MWiki-Browser

This page describes the MWiki-Browser (MWB), a fork of the AutoWikiBrowser project.

MWB is a tool for Microsoft Windows 2000 (and newer) that helps editing pages of wikis operated by the Wikimedia foundation. Other wikis using the MediaWiki software might work as well or the source code of MWB could be adapted to work on these.

The tool can build a list of pages and assist in doing edits to these pages. Changes to pages can be specified by defining hierarchical search and replace rules.

MWB loads a page from the list, applies the changes and displays the result in a window that contains the same diff or (pre)-view as provided by a normal webbrowser. The user has the ability to do additional edits in a text editor window. Previewing and diffing display is provided by the MediaWiki server generated html output.

MWB is not a bot, because its normal use is intended for interactive edits under direct user control. Users are expected to carefully review each diff before they save an edit—the same as when using a simple webbrowser.

MWB can assist in doing tedious repetitive/complicated editor-work, like exchanging one template call with another or replacing names of template parameters. MWB has some limited wikitext parsing capabilites.

Usage Rules

For use on the English Wikipedia, users must be registered at w:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage. The rules on w:WP:AWB must be followed.

Current differences to AWB

Generic wiki support (input field for domain name of wiki [1]). - Now incorporated into AWB
Hierarchical replace rules editor with special support for template calls. Now incorporated into AWB
Minor changes in user interface layout:
- A horizontal split bar in main window.
Slight changes in make list
Less built-in automatic page edit-functionality. Currently there is only:
- Link simplifying

See some screenshots.

Requirements

Runs on Windows 2000 or newer
Version 2 of the .NET Framework (download) must be installed on your computer. Note that this can be installed in parallel with older versions of .Net
MWB internally uses Internet Explorer (IE). You must be logged in with Internet Explorer into the wikis you want to edit (The "Remember me" checkbox must be checked when logging in, so that you have a login cookie in IE).

How to get it

See http://sourceforge.net/projects/mwiki-browser

Documentation

Replace Special

Note that the functionality described here also applies to the AutoWikiBrowser (Advanced find and replace)

Rules can be entered by using the "Replace Special" rules editor. To open the "Replace Special" rules editor, click on "Edit Rules" in the "Options" tab on the bottom left of the MWB main window. The "enabled" checkbox must be checkmarked.

	Main window, Options tab	"Replace Special" editor, New rule, Replace tab

In the "Replace Special" editor, click on the "New Rule" button to create a new rule.

The left hand side shows a treeview of all created rules, while the right hand side shows the details of the selected rule. Rules highlighted in red are disabled rules, whereas rules that are just white, are enabled

Rule

"Name": descriptive name for the rule. Serves otherwise no purpose.
"Enabled": rules can be disabled. If this is not checkmarked, no changes result from this rule and all subrules of this rule.

"Type": Defines to which parts of the page the rule (and its subrules) applies. Implemented values are:

"Entire text" ← The rule is applied to the entire page that MWB loads.
"Inside template calls {{..}}" ← The rule is applied only to text found inside template call wiki markup. This applies to all subrules as well.

"Replace" tab

Upper textbox ← contains the text this rule looks for
"With" ← replacement text

All occurences of the text in "replace" are replaced with the text in "with".

"Regular expression": text in the replace and "with" boxes is interpreted as regular expressions.

Additional options if "Regular expression" is checked: "Case sensitive", "Multiline" and "Singleline" (this is for regular expression experts ;).

"Apply # of times": How many times this rule is applied. This is useful for special regular expression tricks like moving text or punctuation on a page (expert feature). Just leave it to 1 if you have no idea what to do with this ;)

"If" tab

In the "If" tab, you can specify additional conditions that must be met. A rule (and all its subrules) is applied only if:

the text in "Contains" appears in the page (if "Type" is "Entire text") or inside the template call (if "Type" is "Inside template calls {{..}}")
and the text in "Not contains" does not appear in the page/the template call.

Both texts are interpreted as regular expressions, if "Regular expression" is checked.

Subrule

Each rule can have a number of subrules. These are applied only if the "if" conditions (contains/not contains) of the parent rule are met. Note that the replace/with fields of a parent rule can be empty.

The text that the subrule is applied to is defined by the combinations of the "Types" of the subrule and the parent rule. Thanks to this you can catch a template call inside a template call (to achieve this, specify "Inside template calls" for both the parent and the subrule).

Specialized Rules

Specialized rules can be created. In the "Replace Special" editor, open menu "Rule", "New" to view all available rule types.

In Template Call Rule

The "In Template Call Rule" catches template calls by name. It can for example be used to rename templates.

"Catch Template": List of template names that this rules catches. Names can be entered in the input field below (click on Add).

"Replace With": Checkmark and enter new name for the template.

Subrules of an "In Template Call Rule" apply only to what the In Template Call rule catched. In the example on the right, the subrules of the "{{cite video}}" apply only to calls to the template with the name "cite video".

Template Parameter Rule

The template parameter rule is intended as a subrule for the "In Template Call Rule" (described above). It can change names of parameters.

In the example on the right, the name of the parameter "DistributorsLocation" is changed to "location" in calls to template cite video.

se of a SVN client program is needed. A free tool that works well on Windows is http://tortoisesvn.sourceforge.net/ (current version is 1.3.4).

The URL to use for SVN is:

https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mwiki-browser/stable

A login/password is not needed for read only access.

Development tools

MWB is written in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. You may also use Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition, which is downloadable for free.