The category of tools includes physical tools like hammers etc, as well as more abstract tools like e.g. mathematical tables. Most of the articles will reside in subcategories for the different classes of tools.
TechnologyConstructionManufacturingSkills
Tools
A collection of web and software extensions to make your Wikipedia experience faster, better, and brighter. More detail is available from the German version of this page; please help translate it by following the interlanguage link in the sidebar. Non-software tools that help you edit Wikipedia are collected in Wikipedia:Utilities.
==Browser Integration==
===Edit helpers===
These make semi-automatic edits.
User:Humanbot (yes, there's only one!)
See also #Semi-automatic edits
===Lookup Browser buttons===
The following bookmarklet allow you to search for a term in Wikipedia just by selecting a word on any web page and then clicking the bookmark. If you do not select anything, you are prompted for a search term. The scripts support Mozilla/Mozilla Firefox, Opera (web browser) and Internet Explorer.
#To get the bookmarklet click the link below
#Then click and drag the link of the correct browser over to the link/bookmark
#If a Dialog Box appears saying the link might not work/not be safe when trying to add the link to your toolbar, click yes
[http://webpages.charter.net/kylegdb/wikilookup.html Wikipedia Lookup]
When the page opens drag the link over to the links toolbar/Bookmark Toolbar
or
right click and select add to favorites and put it in the links folder
It works on both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. To use it in Opera, add it to bookmarks and then you may want to put the bookmark to the personal panel.
If a Dialog Box appears saying the link might not work/not be safe when trying to add the link to your toolbar, click yes
General information about conducting searches is available at Wikipedia:Searching.
=== Bookmarklets ===
====List of authors of an article ====
The GNU free documentation licence requires the publication of the list of authors of an article, eg. when translating it within Wikipedia, or when copying it to another wiki.
fr.org:Accueil proposes the following bookmarklet to do this:
# Go on the history page of the article
# Click on "500" to display the last 500 modifications of the page
# Make sure that your browser allows pop-ups on this page
# copy-paste the text below to the address bar of your browser:
::javascript:eMlA='';for(iB2M=0;iB2M');write(eMlA);void(close())}
# Confirm your entry by pressing the "Enter" key
# a window opens with the list of contributors. Verify that special characters are handled properly.
==== View diff since your last change ====
This bookmarklet, will, when run from a history page, go to the diff between the current version and your last change. It's a good way to see what happened since you last looked at the page. (Well, edited it, actually, but isn't that the same for most of us? ;-) )
javascript:(function () {z=document.getElementById("pagehistory").childNodes; for (n=0;n
Questions, bugs, requests, or patches to User_talk:JesseW.
==== Clean a list of pages off your watchlist ====
This is not exactly a bookmarklet, in that it doesn't use JavaScript, but it is something you can put in a browser address bar, or on a bookmark list, and it will do something useful, so I guess it's a bookmarklet.
I use the preference that puts any page I edit on my watchlist, which works really well except for very active pages like the Village Pump. I often will edit them, and forget to uncheck the watchlist checkbox. Having them on my watchlist clogs it up, as they have always been changed in the last day or so, and I wanted a simple and automated way to take them off. Volia...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Watchlist&action=submit&remove=Remove+checked+items+from+watchlist&id%5B%5D=Category%3AOrphaned_categories&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3ARequested_moves&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3ADuplicate_articles&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3ACleanup&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3ACategories_for_deletion&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AHelp_desk&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28assistance%29&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28news%29&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28policy%29&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28technical%29&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28proposals%29&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28miscellaneous%29&id%5B%5D=Wikipedia%3ACopyright_problems the thingie].
It works as follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml (the site's command form of address) ?title=Special:Watchlist (the watchlist) &action=submit (i.e. do something) &remove=Remove+checked+items+from+watchlist (i.e. remove stuff) and finally, the critical part: &id%5B%5D=''name of a wikipedia page you want to remove, url-encoded''. Repeat the id part for each page you want to remove and that's it. Questions, bugs, requests, or patches to User_talk:JesseW.
==== Show anchors and names ====
This will change the text of all the links on a page to include their hrefs. This is helpful when you want to link to a lot of wikipedia page sections en masse.
Questions, bugs, requests, or patches to User_talk:JesseW.
==== Make all links go directly to History ====
This will change all the wiki links on the page into links that point to their respective history page. It may also catch some non wiki links, but if you reload the page it will return to normal. This is based on a bookmarklet for changing the target of links that I got from http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/.
javascript:(function(){var x,i; x=document.links;
for(i=0;i
Questions, bugs, requests, or patches to User_talk:JesseW.
==== Make all links go directly to Edit page ====
This will change all the wiki links on the page into edit links. It may also catch some non wiki links, but if you reload the page it will return to normal. It is a one word change from the previous one, just changing "history" to "edit".
javascript:(function(){var x,i; x=document.links;
for(i=0;i
Questions, bugs, requests, or patches to User_talk:JesseW.
=== Search Plugin for Internet Explorer ===
To be able to search conveniently the english Wikipedia (but also other language versions), a WikiSearch Toolbar is available at http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/usr/h04b/h0450953/download.html. It has a search box and language selection box.
=== Search Plugin for Mozilla & Co ===
To be able to use the search box at the top right in a Mozilla browser to search the Wikipedia, use the extension provided at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/wikipedia.html. This allows searching Wikipedia conveniently by simulating the "Search" button (not the "Go" button).
==== Firefox plug-in extension ====
To add a Firefox extension which will allow you to select a word or phrase on any webpage, right-click on it, and look it up in Wikipedia or Wiktionary do the following:
# download the dictionary extension from [http://www.m-w.com/firefox/firefox-popup.htm Merriam-Webster]
# follow their instructions
# when you have the extension options opened add the following entries
#* Wikipedia
#** Wikipedia Search for "$"
#** W
#** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=$&fulltext=Search
#* wiktionary
#** wiktionary Search for "$"
#** w
#** http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=$&fulltext=Search
=== Browser Keywords ===
====Microsoft Internet Explorer====
I don't know where to put this, but I love it. If you use Windows and Internet Explorer, try this:
* Open a new text file in your favourite text editor
* Copy and paste the following text into it exactly as written:*
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\w]
@="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s"
* Save the text file as "wiki.reg" (make sure its filename extension does end up as ".reg", not ".reg.txt")
* Doubleclick on the file you just saved, and click yes when it asks if you want to merge it into the registry. All done!
You now have Wiki for Windows! Any article you want to look up, type "w" followed by a space and the article name into the web address field (don't forget caps!), and it'll take you straight to it.
Some examples:
w Disney
w Donald Trump
w WP:RFC
The same trick can be used to make an in-line command to add any text into a web address and open it. The 1st line stays the same, 2nd line just change the last letter to the letter or letters you want, 3rd line is the address with %s substituted for the text you give it. Google example:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g]
@="http://www.google.com/search?q=%s"
(* NOTE: Windows 98 users and others using version 4 of the Registry Editor must instead input the 1st line as "REGEDIT4", without the quotes, in order to make this scheme work.)
==== Mozilla & Co ====
In Mozilla, you can define ''keywords'' or ''shortcuts'' to websites: You just need to create a bookmark of the form "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s", and then specify a keyword like "wp" (or "wiki" or what you like) for that bookmark. To search for ''"fnord"'', you may then simply type ''"wp fnord"'', into the addressbar. The "%s" is used as a placeholder for whatever you enter in the addressbar after the keyword.
Here are a few examples:
* wp: ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
* wpw: ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%s
* wpu: ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%s
* mwp: ==> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
* wpg: ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go
But you may use whatever keywords you like.
In later versions you can add keyword searches more easily by right-clicking on the search field of the required site and selecting "Add a Keyword for this Search" in the resulting pop-up context menu.
==== Konqueror ====
Use ''Settings/Advanced Browsing/Add'' to enter the ''Search-URI'' "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/\{@}" and specify "wp" (or "wikipedia", or whatever you like) as the keyword. You may then search for articles in the Wikipedia simply by entering "wp:whatever" into the address bar.
====Opera====
Since version 6 Opera features a search field, which allows you the query different search engines. Using a special prefix, search from the addressbar is also possible. For example, Opera is by default set up to perform a google search for "Wikipedia" when you type "g Wikipedia" into the addressbar.
You can define new search engines yourself, for example the Wikipedia: to do that, you have to edit the global configuration file search.ini in the Opera directory, or the same file in your profile directory, respectively. The files can be edited with any text editor and the syntax is quite simple.
To define the english wikipedia as a search engine, add the following to the search.ini file:
[Search Engine 43]
Name=Wikipedia (english)
URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=%s&go=Go
Query=
Key=wp
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=UTF-8
Search Type=124
The ''Name'' and ''Key'' attributes can be chosen freely. Now you will be able to search Wikipedia by typing "wp What you're searching" into the address bar. Note that the number section title ([Search Engine 43]) must be unique, and the numbers should be continuous. That is, use the next free number there, not necessarily 43. Also beware of key conflicts -- if you assign the same key to two search engines, only the first one will work.
The same can easily be done for other wikipedias, or the wiktionary, by adjusting the URL accordingly. You can also use other methods of searching, assign a different key to them and have them all available simmultaneously. I suggest using "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s" as URL which will go to the article you enter and "http://www.google.com/search?q=site:en.wikipedia.org" for Google search on the English Wikipedia.
====iCab====
In the ''Search'' sections of the settings dialog, you may enter the URL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" as a search engine, and specify "wp" as the key. You may then look for Wikipedia articles just by typing "wp whatever" into the addressbar.
====OmniWeb====
Under ''Preferences/Shortcut Preferences'', enter "wp" as the ''shortcut'' and "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%@" as the ''Destination URL''. You may then look for Wikipedia articles just by typing "wp whatever" into the address bar.
=== Show Articles on the Shell ===
To show a Wikipedia article in the shell (using Lynx (browser)), use the following setup:
* bash and ksh users: put the following into ~/.bashrc:
function wp { lynx -dump en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"$*" | less; }
* csh and tcsh users: put the following into ~/.cshrc or ~/.tcshrc respectively:
alias wp "lynx -dump en.wikipedia.org/wiki/\!* | less"
==== Speech Synthesis ====
You may also use speech synthesis so the page is read out loud:
* bash and ksh users: modify and put the following into ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile respectively:
function wp2a { lynx -dump en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"$*" | txt2pho | mbrola -t 0.7 /usr/local/mbrola/de3/de3 - - | bplay -s 22050 -b 16; }
* csh and tcsh users: modify and put the following into ~/.cshrc or ~/.tcshrc respectively:
alias wp2a "lynx -dump en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"$*" | txt2pho | mbrola -t 0.7 /usr/local/mbrola/de3/de3 - - | bplay -s 22050 -b 16;"
=== WAP-Browser ===
There is an experimental WAP-gateway for the wikipedia that allows you to browse articles with your cell phone or a Personal digital assistant. You may try the developers version of the gateway at http://w.lucem.de, but beware the bugs! Development is currently managed by :de:Benutzer:Blauba\"r.
An alternate WAP-gateway exists at http://wapedia.de/. This, too, is still under development and may contain bugs, but it seems to work for the most part.
=== Wikifikator ===
'':ru:Википедия:Викификатор'' ([Vee-kee-fee-KUH-tor]) is a JavaScript currently used in the :ru:. It is embedded in the source code of an edit page, so that any visitor can use it just by clicking a link below their editing box. The script applies certain transformations (mainly regarding typographics) to text highlighted in the editbox, if any; otherwise to the whole article. It is very convenient and does a great job improving the look of the Russian Wikipedia's articles. Wow! ^_^
The thing is “open”, but can be modified only by our sysops, since it sits in the source of :ru:MediaWiki:Summary. Note that the Russian typographical conventions are quite different to the Anglo-American ones. But is very easy to adapt it; if you know JavaScript, of course.
A detailed description of the script (pun not intended) is at :ru:Википедия:Викификатор and is in Russian.
==Help with editing==
===List Generator===
The :de:Benutzer:JakobVoss/wplistgen ''(page in german!)'' allows you to generate alphabetically sorted lists of wikipedia articles. Disambiguation pages are marked as such. (by :de:Benutzer:JakobVoss)
===Importing Tables===
*The [http://area23.brightbyte.de/csv2wp.php CSV to Wikipedia converter] allows you to convert tables in CSV format into the Wikimedia syntax for tables (or to HTML, if you prefer). This way you can import tables directly from spreadsheet applications like Excel or from databases. For more information, see :de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb/csv2wp (en). (by :de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb).
*There is a tool to convert HTML table to wikitable syntax [http://www.wackyboy.com/ConvertHtmlTableToWikiTable.html here], written by Kevin Rector. It covers almost all the table syntax except captions; it does sometimes have trouble with nested tables.
*The [http://diberri.dyndns.org/html2wiki.html HTML::WikiConverter module] (mentioned below) is also capable of table conversion.
===Importing HTML===
An online interface for converting plain HTML to MediaWiki syntax is available at http://diberri.dyndns.org/html2wiki.html. It is based on the Perl module HTML::WikiConverter which performs html→wiki conversion and is available on CPAN. (by User:Diberri)
Another HTML to Wiki converter is available online at http://www.dwheeler.com/html2wikipedia/
===Spell Checkers===
A well-designed spell checker for Internet Explorer is [http://iespell.com/ ieSpell].
For Mozilla Firefox textboxes, there's [http://spellbound.sourceforge.net SpellBound].
Post 7.5 versions of Opera: GNU Aspell can be used as spellchecker by Opera (textboxes only.)
===Timelines===
For a tool to create nice graphical timelines, see meta:Wikipedia Project Time Charts and the [http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/EasyTimeline/Introduction.htm Easy Timeline Homepage]. (by meta:user:Erik Zachte)
===Support for External Editors===
There are extensions for several text editors, including vim, Emacs, jEdit and Kate (text editor), that provide syntax highlighting and more when working with wiki source. For details, see Wikipedia:Text editor support.
===Advanced Edit-Box===
:de:Benutzer:PeerBr/IzGUI ''(page in german)'' by :de:Benutzer:PeerBr is a editor for wikipedia written in JavaScript, similar to the edit-box and toolbar provided by the MediaWiki software. It features buttons for inserting templates, date-formating, etc. Also, it allows to select categories from a hierarchy. '''Note: this tool is currently designed with the german Wikipedia. It needs to be adjusted for working with other Wikipedias.''
===WYSIWYG-Editor===
See meta:WYSIWYG editor
=== Shortcuts for inserting Wikilinks ===
''(to be translated)''
===FireFox extension for WP editors===
http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/
=== Geodata ===
==== GeoRob for German Cities ====
:de:Wikipedia:Helferlein/GeoRob: A Windows program, that collects data about german, swiss and austrian towns from freely available sources in the Internet and composites it into a configurable Template. (by :de:Benutzer:RKraasch)
=== Chemistry ===
''(to be translated)''
=== Live Preview ===
User:Pilaf/Live_Preview is a script that you can use simply by editing your User:Name/monobook.js file. It allows very fast preview in the browser window, without loading a new page, using a JavaScript parser. It does not support templates and has some other limitations.
=== Semi-automatic edits ===
User:Humanbot suggests edits for you. Currently only for spelling mistakes - write at User talk:Humanbot with ideas!
==Other tools ==
* [http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57621&package_id=138624 Eclipse Wikipedia Editor plugin], in Beta as of December 2004.
* User:Sietse_Snel#wikidbsplit - Script to divide the sql dump files into individual article files, for grep searching.
* [http://colloquy.info/extras/details.php?file=36 Wikifier] plugin for the Colloquy IRC client makes wikilinks clickable.
* Automated copyright check ''(to be translated)''
** Python for ACL ''(to be translated)''
* Wikipedia for the Blind ''(to be translated)''
* Export Tools ''(to be translated)''
* Link-Checker ''(to be translated)''
* Conversion to PDF: see Wikipedia:WikiReader#Wiki_-.3E_PDF
* Several scripts for dealing with Unicode, the Internet Relay Chat channel, etc: Wikipedia:Scripts
* User:CryptoDerk/CDVF is a Java program that gives a nice, customizable front end to the [irc://browne.wikimedia.org/#en.wikipedia Recent Changes IRC channel].
* [http://vs.aka-online.de/globalwpsearch/ GlobalWPSearch] is an external web-based interlanguage search tool that shows missing interlanguage links.
* For users of Mac OS X 10.4, there is a [http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/dashboard/wikipedia.html Wikipedia Dashboard widget].
* [http://www.flacus.de/wikipedia/Wiki/index.html Interwiki-Link-Tool] to interwiki articels found in languages and still do not have a Interwiki-Link.
Need to be translated into different languages. At the moment only german language-Interface but different languages in the database.
==External links==
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikiapi/
* [http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?WWW::Wikipedia Perl-Module that searches for and retrieves an article]
* [http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/ Wikipedia extension] — An extension for Mozilla Firefox that assists in editing Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia help
Tools
== Importing HTML ==
I wrote HTML::WikiConverter (and the corresponding MediaWiki dialect) which performs html->wiki conversion. It's available on CPAN and there's also an online interface at http://diberri.dyndns.org/html2wiki.html which doesn't require users to download and compile source code. It might make a better alternative (at least simpler to use, IMO). --User:Diberri | User talk:Diberri 15:23, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
: Tank's for the Information! I'll put that into the article. -- User:GearlooseUser Talk:Gearloose 16:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
==Why not Soundex searches?==
As I was trawling through a chunk of All Pages, I noticed yet again the large number of redirects such as Cheeleaders, Chem Trails, Chaykovsky, etc. that seem intended to help with misspellings or variant spellings. Although there are many such entries, they are unsystematic and don't even come close to covering the range of reasonable possibilities. For example, we have Cheeleaders but not Cheerleaders, Chem Trails but not Chem trails, Chaykovsky and Chaikovski but not Tchaikofsky or Tchaikovski or Tchaikowski, or Tchaikowsky, etc. We don't have Neitzsche or Nietsche or Nietszche.
It seems to me that it would really be helpful to have some kind of fuzzy matching capability, particularly on the Go command.
Why not Soundex lookups, for example? User:Dpbsmith_User_talk:dpbsmith">User:Dpbsmith|User:DpbsmithUser_talk:dpbsmith 00:44, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
:Not a good idea; every homonym would map to the same article (e.g. poor, pore.) Maybe an extra "sounds like" link in the search results would be best--it's not like the soundex algorithm would tax the MediaWiki servers. However, the ''real'' problem is what to do for non-english languages. --User:Ardonik.User talk:Ardonik 02:31, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
:And Soundex is a rather poor algorithm with too many collisions. User:Orthogonal 04:23, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
:"Sounds like" searching wouldn't be a bad idea, and there are several alternatives to the Soundex algortihm that aren't quite so English-biased. The New York State Identification and Intelligence System (NYSIIS) code was developed in 1970 or so to cope with just that problem, and produces a computable and storable result, unlike string-comparison algorithms (e.g. Jaro-Winkler and Levenshtein distance). Such codes could be stored with the article itself and searched for, just like any other term. It sure beats the heck out of polluting an encyclopedia with typographic error redirect pages. (Oh, and Cheerleaders now exists, created by User:Golbez yesterday :-) ) User:RossPatterson 17:03, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
:Although redirects are necessary for variant spellings, having a redirect for every misspelling is a bit ridiculous. I have to wonder if the redirect for Cheeleaders wasn't just a typo by the person who created it. —User:Moverton 01:47, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
::I think that's the likely cause for a lot of these. If you use Move to rename an article, the old name becomes a redirect. User:Hob←User:Hob 06:18, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)
::: I just checked, and it doesn't appear from the history of the two pages that started this topic that any move occurred. Not that that isn't the cause of lots of others. User:RossPatterson
:MediaWiki already has a feature for searching for a "fuzzy search" on titles using Levenshtein distance, but it was disabled on the live site because it was too slow. -- User:Tim Starling 15:28, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
:I am against Cheeleaders-type "typo-redirects", because it means we are "feeding" the web with typos. If I am redirected, I assume my spelling was a ''variant'', not a mistake. For typos, there could be a "did you mean" page, but these - necessarily unsystematic - redirects are less than elegant, if not harmful. User:Dbachmann 10:04, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
::What do you mean by "feeding the web"? If there's no link to a redirect, it's invisible and doesn't get indexed by search engines - no? User:Hob←User:Hob 06:18, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)
:::hm, true. I'm still against them. (a) because it's necessarily unsystematic, and (b) if it's a common misspelling, there is a good chance that it ''is'' linked to (i.e. by the same misspelling in a different article), and the mistake will not be discovered as easily. User:Dbachmann 11:44, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
::::You are challenging a long-standing policy here. That's not to say it's right, but changing it is not a quest for the faint-hearted. (;-> User:Andrewa 14:58, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
== Macros ==
Are there any macros for MS Word that can automatically convert text to Wikisyntax? ɳȉčḩåḽṗ_|_User_talk:nichalp">User:Nichalp|¶ ɳȉčḩåḽṗ | User talk:nichalp 20:25, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
:Not that I've encountered, but you might look at http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=WordToWiki_swythan#comments as a starting point. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDoc may also be relevant. User:MrJones 09:37, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
== Browser Button ==
What do you think of it?
==How??==
How are we supposed to use these things/ I want to make every link go automatically to the edit page everytime... User:Jaberwocky6669 06:12, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)