:AWB 2. Click download TOC 3. Click download link 4. Click green "download button" 5. Click actual ZIP file. 6. Try another mirror when it's a really new version and the mirror chosen don't work. If it were in the svn repository, it is 1. Open folder with AWB in it 2. Right-click and choose "SVN Update". — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 13:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Feature Suggestion: Retain Auto Mode Settings

The title says it all. I'd like it if my bot timing settings were retained when I reloaded the settings file. alphaChimp ^laudare 05:50, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added this now. Martin 12:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

'stub sorting' link to WP:WSS

For the edit summary 'stub sorting', I think it should link to WP:WSS since most of the other edit summaries link to a WikiProject. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 14:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

ok, i'll add the link. Martin 14:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Stupid? question

OK, maybe I'm just being dense, but can someone tell me how to copy text from the "diff"/"preview" pane? If this is not currently available, is it something that can be added? --Brian G (Talk) 14:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

You can't…this is deliberate, the only thing that can affect that pane is AWB itself. If it were possible to lock it down completely to avoid random clicks and stuff, that would likely be even better. What text do you want to copy that is not available from the edit box? —Phil | Talk 15:15, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes, it would be convenient to copy text from the "current revision" side that has been changed by automated processing and isn't in the edit box any longer. Example: I saw a typo fix suggested and it looked like the word that was going to be replaced might be correct in British vs. American, so I was going to copy it and paste it into a dictionary to check. (Of course, I was wrong anyway.) The other thing is just me being lazy, if I want to copy the name of the article to paste into my regular (non-AWB) session, it is just tempting to grab it from the top of the preview, but yes, I could get that another way. --Brian G (Talk) 15:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I wish, if it weren't likely nearly impossible, to have the changes easier to find in the little edit box. Sometimes it will change 5 things in the article, but I want to hand-revert one and then have to go searching for it. It can be a real pain on some pages... — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 16:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Martin: Is there a way to put a transparent layer over the browser, and they put a tooltip there explaining not to touch it? --mboverload@ 13:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The webbrowser is locked most of the time, so clicking on links in it doesnt do anything anyway. Martin 13:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but when you rollover the links they change, and when you click a button they change. That implies you can use them. mboverload is anal. =D --mboverload@ 13:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Also it is possible to "shift-click" the links to fire up a new browser window…which has the unfortunate side-effect of allowing the greedy IEControl to grab the focus, about which I have been whinging unreasonably at Martin . HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:44, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

You'll be pleased with the next version then, hopefully. Martin 14:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I've been pleased with every version so far…professional software-whinging dies hard . HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 19:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a way to make it so if you try to highlight something it doesn't. using:

document.write('<body onselectstart="return false" ondragstart="return false"');

(you have to put that after any other document.write's that write to the <head>. GeorgeMoney (talk) 16:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Couple of little UI tweaks

Please could we have:

1. a "Start" button on the tool-bar to allow restarting after one of those strange stalling incidents
2. a notification of the number of items remaining in the list on the status bar at the bottom
3. a copy of the timer on the status bar (or simply move it there)
4. Also, could we have "access keys" for the "Preview" and "Show Changes" actions, please?

I spend a lot of time with the panel hidden, chugging through long lists of articles, and it would be great if I could have these available without having to reveal the panel. TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 15:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

As of this post the dev version has #2 implemented in the toolbar, is that what you meant? --mboverload@ 13:02, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Its not exactly what he meant, but I have lots of other things to consider when implementing these things. Martin 13:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Bug when recovering settings file

AWB fails to recover certain items from a settings file properly. If you set up an advanced replacement with a single space in the "with" field, the space gets saved but is not loaded:

        <rule name="underscore fix" type="0" enabled="True">
          <regex />
          <replace>_+</replace>
          <with> </with>
        </rule>

For some reason this appears to inactivate the replacement, so instead of replacing the "from" text with nothing, it is just ignored.

Oh, and before anybody says, replacing it with &32; is notacceptable in this context (templates and links). HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Hhhhmmm, I'm not sure where this problem is coming from, as this is the only part of the program that I didnt make, I'll look into it some more. Martin 13:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Hacker info: .Net Framework object System.Xml.XmlTextReader in Rule.ReadFromXml() has WhitespaceHandling set to WhitespaceHandling.None, XmlTextReader.ReadElementContentAsString() thus ignores the space. XmlTextReader must be set to WhitespaceHandling.All. I'm currently looking into how that's best done. It can be fixed locally by doing something like:

          WhitespaceHandling saved_wh = rd.WhitespaceHandling;
          rd.WhitespaceHandling = WhitespaceHandling.All;
          r.with_ = rd.ReadElementContentAsString();
          rd.WhitespaceHandling = saved_wh;

But that's not the best solution. Martin: I can provide an SVN patch for AWB if you want to wait (in case you haven't fixed it already :). --Ligulem 14:02, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

A patch would be great, I assumed it was to do with the whitespace handling, but I couldn't see where exactly, thanks. Martin 16:10, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Done [1]. Cool, my first official patch on sourceforge! Oh wait, now we are going to patch MediaWiki :)... (just kidding) --Ligulem 19:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Martin 19:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Bug report and feature mod request

Firstly, this problem happens when I bring up the find and replace page – I don't know what the problem is (to do with the checkboxes not showing), and it could well be me and not the actual software – any idea how to fix it? Secondly, would it be possible to make an option to turn the auto-mode (bot mode) delay off completely? The best we can do at the moment is to change it to one second, which is a bit fiddly when it comes to setting it. Thanks. — FireFox ^(talk) _{20:25, 9 August '06}

Bunched-together problem has been fixed --mboverload@ 22:29, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't changed the timer though. Martin 08:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. — FireFox ^(talk) _{20:01, 10 August '06}

Skin

I have made a skin that makes awb browsing easier. It is at User:GeorgeMoney/AWB.css. It removes a bunch of useless links and stuff (why have navigation links, etc.. if you can't click them? ). To use it put the following in your monobook.js (if IE isn't your default browser):

var isIE=((self.navigator.appName).indexOf("Microsoft"));
if (!isIE) {
document.write('<style type="text/css">@import "/w/index.php?title=User:GeorgeMoney/AWB.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css";</style>');
document.write('<body onselectstart="return false" ondragstart="return false"');
}

.

I would like to make this skin a public AWB project to make developing it easier.

Also, there brings up the problem of people who actually use IE, because they will have the AWB skin as default. I think AWB should modify the info into something like "AutoWikiBrowser" and then for the code we can have "((self.navigator.appName).indexOf("AutoWikiBrowser"))" instead.

GeorgeMoney (talk) 23:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Awesome! Tnx! — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 00:05, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't work for me. --mboverload@ 07:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The reason it doesn't work for you is because you added it to your css file instead of js. GeorgeMoney (talk) 14:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts?

What are anyone's thoughts on the matter of using a skin for awb and making it publically developable? Any thoughts are welcome. GeorgeMoney (talk) 00:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm liking it in both VP and AWB. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 01:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see the point. We shouldn't get sidetracked. --mboverload@ 02:24, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the default monobook skin that is there is kind of "obtrusive" in AWB. There are so many things with useless stuff like links you can't even click. GeorgeMoney (talk) 03:00, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I also have a special css with AWB, however I use it with an own username (nl:Gebruiker:JePeAWB/monobook.css) so the css is only used when I'm working with AWB. JePe 12:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

"Avoid making insignificant minor edits"

Why? /Grillo 19:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Wastes resources and clogs up watchlists. Martin 19:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll add that to the project page. /Grillo 23:05, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

File --> User & Project Prefereances

On that preferences thing, you haven't put a close event on the close button

D

Cheers

Reedy Boy 19:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

3.0.2.1 - Sort Alphabetically doesn't work....

Any ideas?

Cheers

Reedy Boy 19:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, i made lots more big internal changes, these little things are really annoying. thanks. Martin 19:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh, keep up the good work. I like the way its big internal changes, yet only a small version change on the version numbers Reedy Boy 20:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, when I create a list using the "Links on page" option, the list is presented sorted alphabetically even when I haven't asked for (and don't want) it to be sorted. --Russ Blau (talk) 00:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

They are presented in the order given by Query API. Martin 08:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Feh. Not your fault, of course, but the Query API doesn't give you any choice in how the list is ordered. I'll have to take it up with Yurik, I guess. Thanks for your labors! --Russ Blau (talk) 14:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

If you save the article into a text file, then open it up in AWB, the order of the links will be kept. Martin 14:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

shortcut keys

The new shortcut keys don't work if you loaded the page while you were in another window.

For example: My list of pages is a, b, c, d.

Page A loads fine, I use ctrl + s to save. I am still in the awb window.

Page B loads, ctrl + s.

I go to another window.

Page C loads while I am in another window, then it beeps, so I go to the awb window. ctrl + s doesn't work.

I am still in the awb window, and page D loads. ctrl + s works.

The end.

GeorgeMoney (talk) 23:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Other MediaWiki project request

Would it be possible to add OrthodoxWiki[2] into the next release?

Also, what is the possibility of the next release being modified so that it can be pointed at any MediaWiki project?

Thanks! —Preost ^{talk contribs} 03:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

You might use m:MWiki-Browser (download), which is a stripped down version of AWB that has generic wiki support (enter the domain name of the wiki into the wiki field [3]). --Ligulem 08:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Just what I needed. —Preost ^{talk contribs} 14:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The reason it won't/can't be enabled for any mediawiki project is that to work properly you need to know some details about things such as namespace names etc. I suppose i could let the user enter all the details, but that isn't high on my priority list. Martin 09:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I would like to be able to use AWB for several repetitive tasks, such as archiving on Wikinews. I'll take a look at the stripped version in the meantime, but can this be added to the to-do list please? --Brianmc 08:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I have a feeling that there was something unusual about the wikinews which meant AWB didnt work properly with it, i'll look into it again later though. Martin 12:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I would like to request adding en:Wikiquote to the available projects. We have a severe backlog of highly repetitive maintenance and cleanup tasks on nearly 8,000 articles that would really benefit from the use of AWB. I would be happy to provide any namespace or other project information needed to facilitate its addition to the project list. (I am a sysop there and have been involved in all of the project-namespace policies and practices, like page deletion and categorization, for the past 1-1/2 years.) Meanwhile, I'll take a look at MWiki-Browser. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:51, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

This is actually (noramlly) really easy to do now, I have added support already, I'll release the version later today. thanks Martin 16:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

weekly release?

Can AWB's new version be released weekly, rather than every few days? I find it annoying having to download new ones all the time, of course large bugs could nessitate daily releases.-Ravedave 17:36, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Noramlly versions are left enabled for at least a week, there was an exception recently due to some breaking changes in the format of the typo page. Martin 17:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Bug - replacing with Uppercase

AWB tried to replace {{link FA|hu}} with {{Link FA|hu}} on Alaska, but it just added it underneath it. -Ravedave 17:44, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The LinkFA tag was duplicated, AWB removed one of them. Martin 18:00, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops we are both wrong, the article had both, and AWB just put them next to eachother, I manually removed the duplicate. -Ravedave 18:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The 'beeping' sound

I found this useful, when it beeped to tell you the page was ready, and it seems to have gone? Can we have it back (or at least have the option to enable it if we want)? Thanks, — FireFox ^(talk) _{18:07, 12 August '06}

I didnt mean to disable that, it's an unfortunate consequence of the major internal changes I made, i'll add it back, with an option in the preferences menu for next release. Martin 18:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Great, thanks. — FireFox ^(talk) _{18:29, 12 August '06}

Is this insignificant?

The rule says not to make insignificant minor edits, obviously. I plan on changing any links to Inuyasha to InuYasha. Is that insignificant? --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 19:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Inuyasha redirects to InuYasha. So, unless the redirect is going to be deleted, I would suggest to leave it. I read somewhere (I think on a page about popups fixing redirects) that it takes 10,000 clicks of a redirect link to be equevilant to the server load of fixing the redirect. If you are also doing other stuff like cleanup and retf then you can fix the redirect.

But, alone, it would be insignificant.

GeorgeMoney (talk) 20:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm well. I'm not fixing it because it's a redirect. I'm fixing it because Inuyasha is the wrong casing. If it's left that way on pages, new users may assume that's the correct casing and will continue to use that on edits they make. --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 20:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

In that case correcting a genuine error is not insignificant. Martin 20:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixing a redirect on a large scale is more of a bot job, and is a significant edit. alphaChimp ^laudare 13:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. So do you want to say that Zeno should make a request to get a bot license, only to change the links as he said? I would say no. Let's not be overly buerocratic here. If the link is misspelled, then he can fix it without a bot license. Like any AWB user here would do too. --Ligulem 13:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Nah, I'd do it for him if he wanted a bot (and my bot is an awb bot). alphaChimp ^laudare 14:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I think he can do it himself (if he wants), after all he asked nicely, which shows that he cares well. Such a task is also a good start to learn using AWB. What links here of Inuyasha shows less than 500 entries, so there is no need to bother a mister bot with cap in hand or jump through hoops at WP:BOTS ;). --Ligulem 15:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Bug?

Is this me or in the latest version, the edit summary does not get saved in the settings??? -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably something that has been 'broken' during the upgrade of the internals. Thanks for reporting, Martin will let you know Reedy Boy 23:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Just tried it in 3.0.21a and its fine.... Reedy Boy 09:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

One more bug (editing window)

I'm using the new version (3.0.2.1) under XP and IE for search-and-replacement purposes, but the editing window in the lower right part of the screen has become impossible to use. The text size is gigantic, so I can't see more than a fraction of a single letter at the time. I've tried reinstalling with the same result. Regards. Valentinian ^(talk) 06:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There is an option in the file=>preferences menu to set the text box font, or reseting the settings should put it back to normal, though i'm not sure why it changed. Martin 09:23, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. It had changed the font size to 975 for whatever reason. Thanks again. Valentinian ^(talk) 20:31, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Where can one get a more indepth guide to using AWB?

I'm still quite lost trying to use the thing.. — Prodigenous Zee - 10:54, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

My AOL Instant Messenger screenname is mboverloadALT. --mboverload@ 11:04, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

What links to deleted pages

AWB generates a "page does not exist" error when trying to make a list from articles that link to a deleted article. See for example BJAODN: lots of pages link to that deleted page, it should be orphaned but AWB refuses to create a list from it. --Zoz (t) 18:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll change this. Martin 18:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Feature Request: Scheduled Bot Mode

I realize that this might be controversial. My AWB bot does some really basic functions that might be better achieved on a routine schedule. To be honest, it's getting a bit annoying to go through the routine series of clicks that I need in order to run my bot. That's not to say that I won't continue to run my bot, but I'd like some way to keep it running during a vacation or the like. Obviously, it could easily be blocked (or stopped via a talk page message) if it started acting up. Here's what I propose:

• The ability to click the "Start the Process" button at a scheduled time on a daily basis.
• The ability to create some sort of a macro to automate a series of routine clicks.

alphaChimp ^laudare 21:08, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

This would be ultra complex to add on as a whole new feature, adapting the software as needed probably wouldnt be too difficult, but at the moment i am aiming for a stable bug free release. Martin 09:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

File list context menu

Martin, would you be willing to add a "Open page in browser" option to the right-click context menu in the file list? It would be much appreciated, thank you. --kingboyk 10:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

ok, fixed in next release. Martin 09:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

disambig

I've been using AWB on the Polish Wiki [4] and it's been working like a charm with one minor annoyance, the "clean up" option moves the {{s|disambig}} template to the bottom of the page but on pl Wiki we like to keep it on the top of the page, is there any way to switch off/customise this options? Cheers, Яǿǿ⁷² ✉ 12:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem creating list of dab pages

I think I am having trouble getting a complete list of {{disambig}}. I am trying to see which disambiguation pages are not in {{hndis}} with the thought of then going through and changing some of them from disambig to hndis where it is appropriate to do so. I tried to make a list from Category:Disambiguation and another list from Category:Lists of ambiguous human names. I saved them both and launched list comparer. I expected that there would be many names which were only in disambig and a smaller number that were in both lists, but none in hndis only, since the hndis template puts it in both. Oddly, almost 800 of them show up as being only in hndis. I checked some of them manually, and they show up in Category:Disambiguation, but are not being added to the list by AWB. Am I doing something wrong? I can give more details or examples if you want. Thanks, --Brian G (Talk) 21:08, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

hhhmm, I can only imagine that the enourmous size of the disambig category is causing some problem somewhere along the line. Martin 09:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Bugs

1. Doesn't recognise piped categories ([[Category:Foo|Boo]] - or at least certain variations where the piped name starts with a #), and attempts to readrename the category.
2. Shouldn't attempt to substitute the unicode encoding &#x7c back into | - if someone is using that code, it's probably to avoid a syntax clash.
3. Incorrectly replaces underscores with spaces in in-page (anchor) links (ie, [[#link_on_this_page|link]] with [[#link on this page|link]] )

Other than that, it's good :) Stevage 08:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

1. What do you mean, when re-categorising or adding a category? I see what you mean now, fixed in next release.
2. It doesnt substitute that unicode.

   Here was the example page: ISO/IEC 8859-4. I was just adding categories with unicodifying switched on, and it changed [[pipe (computing)|& #x7c ;]] (two spaces inserted by me) into [[pipe (computing)||]]

   Ah, yes that's becuase it is in a link, I'l change that. Martin 13:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

3. That is not an incorrect replacement, it makes no difference at all.

Are you sure? When I checked it, the link with spaces instead of underscores didn't work. Stevage 13:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I am sure, this link and this link both work, first with then without underscores. Martin 13:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, cool, sorry to be a pain :) The link I originally saw this on must have been defective anyway. Stevage 14:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Martin 08:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Spelling errors

It would be great if there were a page on which folks could list spelling mistakes that are frequently made, e.g. paticularly ... particularly so that AWB could regularly be used to start at the top of the list and hunt them down and change them. Of course it should only list DEFINITE errors, not humour/humor etc. The list would become ever longer and would have to be subdivided every so often (eventually by first letter I imagine). - Kittybrewster 11:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos Martin 12:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Weird bug?

This has happened quite a few times to me when I'm running my bot – for some reason, at random intervals it will stop editing and try to log in again, saying at the bottom "loading page to check if we are logged in..." etc etc. However, it refuses to log back in until AWB is restarted, which can be very annoying when it keeps happening. Any ideas? — FireFox ^(talk) _{13:34, 15 August 2006}

Had it actually become logged out? Martin 23:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

There's no way to tell. It would just load a blank screen and display the above message. — FireFox ^(talk) _{10:27, 16 August 2006}

I've had the same problem stated above with version 3.0.2.1a. In Internet Explorer after this problem occured it still was logged in. Harryboyles 11:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Won't run?

So I click "Start the process" and the entire program freezes. Happens every time. I'm using WinXP SP2. Any ideas what's going on? --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 23:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Did you make a list of articles first? when it had frozen, did it shut down happily? Martin 23:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it had a list of articles. When it froze, no it didn't shut down happily, the program stopped responding. Had to kill the process. --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 00:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay well it works on my laptop but not my main computer. If anyone could tell me how to fix it, that'd be great. Thanks. --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 23:44, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem when replacing categories

Unless I'm mistaken, in the past when I asked AWB to replace cat A with cat B, and the article was already in both A and B, it would just remove the article from A. Now it seems to just do the replace, leaving two instances of cat B. Is this a change, or am I doing something wrong? --Kbdank71 15:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't changed this code for a while, possibly the problem is because the duplicate category is only removed when you have general fixes enabled. I'll have a look at it anyway. Martin 16:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Bug: Font size in textbox

It seems that in the latest version the font size in the textbox on the lower right is so large that it's completely impossible to use the box to make any changes to the edits... --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:16, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I just noticed the bug has already been adressed above. Sorry. --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:17, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there a way this problem can be reproduced, as otherwise it is difficult to know why it happens. Martin 08:22, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned above, the font size was set to 975 when first using the new version. Not sure why... --Fritz S. (Talk) 08:30, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Self Checking Mode

Hi, Would it be possible to implement a mode in AWB, that you can leave it to check articles for changes automatically, then save it into a second list that the user can go through and check the edits? (Not to make the changes - this would be 'BOT Mode')

As it would be useful for it to go through and do all the relevant checks, and then be presented with a list to work through. this would be good for when you want to leave your pc to say check 2000 articles

Would it be possible?

I think from a coding point of view, that it must only be a case of having a second list box thing, and that if a change is detected, then the article name is added to the 2nd list. This list could be hidden, and then at the end of the process, this be added to the main list for the user to go through

Cheers

Reedy Boy 10:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

This might be asking for trouble - I would think you would have a lot more conflicts this way because who knows how long it will be until you return and actually apply the change? — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 11:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I was meaning, using it to create a list of articles that need changing, then it can reload them and check for changes again... I thought i had put that down, but it seems not! Reedy Boy 13:05, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this could be very useful. --Fritz S. (Talk) 13:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

This would be a massive drain on server resources, it would probably end up DoS'ing Wikipedia. If you are having trouble finding articles that need to be changed, and all the normal searching methods do not help, then the last resort should be scanning the database. Martin 13:13, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Running the database scanner on my computer for the full database takes 12 minutes to search for articles containing a text string so it is certainly a very useful tool. Can the RegexTypoFix checking capability in AutoWikiBrowser be put into the Database Scanner to find articles that FIRST match other criteria but then fail RegexTypoFix? The list can then be imported into AutoWikiBrowser. Also, it would be useful if articles can be identified in Database Scanner that can be corrected by the "General" section in the (2) Set Options tag (in "or" mode, not "and" mode). I know that AutoWikiBrowser is not supposed to be used for simple fixes on articles that can be cleaned up by the "General" section only. However, it is usually the same articles that require that automated cleanup that require a lot of other work and it would be useful if Database Scanner can be upgraded to find those articles. Skapur 20:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

One more request: In the Database Scanner, in the Special Filter pop up window there is a section "Special Filter" to remove articles. Can another section be added that does the opposite and include only those articles that are in that list? If this is done one addition to the request above, most of the work of locating articles that need attention can be done offline. This would be to some extent integrating ListComparer functionality in Database scanner Skapur 20:33, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB not detecting loss of session

If you leave AWB sitting waiting for a while, when you try to save the current article it is not uncommon for the session to expire. AWB fails to detect this, however, and moves on to the next article in the list. It would be helpful if AWB were to detect this, and allow a retry. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Something must have changed in the mediawiki software, do you know where that list of messages (e.g. "This page is protected" kind of message) is, I'm pretty sure it is in the MediaWiki namespace, but I always forget where. Martin 13:27, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Special:Allmessages, "protectedpage", which on en.wikipedia.org is "[[Wikipedia:This page is protected|Protected page]]", MediaWiki:Protectedpage --Ligulem 14:46, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

The appropriate message is MediaWiki:Session fail preview. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 20:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Image feature request

Right now in AWB you have the functionality to replace one image with another. Can you also add the ability to remove an image, and the ability to comment out an image? —Mets501 (talk) 19:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Just write a PCRE... Find:

 (\[\[Image:Example.jpg\]\]) 

Replace:

 <!-- $1 --> 

Make sure RegEx is checked. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 03:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking about this more. I'm adding that to mine permanently... you stumble across Example.jpg every now and then... ;) — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 04:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

This is on my list of things to do, but it is complicated because your regex will not work when there is a link in the image description e.g. [[Image:Example.jpg|This an [[example]] of an image ]] will only match [[Image:Example.jpg|This an [[example]] . Martin 11:39, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I just tired

(\[\[Image:Example.jpg.*\]\])

and that works (e.g. matches the whole "[[Image:Example.jpg|This an [[example]] of an image.]]"). --Fritz S. (Talk) 12:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It can end up matching too much though, and deleting text after it as well, after all the regex engine cannot tell where the image ends and the text starts, the only way to do it reliably with regexes would be to use grouping constructs, specifically the Balancing group definition, but I have not seen any decent examples of how to use this, and haven't had the time to master it myself. Martin 13:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a couple of issues, including hyperlinks in images, images in galleries, and images in infoboxes (or other templates) —Mets501 (talk) 14:06, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Mine was a first pass. And yes, the one noted above is greedy and can get ugly fast - I highly recommend not using it. We're now getting into why parsing [HT|X]ML with PCREs is not easy... — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 16:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I've been experimenting, and this seems to catch all images with up to 3 links in the caption:

\[\(I|i)mage:IMAGENAME(.*?\[\[.*?\]\].*?\[\[.*?\]\].*?\[\[.*?\]\].*?\]\]|.*?\[\[.*?\]\].*?\[\[.*?\]\].*?\]\]|.*?\[\[.*?\]\].*?\]\]|.*?\]\]

Where IMAGENAME is the name of the image. What do you think? (I know it's the ugliest regex you ever saw =) —Mets501 (talk) 19:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I've just released a version that has an option to remove images (partially using regexes), it has worked properly for me so far, but it is quite possible that there is some situation I haven't considered that it won't work in, so be careful to start with! Martin 19:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Yay! Thanks Martin! Also, can I add my bot to the approved bots list at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage? I will do testing for this feature later today and let you know how it goes. (I'll manually approve each edit while in testing) —Mets501 (talk) 20:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've added it now, thanks Martin 20:33, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

could there be an option to look inside [[ ]] to catch something in internal link and images? like there is for {{ }} in "replace special" --84.234.42.68 16:29, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Stub warning

The warning Long article with a stub tag. is useful but doesn't make sense when the stub tag is actually {{section stub}}. I think there are a few variants of that stub... — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 05:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

regex

I don't know where i should write, but here may be a good place, 'cause i'm using AWB ;] (if it isn't – please move it to a proper place). I'm changing " - " to " – ", and I need a regex (or advise, tip – how I should do this) to be sure that I'm not changing "-"'s into internal links, also need the opposite regex, to revert those possibly existing "–"'s --pl:gregul talk 22:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser redirect discussion

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2006 August 16 has a discussion on removing the AutoWikiBrowser → Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser -- Skapur 22:42, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

What links here redirects

I'm looking at Major League right now which has about 130 articles linking to it, about half of them are linking directly to that article but the other half are redirecting from Major league. However, in AWB, only the 60 or so that links directly to the disambig page is shown. Obviously I can just make two lists, but is there any way to make it so that both direct and redirect links can display? Metros232 12:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

New Image Feature Bugs

Hi Martin: Here's what I discovered about your image commenting out/replacement:

1. It works great for all images with no or one wikilink in the caption, and images with no captions.
2. It only replaces the first instance of a picture on the page.
3. Once you try to comment out or remove an image with two or more wikilinks in the caption, you can't use the image feature ever again, even after reinstalling AWB, as every time you try to comment out or remove an image a message pops up saying "startIndex must be less than length of string. Parameter name: startIndex".

I'm going to restart my computer now and try again to get the image feature working again, and then test images in infoboxes and galleries. —Mets501 (talk) 01:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

No, even after restarting my computer, I can't use the image feature. I wonder what happened. —Mets501 (talk) 01:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I've uploaded 3.0.2.2a now, hopefully it fixes these issues. Martin 20:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Downloading now...will let you know. —Mets501 (talk) 13:29, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

You're a genious, Martin ;-). It works great! —Mets501 (talk) 13:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Auto tag bug

When "Auto tag" is enabled and AWB adds {{stub}} to an article, even if I manually delete {{stub}} in the edit window, "and added stub tag" still gets appended to the edit summary. example --Pascal666 10:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I got that too, when it added {{stub}} to a 70 kb article mostly consisting of tables (List of oldest companies). I'm not sure which is the bigger problem - the message or the decision to add the tag to that article. --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:27, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Proxy

Does AWB support proxy servers that require authentication? I am behind an HTTP proxy. Viridae^Talk 11:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB relies on IE and its settings. With my own proxy, the auth is automated (meaning pass is remembered) and I have no trouble using AWB with these settings... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 13:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

The proxy settings in IE are right, but it requires authentication each session. I am getting a proxy requires authenticaion error when I try and use it. Viridae^Talk 13:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Anyone got any ideas? 10:39, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

mod_perl should not become mod perl

Is there a way to include an exclusion for this?

As that is its name

Reedy Boy 12:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I just always go back and fix it by hand. With AWB, the user is always supposed to review their changes. mod_perl is an exception. The problem is, if AWB added support for that, then what about all the others, eg FILE_ID.DIZ (the other I run into whenever I AWB over my watchlist)? At a minimum, here and here are a list of exceptions. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 13:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I know. With there being more, im sure they can be added to an exclusion list or something? Ie it wont be impossible Reedy Boy 14:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

“question”

Is AWB able to search for “...” and replace it with „...“? The problem is that there is of course very different text between the apostrophes. Thanks in advance & greetings, Pill- 07:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, using regular expressions, search for “(.*?)” and replace with „$1“ Martin 08:57, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

can this be useful also for [5] ? 193.219.28.144 14:09, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

probably bug

it appears when AWB changes internal link (which was already prepared to fix) to unicode format, link is only unicoded, but not fixed to what it should be 84.234.42.68 21:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you link to what you are refering to, as it is difficult to understand otherwise. Martin 22:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I can't find it now – too much edits, maybe someone discovers when "find" doesn't change to "replace with" but it's only unicoded (weird chars changed to normal) or test this some way 84.234.42.68 23:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

here's the bug! [6] pl:gregul

There isn't any code to change dashes like that, and I can't reproduce a problem, are you sure you didn't have some find-and-replace settings enabled to do this? Martin 12:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

it's about this: Laser_(źródło_światła) -> Laser (źródło światła), so it changes "_"'s to spaces (probably the cleanup option, "apply general fixes" or "unicodify whole article", both are always set so I dont know which does this), but "Laser (źródło światła)" should be later changed to "laser" as it was primary reason of editing --pl:gregul 13:37, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, removing underscores is part of the general fixes, but i don't see what the problem is, the underscores are not needed for anything, I'm not sure how this relates to the fact that you wanted to change "Laser (źródło światła)" to "laser". Martin 13:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

the problem is that INTERNAL LINK WASN'T CHANGED as it should be done through "find and replace", or I should run AWB 2 times to be sure that links are fixed 'cause they could contain underscores ?? it's not normal i think ("Laser (źródło światła)" was prepared to change to "laser", this edit should mainly repair internal link but it didn't ;]) --pl:gregul

The find-and-replace is done before the general cleanup. The problem is that the way you are replacing the link does not account for underscores, if using a regular expression then "Laser[ _]\(źródło[ _]światła\)" would find the link whether it had underscores or not. Martin 14:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

so I need to change 200 lines in my "find and replace" window, to be sure that there are no underscores insted of spaces, I realize that probably there will be problems if the "general cleanup" was done before "find and replace"... pl:gregul

List>Convert to Talk pages not available?

I see in the instructions that I can convert a list to their Talk page versions, but when I click on List in the File Menu that option isn't available. I just downloaded the software tonight plange 04:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Right click within the list, and select convert to talk pages. Come back if that doesn't work. --kingboyk 08:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

In the context menu of the list there is an option called "Convert to talk pages" Martin 08:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the manual to reflect that this is not on the list menu, and I have added a section on the list box menu. mattbr³⁰ 09:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Typo feature description

On the main page, it says that AWB does not check for typos. This is now possible. Please change the description on the main page (in the first paragraph). Harryboyles 13:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB clean-up

I've noticed that when AWB is "cleaning up" a page it places stub templates last, after categories. To my mind this is incorrect. Stub templates place text into the article, so should come before categories and interwiki links which only affect the footer/sidebar. I'm quite sure this behaviour isn't a peculiarity of AWB and is documented in some guideline somewhere, so if you'd point me in the right direction I shall go argue my case! :) Cheers. --kingboyk 16:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Last time I checked the guide it just said something like "at the end". Putting stubs at the very end has a number of advantages; It means the stub category is listed last (least important categories should go last), it means the stub tag is less likely to become adjoined to the preceding text (as stubs need a double space before them, not sure why), it is a good idea to put maintenance tags either at the very beginning or very end of an article (i.e. out of the permanent text/meta data), and stub tags are meant to be unobtrusive, after all, they are on over half of all articles, I think they are most unobtrusive at the very end of an article. Martin 16:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

how about {disambig}? why at the end ? could this be chosen (beginning/end) ? 84.234.42.68 22:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB library?

Martin, I was wondering - since you're apparently undertaking a major rewrite of AWB internals anyway - how much work would be involved in exposing AWB functionality as a library and if you'd be willing to do it? Or is it already done?

I was thinking that if I could write my own bot around an AWB framework I could do such cool things as place properly parameterised WikiProject templates on article talk pages based on what categories the article is in. {{WPBiography}}, for example, has parameters for workgroup (royalty, politics, etc), whether the person is living or not (Category:Living people), and the class of the article (i.e. stub categories). Thoughts? --kingboyk 14:07, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

The WikiFunctions.dll file exposes a lot of the functionality I have made. Though rather than writing your own bot, it would probably be easier to write a method/class to do the job you want and then insert it into the existing code, it would be pretty simple to do, I do it quite often to do a complicated task. Martin 18:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks. You mean I have to get the CVS working?! Gulp! --kingboyk 18:28, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, SVN, but it is really not too difficult! Martin 18:38, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

We'll see! :) I've downloaded the SVN software, once I've rebooted I'll let you know how I get on. I'm am MCP in dotnet but I get mental blocks too you know! --kingboyk 16:34, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugins proposal and discussion moved to a new thread. --kingboyk 08:54, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Prepending to talk pages

Sorry, me again, but as my bot (Kingbotk (talk · contribs)) has now done over 130,000 edits with AWB I guess it's inevitable I should have a few things to say :)

Scenario:

1. I want to add parameterised {{WPBiography}} templates to talk pages
2. Some talk pages won't have the template, or will be redlinked
3. Some talk pages will have the template with no parameters at all
4. Some will have it with empty parameters only
5. Some will have set parameters

I can probably handle cases 3-5 with regular expressions. The difficulty I'm having is in case 2. There's no conditional statement for the append/prepend feature, is there? I can skip articles, of course, if they contain a certain regexp, but that necessitates a second run.

So, I'm thinking, we need one or more of the following:

• Conditional code for the append/prepend feature (append/prepend if contains/doesn't contain a regexp) -- probably best
• The ability to manipulate the append/prepend text using the find/replace feature and tokens -- e.g. if the talk page already contains WPBiography|living=yes, add living=yes to the prepend text)

Thoughts? Am I missing a should-be-obvious way to achieve my goal? --kingboyk 16:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The advanced find and replace does selective ignore if does/deosn't contain as well as other stuff, combined with regexes it could possibly be done using that. Martin 16:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, cheers, I'll take a look at that. Have a think about the conditionals for append/prepend though, might do the same thing in a simpler fashion and I'm guessing would be extremely easy to code since you'd be reusing existing procedures. --kingboyk 17:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Links in infobox and image captions shouldn't count as the first occurrence of a word

Hi. I just reverted an edit by AWB that I think was detrimental to the article. I'm guessing that AWB thought it was removing redundant links when such links already existed earlier in the article. However, the links it removed were the first occurrence of these words outside of an infobox. --Doradus 16:54, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB only removes self referencing links. The user is free to do what they like with it of course. Martin 16:57, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugins

Another possibility which is really quite easy to implement - there's plenty of examples on the web - is plugins. An application publishes a public plugin interface, and then scans a plugins directory and uses reflection to look for files which support the interface. --kingboyk 16:34, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Hhhmm, the idea of supporting plugins doesn't initially fill me with joy, though I'll look into it anyway, I guess it might be interesting. Martin 16:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it wasn't that simple but i have made a plugin feature now. To use it you need to make a class library project, reference the WikiFunctions.dll file, implement the IAWBPlugin interface, add your code (the values available at the moment are the article text, title, and a referenced value indicating whether to skip the article or not), then compile it and put the dll in the AWB folder. I'm not sure if that sounds simple, but from a users point of view it really couldn't be much easier. I'll upload an example project tomorrow that can easily be changed. Martin 23:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

/me Picks himself up off floor. Are you Superman or something, Martin?! :) --kingboyk 07:03, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

hah, hardly, i have released it now and put some instructions on the main page, it was quite fun doing it in the end. Martin 15:54, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I've already done it in VB.net, and, yes I thought it was pretty cool. It's worth it just for learning about the power of reflection :)

I've taken the liberty of moving the instructions to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Plugins - as this is no doubt something of a niche feature. I've also added an "interface might change" disclaimer, as interfaces are supposed to be locked down - but given the speed with which you release things that just isn't possible. Feel free to remove it if you're certain this is final interface version 1.0 :)

It might be an idea if you exposed the menu bar as a public property. No need for fancy wrappers, just expose the whole thing as the correct type (or add a Plugins menu and just expose that publically). Then plugins can add menu items and capture the events (I guess).

Well, anyway, I've downloaded the new version and will give it a whirl asap. I'm thinking it might be easier to write a plugin for complicated tasks than it would be to get my head round the cryptic instructions for Advanced Find/Replace :) Cheers Martin! --kingboyk 20:02, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the side shot :) Advanced Find and replace was invented for complicated template migrations, replacing hackery like [7]. Interestingly, I didn't need to do such a thing yet again. Therefore I wasn't yet so inclined to describe everything. But you could take a look at the code. However, writing code is sometimes easier than understanding code of others :). --Ligulem 23:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Gulp - you sound like you might be offended. My sincere apologies if you are! I really didn't mean to cause any offence. I can see that the advanced/find replace is a very powerful feature, it's just that the docs are a bit hard to follow :) As for understanding other people's code, I sometimes have trouble understanding my own :) Advanced template migrations, by the way, are exactly what I'm wanting to do. For example:

• If {{BioWikiProject}} exists, replace it with {{WPBiography}}
• If neither exists, add {{WPBiography}}
• If living= parameter exists retain it, otherwise add empty param
• If class= parameter exists and has a value, retain it, otherwise set class=Stub and add auto=yes
• Set military-work-group=yes
• If other set params exist, retain them, if they're empty remove them

--kingboyk 09:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Have you written a plugin to do this? I imagine it would be quite easy, basically just a series of if statements with some regexes to do the business. Martin 09:14, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Not yet mate, but I'm planning too - VS is open right now :). I'm hoping I can code all of the different scenarios in (it's worth doing as the biography articles on Wikipedia are in 6 figures) and then be able to save the settings along with the AWB settings. (Which reminds me, I'm not sure if this a job for the plugin author, for AWB, or for both (probably for both), but being able to turn the plugin on and off (and save that in the settings) would be convenient. Then the same installation of AWB can be used for multiple jobs concurrently. --kingboyk 09:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

<- reindent. I've added VB instructions to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Plugins.

A few thoughts:

• My first reaction when loading up the AWB DLL in the Object Browser was "where the hell is the plugin interface"? :) I'd recommend using namespaces. A great thing about namespaces is that they can span multiple libraries and executables, and even span programming languages. I'd put the .exe and the .dll inside a namespace of e.g. AWB and then have something like the following:
  • AWB
  • AWB.DatabaseScanner
  • AWB.IRC
  • AWB.API
  • AWB.API.Plugins (put the plugins interface and any code intended for plugins to call here)

Import those namespaces and the code should compile without any further changes (unless you've been using fully qualified references).

• It would be handy beyond belief if the plugin had access to settings: if it got notified of changes in settings and if the plugin's settings got stored along with AWB's settings. Scenario: I have two instances of AWB running, both using my one-plugin-does-all DLL, but doing different jobs based on the settings I've stored in the AWB XML settings file. This might be implemented by events, perhaps? However it's done ought to be fairly trivial, it's simply passing objects around.
• Access to the menu bar or at least a plugins submenu (would work a treat if the plugin has access to settings too). It would be very nifty if the plugin could add a tab to the set options/more options/start area, that way it could display it's settings and status and the operator can be comfortable that everything is going as it's intended :)
• Display the plugins installed in the About Box. Details can be acquired through reflection or through mandatory properties in the plugin interface
• All the above are quite trivial. A bit harder, but tremendously useful, would be if the AWB library file exposed any useful worker routines it has so that the plugin can tap into the power of AWB. (Maybe they're already exposed and just need to be organised into namespaces).

I'm pretty good at object model design so I'll endeavour to get the source downloaded today or tommorow and see if I can help with any of this stuff. Unfortunately I don't use C# but I don't suppose it will be too hard to pick up as I can write Unix shell scripts/PHP/a little Java.

Anyway, I'm going to have a play. This is all quite exciting and it promises to be a killer feature :) --kingboyk 09:27, 26 August 2006 (UTC) (edit conflict)

The wikifunctions.dll already exposes loads of stuff, it's just not very well organised, I've improved it now. I had already made a menu option that can enable/disable and display the installed plugins, i hadn't enabled it just yet. Also, I have added a method called initialise to the interface, and takes a form, a menu item and a context menu as parameters. It will be called once when the plugin loads. hhhmm, all this should be enough for someone to make a really cool disambiguation tool. Martin 10:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Wicked. What's the form for? --kingboyk 12:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking that you could cast the form as the awb form and then have access to everything, but on reflection it's probably not such a good idea, and requires another reference to the awb exe. What i will do is pass more objects, such as the list maker and the webcontrol (so you can then access the html directly, which would resolve your problem below). What other objects would be useful? maybe the textbox. Martin 13:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Not really sure until I get my hands on it and start having a tinker. When will that be? (Is the code on Sourceforge the latest release version, or does get it changed every time you edit it?) --kingboyk 13:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The code is always the newest, the binaries are not though, so you can either compile your own, or wait for the next release. Martin 13:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've got the code :) By the way, I don't see why requiring a reference to the exe too would be a problem. In fact, you don't really need a seperate DLL from what I can see. --kingboyk 14:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The exe is awb specific stuff, the dll is stuff that can be shared. I decided that exposing the exe members would be asking for trouble, and certainly pretty poor OOP practice. I suppose that part of the problem is that AWB was not designed from the ground up to do certain things, i.e. accept plugins, so some things are not always done in the best possible way, but i think over all just passing a few object references to the plugins is fairly satisfactory, and safe. Martin 14:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not good practice for a traditional executable/shared libraries scenario, granted, but this is kind of different. A plugin kind of latches onto the application (some folks call them "extensions" after all) so I don't think there's any great harm in having it reference the exe if that would be helpful :) That said, it's perfectly fine to have the application be in charge of the plugin, and for the DLL to ask the plugin what services it needs (as you've done with that new init routine) or indeed for the interface to define events that the plugin can raise when it wants something.

I'm playing with some code at the moment but not only am I snailspeed coder compared to you I feel like I'm walking in the dark at the moment. I'll get there and will have a plugin in service before too long though, don't you worry. Thanks again for doing this, I think it's a really exciting feature! --kingboyk 15:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm one happy bunny :) I especially like it how you pick up multiple plugins in one DLL. This has allowed me to define a base class, and then inherit from it. I've tested that this works. Now, to make best use of the feature could we:

• Get the ability to turn on/off indivdual plugins and save this in the XML settings file, and/or
• Give the plugin access to the settings

Then a user can have as many plugins as s/he has jobs, and automatically get the correct one loaded when loading his/her XML settings file :-) --kingboyk 18:41, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

<!- Indent. This code doesn't seem to be right:

                a.Initialise(listMaker1, webBrowserEdit, pluginsToolStripMenuItem, mnuTextBox);
                
                ToolStripMenuItem i = new ToolStripMenuItem(a.Name);
                i.Enabled = false;
                pluginsToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(i);

Have the values be passed by reference. Let the plugin create the menu item object (and other objects where applicable), just have AWB check it's not an empty reference (don't throw an error, just ignore empty objects). Looks like you're sending the Plugins menu to the plugin, then creating a menu item for the plugin locally, without giving the plugin a reference to that object? Instead, let theplugin supply you with a listmenuitem object, and you add it to the menu and enable it if the plugin is enabled. Then the plugin can trap its own events. --kingboyk 18:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

They are being passed by reference, c# is different to vb. Only value types need the ref keyword. Martin 19:12, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. They come up as ByVal in VB, but IIRC it doesn't make much difference for reference types. Nonetheless can you change it to have the plugin create the menu item and AWB just check if it's a null reference or not? --kingboyk 19:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It is not null when sent to the plugin, it is the already existing "plugin" menu, the plugin can then add new items and register with events as it pleases. Martin 20:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Aha! Doh!! Sorry, I'm a dumbass today, feeling a bit under the weather. --kingboyk 20:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

OK! Yip yip! I now have a plugin which is correctly sending altered text back to AWB, registering a menu entry and receiving click events, and manipulating the web browser control (setting minor edit to true). Fantastic! Now to read through your code a bit more and see what regexp methods I can piggy back and which I need to write from scratch :)

Is there any routine I can call to have AWB fetch and return to me another wikipedia page? e.g. I receive a talk page through ProcessArticle(), and I want to grab the associated article and see what categories it's in and what stub templates it uses? Then I could write a killer talk-page-templating bot :) --kingboyk 21:12, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Use WikiFunctions.Tools.GetArticleText("Article"); Martin 22:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Edit summary ought to be a by reference argument to ProcessArticle() I think, since there's no edit summary without an article, and having it as a seperate property forces the plugin to preserve state. --kingboyk 20:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It was a bit easier to use properties, but i'll change it internally so it uses a better system, and a ref value. Martin 20:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Upon reflection (no pun intended), saving state is OK (I'll be having to use delegates, I've discovered, so I'll be saving state anyway) so don't worry about this if you haven't changed it yet. An argument would probably be better but it's no big deal.

I was looking at the C# code and I see that you call the plugins before calling AWB's code. I wonder if it might be better to call the plugin last? The idea, of course, is for the plugins to do what AWB can't do, not for them to reinvent the wheel. So, if AWB has already decided to skip the article, for example, the plugin needn't be called, or the plugin can receive the article text as already processed by AWB. Thoughts?

We're going to need either for plugins to be turnable on/off individually and have this stored in the user XML settings, and/or for the plugins to be able to read and save their settings in the XML file. Without one or both of these multiple plugins in one DLL aren't going to be very sensible. Any idea which you want to go for (or have you already done it? I know what you're like, super coder! :)). --kingboyk 11:18, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking that probably the easiest thing to do would be if each plugin makes and adds its own menu item to the plugin menu, and can then check whether it is checked or not itself. Doing it inside AWB and especially loading and saving XML settings might be a bit complicated to do in a reliable way. Martin 13:34, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. I still maintain though that the plugin should be able to latch on to the settings saved to the XML file somehow, then when settings are reloaded the plugin is configured too and it's just a case of clicking start :) I've had computer woes today but I'll try to take a look at the AWB code and the MSDN docs tommorrow and see if I come up with something. I suppose I'm going to have to provide an advanced VB example too to match your C# example! --kingboyk 21:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Ahem. If you find out how my cryptic "rules" work, it might be possible to create plugin rules. The central class is IRule [8], which can save itself to an XML node and has a display control (right side in the advanced find and replace dialog). Just some rough ideas. --Ligulem 22:17, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I am considering adding reading and writing to the XML file to the plugin, but I fear it may be a botomless pit of bugs and problems. On another note, plugins can have a user interface as well, for example the plugin can just be a normal windows form and shows and hides itself as appropriate. Martin 09:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

As an alternative approach, I might see if I can get my plugin to load/save the AWB settings. --kingboyk 16:07, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

My rules zoo thing has the benefit that rules can be sorted by the user. A plugin rule would in fact be a class of rules (a new type of rules per plugin). The user could then instantiate multiple rules as needed (with differing settings). Rules can be subrules, which means they are only applied to the article text if the conditional criteria of all parent rules are met. So the rules dialog is a bit like a reciepe. I don't think storing/reading to XML would present much of a problem as long as element names can be agreed on over all plugins (no plugin should have the same name as any other plugin). The rules are stored like the rule tree of the dialog and each rule in the XML forms its own compartement. But the whole rule thing might well be overkill anyway ;-). Maybe I should finally start doing some server side coding. PHP is just not my home turf. --Ligulem 15:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Will look into that, thanks. I have a mostly-working regular expression and delegate for exploding a template and params but I haven't worked out yet how to get the named matches. Perhaps I can either call your code or get some inspiration from it :) Cheers. --kingboyk 16:07, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Woot! I have my regular expression and delegate working now, even for messy but legal template usage like:

{{album}} some text or other
{{talkheader}}{{
template : WPBiography  
| living=
| class=Start}} {{somecrap}}
iofjq2oefjrf
fe24wqfjrto

Hopefully I'll have it all packaged up into a nice object model ready for a test run later today :) --kingboyk 17:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Martin for moving the plugin call to after AWB has done it's work. I'm wondering now if ProcessArticle() ought to have a boolean argument which tells the plugin whether AWB has changed the articletext in any way? Otherwise the plugin might tell AWB to skip an article which has been changed. --kingboyk 19:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Plug in request

I do not know if this could be accomplished by a plug in. I really like Google toolbar spell check. If AutoWikiBrowser can invoke this, it would help a lot when cleaning up articles. Currently I have to open an article in a browser, switch to edit mode and click on the spell check button in the toolbar, go through spell check, save the article, switch back to AutoWikiBrowser. --- Skapur 20:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB can't interact with the toolbar, if there was a webpage that did the spell checking then it could be possible. Martin 22:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It would probably be a good idea to think of this as an alpha feature for now. When the interface is stable and somebody (hopefully me!) has got a plugin running and doing good work, we could probably set up a plugin section where people can share their code and ask for plugins to be written. It might help free up Martin a bit too! (but only free him up to do other AWB work, of course, hehe). --kingboyk 22:26, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah that would be a nice idea. I was planning on getting to a stable version and then slowing development a bit, as I always seem to working on some new feature or other, but I couldn't resist adding the plugin feature. Maybe when the plugin system is fully up to speed development can shift to the actual plugins. Time to sleep now, I bet I dream about plugins and reference values. Martin 22:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

You too huh? It's the thing I hate most about programming, just can't get the damn code out of my head! :( --kingboyk 05:31, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It's a bit worrying when I start subconciously trying to solve everyday problems with object orientated techniques! Martin 10:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean to say there used to be other ways to solve problems? ;-) --- Skapur 23:11, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Will any of the spell checkers that come up with the Google query: http://www.google.com/search?q=spell+check work?

Possibly, though they are plenty of complications (limits on character count, confusing wiki syntax etc.) Martin 10:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Tagging talk pages of red-link articles

Kingbotk has had a few false positives, where I've tagged talk pages for articles deleted since I built my list. Looking at the message displayed above the edit box for new talk pages, I think AWB could very easily trap and avoid this.

This is a currently redlink talk page and redlink article HTML:

please verify that a page called <i><a href="/w/index.php?title=There%27s_nothing_to_see_here%2C_move_along&action=edit" class="new" title="There's nothing to see here, move along">There's nothing to see here, move along</a></i> exists.

This at the time of writing is a blue link article but red link talk page HTML:

"please verify that a page called <i><a href="/wiki/About_a_Book_Club_%28Hope_%26_Faith_episode%29" title="About a Book Club (Hope & Faith episode)">About a Book Club (Hope & Faith episode)</a></i> exists"

It's a silly message really, because Mediawiki has had to look up whether the article exists or not!!! Anyway, it seems that class="new" is responsible for making the link red.

Presuming that the message comes from the Mediawiki namespace somewhere and not from the PHP code directly, we can also leave a message on the Mediawiki talk page asking to be alerted of changes or of course just watchlist it :) --kingboyk 12:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Stupid me... much easier way is to just check if the "article" tab is red or not. --kingboyk 10:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

OS X?

I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but is there a version of Mac OS X? Geoking66 02:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

For there to be such a version the OS would need to support the .NET framework version 2 and have Internet Explorer. In other words, I doubt it. --kingboyk 09:59, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Most (Mboverload) typos in one article?

Possibly Japanese settlers in New Guinea during 1919-1940 times "comunity → community (12), regulary → regularly, autorities → authorities (2), autority → authority, belived → believed (2), colaborators → collaborators (3), condemmed → cond" then the edit summary fins out of space. Approx 32 replacements. Rich Farmbrough 08:51 27 August 2006 (GMT).

Wow, that's mighty impressive, shame the article is probably going to get deleted! Martin 10:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

New version ignoring option?

The new version seems to be enabling "add replacements to edit summary" even though I have this option disabled in the settings. It's just doing it anyway. Am I missing something or is this a bug? --W.marsh 13:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It is a new bug, I improved the edit summary system and missed something, the older version is ok. thanks Martin 13:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

changing link bug

here [9] it only added a summary with no change, link [USA] should be changed like in here [10] pl:gregul 06:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It is most likely a bug in what ever find and replace strings were used, AWB has an option to ignore articles when no replacement was made anyway. Martin 10:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Nested square brackets bug

I quote Timeshifter who I think explains the symptom well

The bot is causing some images to not show up. The image is Table 1 in the section called "Frequency of Incarceration." SmackBot deletes one of the brackets at the beginning of the external link in the caption. It also deletes the 3rd bracket at the end of the caption and link. It obviously is not recognizing the stacked brackets due to the combination of link and image coding ending at the same place. This is a serious problem because it is common to put a source link at the end of a sentence. Here is the correct image coding:

[[Image:USA._Prisoners_1995_to_2005.gif|right|frame| Table 1 from [http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pjim05.htm "Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005".] A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report. The totals do not include people held in juvenile facilities. According to a 2006 OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) report there were 97,000 held in juvenile facilities as of October 22, 2003. [http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/nr2006/html/chp7hl.html]]]

SmackBot ends up with this coding below, and it causes the image to not show up:

[[Image:USA._Prisoners_1995_to_2005.gif|right|frame|Table 1 from [http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pjim05.htm "Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005".] A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report. The totals do not include people held in juvenile facilities. According to a 2006 OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) report there were 97,000 held in juvenile facilities as of October 22, 2003. [[http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/nr2006/html/chp7hl.html]]

Clearly a somewhat rare occurrence to have two external links in an image link, but there it is. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 09:22 28 August 2006 (GMT).

Ok, thanks I'll look into it. Martin 09:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed by Martin, I believe, see #small bug below. Rich Farmbrough 20:39 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Tip - Disappearing space on C:

This might be worthy of a mention on the project page.

Since I started using AWB in anger, free space on C: has become an issue. I cleared 2GB of space and soon that was gone too. I searched for large files, cleared my internet cache regularly, but still the drive would be full. Well, exploring in Cygwin it would seem that IE creates a sh*tload of files in the Temporary Internet Files folder which don't get cleared even if you tell IE to clear it's cache. What's more, they're hidden in Explorer even if you have it configured to show hidden files. Why they would do this I don't know - it's slightly sinister if you ask me - but, anyway, if you find that C: is gobbling up the gigs with no apparent cause this might be it.

It's covered in more detail here. The best tip seems to be:

• Click Start, click Run, type the following command and click OK:

Shell:Cache\Content.IE5

--kingboyk 09:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't noticed a problem, but if it does does exist for some people it will only become noticed if they were doing 10s of 1000s of edits. The cache would probably clear itself after a period of time anyway, unless there is a massive flaw in how internet explorer works. Martin 10:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd call 386,156 files in just one of the subfolders - having clicked "clear cache" multiple times - a massive flaw! I'm only part of the way through clearing this crud and I've clawed back gigabytes. This is insane! Anyrode, I hope the tip is useful to somebody, it's sure helped relieve my disk space issues. --kingboyk 10:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

But it should be noted that your bot has made enourmous number of edits in a relatively short period of time, for the average user doing a few 1000 edits this will never be an issue. Martin 11:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I'm blaming you Martin (unless you work on the MSIE team :)) but I think that a "clear cache" button which leaves several gigs of cached files in place, to the extent that a user's C drive is full and programs start crashing, is quite manifestly broken. Perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree on this point :) --kingboyk 19:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

For me clearing the cache of IE (in IE) clears "Shell:Cache\Content.IE5" (accessed by the procedure you've shown above). On a second note, AWB just uses the BrowserControl which is shared with IE. So we are rather bound to that with all the drawbacks/bugs. If you can provide a better control for browsing (or refer to one) or a tweak to the AWB code, you are of course very welcome :-). --Ligulem 08:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I know that - why does everyone seem to think I'm complaining?! Can't a guy indulge in a bit of gentle Microsoft bashing? :) --kingboyk 09:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

For your curiousity: The mozilla control which iirc can be downloaded here, while nice, does not provide the critical functionality that AWB needs. Martin 08:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ooh. Interesting, thanks. --kingboyk 09:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. Rich Farmbrough 10:20 31 August 2006 (GMT).

small bug

There's a small bug if a URL is embedded in a image description link where AWB messes up the brackets: for example [11], you have [[image:x| ... [url...]]], and awb removes one of the right square brackets and adds a left square bracket before the url. Tim! 10:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC) This is the same as two sections up, sorry :) Tim! 10:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed in newest release. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Weird bug with talk pages

I have a weird bug with AWB when prepending information to talk pages. When I want to prepend a msg to a list of talk pages, the diff blanks the whole page with just a "Modified" word. Here is the screenshot: (clicky).

Is it me or is there something weird?

Thanks, Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 11:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to release a new version at the moment that cleans up a few issues, but sourceforge is giving me an "internal server error", I'm sure it will work soon. Martin 11:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Done it now, hopefully that will be the last release for a while. Martin 11:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Woot, thanks!!! :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Auto-update?

How about a one button "upload new version" to make re-installing a snap when an existing version is superseded? bd2412 T 15:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Not really possible while it is hosted at sourceforge, hopefully the frequency of releases will slow down now anyway. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Prepending to talk pages reloaded

While testing my bot that currently delivers newsletters, I encountered a weird thing. While prepending to an un-existing page, well, nothing gets prepended. The diff is loaded but is not saved. And of course, the option "Ignore non-existing pages" is unchecked, as can be seen. And it works for a blank article talk page too. Obviously, it is only true for auto-mode.

Is it a bug or a feature?

Thanks, Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Hhhhmm, I tihnk it's fixed now, hopefully this really will be the last release for a while. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

(Hopefully very easy) feature request

Hi Martin: can you create a way to add the contents of first-level subcategories to the article list? For example: when you make a list from a category, you get all the pages in the category plus the subcategories as part of the list. Do you think it would be possible to be able to double-click on the category in the list of articles to add the contents of that category to the list? Or something of the like...? It would be much easier than copy/paste, especially if you wanted the pages in all the subcategories of something with a huge amount of subcategories, such as Category:Saints by country. —Mets501 (talk) 21:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

If you highlight the categories in the list and then open the context menu "Add selected to list..." and then "from category", this will get all the articles from those categories. Martin 21:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

/me slaps himself in the head. Thanks :-) —Mets501 (talk) 21:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Unicode bug

When I was operating WinBot in 3.0.2.3 I was told that the unicodify in this edit was a bad one. So I am wondering if there is a bug in here? Many thanks. --WinHunter ^(talk) 03:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

IOW, the bug discussed at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_8#AWB_bots_are_breaking_non-BMP_articles appears to be back. EdC 07:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, fixed in the newest verison. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Linux?

Can I run it on Linux, using Mono and Wine. --Mihael Simonič 07:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Afraid not. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

What about this: I have .NET farmework and IE6 instalated with Wine, mscoree.dll is also included in Mono. --Mihael Simonič 13:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

You like to make things complicated, I see :)) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 13:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Lol. It's not reasonable to expect Martin to support, erm, "esoteric" configurations like that. If you can get it to work, great - please report back - but the official line I suspect will remain the same :) --kingboyk 15:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugins

Feature requests

• (Being looked into) Access to XML settings. (If this isn't available I might try to go in the opposite direction, having the plugin control AWB's settings)
• HasChanged boolean byval argument to ProcessArticle(), so that the plugin doesn't tell AWB to skip when AWB has made a change; or (easier) ignore the plugin's Skip value if AWB made a change
• If the plugin has set a valid edit summary, have AWB not complain about empty edit summary box (but if in point above the Skip value is ignored and plugin returns an empty summary, AWB must use it's own summary)

--kingboyk 15:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Reading and writing AML settings is a possibility, actually changing the AWB settings in a definite no. Having the "HasChanged" variable would be tricky, I know things like that look easy but they are not, largely because it is fundamentally against how AWB works, i.e. if you are doing job x, then the article either needs job x doing (so save it) or it doesn't (so ignore it), also, anything that is done with find+replace wuithin AWB can be done easily in the plugin anyway. Martin 16:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

True, true. Thanks. My plugin is working now anyway and hopefully will go into service later today - I have a backlog to catch up on! :) --kingboyk 17:15, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to be a pain in the arse now and suggest that - given your (well argued) line about moving all work to the plugin and not using AWB's skip/find/replace features at all, the code which calls the plugin ought to be moved back to where it was :) i.e. AWB gets article text, sends it to plugin for processing, and if plugin says skip that's the job done. What do you think?

I took your advice by the way and moved my "skip this article" regex into the plugin. I hardly need worry about AWB settings now, it's all blank settings except for "make from file" and an edit summary of "Bot". --kingboyk 12:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, you're the only person making a plugin, so i don't see the harm in moving it back. Also, I have added 3 methods to the interface for reading/writing XML and reseting the settings. It is a bit limited because of the complexity in dealing with plugins, I'll update my example when I have released the newest version. Martin 12:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Got the newest version, thanks. WriteXML() fires when saving settings (as expected), but ReadXML() doesn't seem to fire when loading settings. Bug? Also, under what circumstances is Reset() called? --kingboyk 18:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The read only fires when the XML node actually has some attributes. reset it called when the user clicks "reset" in the file menu. Martin 18:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Cool. I shall now have a play with that, thanks Martin. --kingboyk 18:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully the last feature I ask for until you've had a rest :) In Initialise() could the plugin somehow get access to the options/start tabs? I'd like to add a tab which shows the status of my plugin and statistics - what it's doing, how many articles it's done/skipped/major edit/minor edit, etc etc. --kingboyk 13:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugins in testing

I have a plugin ready (User:Kingbotk/Living persons biography plugin) and am testing it, should anybody be interested :) --kingboyk 15:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Small categorisation bug

When recategorising articles, could you please fix it so that links that start [[:Category are ignored, or at least create an option for this in settings? I'm not sure this is a very good explanation of what I mean, but hopefully it's understandable. Thanks, — FireFox ^(talk) _{16:01, 29 August 2006}

Why would you not want to change links like that? they will also need to be changed surely? Martin 16:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Well not if they're in discussion, changing someone else's comments. — FireFox ^(talk) _{16:44, 29 August 2006}

I don't see a problem with changing a link in someone's comments if leaving it would result in the link being incorrect. This doesn't apply to automated bots of course, as a human needs to check the context. --kingboyk 10:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I am mainly talking about an automated bot anyway, FFBot, so an option here would be helpful. — FireFox ^(talk) _{13:00, 30 August 2006}

Not if I say "blah blah look at category:trees it should be a sub cat of category:plants blah blah.." and someone recats trees to graphs. Rich Farmbrough 21:40 30 August 2006 (GMT).

Hence the "a human needs to check the context". A bot would get that edit wrong, a human shouldn't. --kingboyk 10:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Another small categorisation issue

When categories have been foolishly placed in the middle of text it seems that their removal leads to extra carriage returns being inserted. If followed by spaces this can change formatting, e.g. this edit. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 10:01 30 August 2006 (GMT).

new feature

1) can this be implemented: change from i.e. [laser|lasery] to [laser]y ? to simplify the links

2) why can't general fixes/unicodify (like removing underscores) be done (by AWB) before "find and replace" ? this causes a need of consideration all unicode/special characters into the regexes used into "find and replace" (special wikipedia's characters can't be matched by "find" until you know them exactly, but it's hard to cosider them everywhere!) gregul

1) Already a feature under "Apply general fixes" Harryboyles 12:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

read again, it's done after "find and replace" so in fact it wont work when matched string contains those characeters, general fixes will change [laser|laser] to [laser] and not moregregul

It has to be done after the find+replace or it can cause some complications. Links aren't simplified any more than they currently are because this can often lead to some strange looking links. Martin 13:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in this case it is fairly easy to allow an option to apply before or after the general fixes. Martin 13:27, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

3) what about moving pages, can this be done ? (if it isn't already included) gregul

4) can erasing redundant spaces be included into general fixes ? for example into expressions like this "blblb ", " blabll", '' ddd '', ''' eee ''' etc., also multiple spaces between the words would be erased as they aren't visible if more than 1 gregul

Buglet

I thought my plugin had a bug, because it was skipping red-link talk pages. However, in debugging mode I found nothing wrong... then noticed that when I click "Auto save" AWB then automatically checks "Skip articles when no change made", which for some reason is causing those pages to skip.

I've no idea why AWB would auto-check "Skip articles when no change made" but if there's no vital reason for doing so could you turn that off pse Martin? :) --kingboyk 13:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's not a bug, it's a defensive feature, otherwise some people have a nasty habit of setting a bot loose without it on and making a series of trivial edits. Martin 13:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

lol, OK. Do any of the objects I get passed in Initialise() give me access to that checkbox? --kingboyk 13:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Answer to self, they ought to now I have access to the tabcontrol. --kingboyk 20:37, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Skipping bug?

I just downloaded the new version and it seems to be skipping nearly everything, without regard to any setting as far as I can tell... Anyone know what I could be doing wrong, or if this could be a bug? --Galaxiaad 01:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably you have "skip articles when no change made" selected? --kingboyk 10:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Nope... argh! --Galaxiaad 14:31, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Try the latest vesion. thanks Martin 14:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Working. Thank you! --Galaxiaad 16:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Categories - for discussion

Copied from my talk page, Rich Farmbrough 09:46 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Could your bot also stop being 'helpful' with categories? I am getting sick of reverting that three or four times a day. To get categories sorted alphabetically you often need to place them above templates, but your bot keeps moving them back to the bottom (which ends up giving me a mish-mashed order). Elric of Grans 23:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it's done for now. I understand what your saying about categories, it raises two interesting points a. how should categories be ordered, and b. what to do about transcluded categories. The first has been thrashed out, and the conclusion reaced that alpahbetical order is not necessarily best (AWB used to order categories). The second is more probelmatical, I believe, for example that in general maintainance categories (and hence templates) should go after normal categories - and I thnk this is widely supported in principle. On the other hand it is common practice to put cleanup and wikify right at the top of articles. One off the things that AWB does in its general options is to put interwiki at the end, and non-trancluded categories immediately before, so I will copy part of your comment and this reply onto the AWB talk page for discussion. Rich Farmbrough 09:43 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Alphabetical sorting isn't best in my opinion, sorting by relevance/priority is better. Yes, that does raise the point that transcluded maintenace categories will be first if the template is at the top of the page but c'est la vie... convention is to put those templates at the top of the page and that's not AWB's fault. It's quite simply not an AWB issue. --kingboyk 10:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not solely and AWB issue <grin>. I definatley don't think it's an AWP problem, nor do I want to go 'round the mulberry bush we've been round before - just invite new ideas. I liked your Freudean slip "at the top of the fault." <second grin> Rich Farmbrough 10:11 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Bolding first occurance of title in Image: name

Here I added formatting to an image filename. Whoops! Rich Farmbrough 10:06 31 August 2006 (GMT).

One more oddity

See SmackBot's edit to Linear B. It blanked most of the article. Obiously unusual characters in the page, but apart from that no idea why. Rich Farmbrough 12:16 31 August 2006 (GMT).

You've certainly been very unluckly with bugs today Rich! I'll have this sorted (well, I'll work around the problems in the .NET HTML decoder anyway). Martin 16:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Shotgun effect, there's a lot of them thar ISBNs. Thanks for your hard work. Can you let me know if there's something I can scan for to spot where else this might have happened? Rich Farmbrough 20:43 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Autonomous mode on other projects

Hi, I juse AWB on nl.wikipedia. It used to be possible to use my AWB on autonomous mode (bot-mode) on my bot-account there, but in the newer versions of the software it's not possible anymore, which is a problem for me. I see that someone else has the same problem (see here). Can anyone help and fix this, or is it not possible? NielsFTalk to me.. 19:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The automode only becomes available when it has logged in (there is a log in button on the file menu, or it does it automatically when you start editing). Also make sure you have the newest version. Martin 19:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah thanks, upgrading to the latest version did the trick! Thanks for your quick response. NielsFTalk to me.. 20:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugin stuff

Besides getting notification of start/stop/exit, could the plugin get access to txtEdit please Martin? The ContextMenuStrip isn't very useful if I can't put text into the box (or, is there a routine to call to do that?) --kingboyk 20:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Timer

I'm using 3.0.2.8 and I can't seem to get the timer to appear. I have tried turning it off and on again with no success. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 22:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, my bad. I didn't see that it moved.... BTW, can someone remind me of the limit for "too fast". I can't remember where that is documented. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 22:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)