WikiEditPuffer

WikiEditPuffer is an add-on for Mozilla-Firefox making the editing of contributions safer by maintaining local copies of editors content in a widely inappreciable manner.

Mechanism

Work Flow Triggers

The add-on becomes active every time the "edit this page"-button of a Wikipedia article page has been hit. The state of activity is reported by showing up the WEP-sign at the status bar.

By the first change to editors text field two keepers begin with countdown:

a timer, which will save modified content every n seconds (default: 60)
a keystroke counter, which will save modified content every n keystrokes(default: 100)

Additionally event handlers are added to the "Save page", "Show Preview", and "Show changes" buttons:

modified content will be stored every time one of this buttons is hit.

Storing places

The modified content of the Wikipedia editor text box is stored into a unique text file. The filename for the file consists of

the stripped name of the article
the revision counter, counting 0001, 0002 and so on
the unique number if necessary
the file extension: ".wep"

Thus the name for the current file related to this article is: "UserDhuenwikieditpuffer_0044-01.wep".

Notice: Only "UserDhuenwikieditpuffer_0044.wep" is shown at the status bar. The unique number extension is used internally for quick restoring purposes. In case of recovery using the file picker dialog, files ordered by name are easy to distinguish concerning the revision history.

By default a common temporary directory is used for storing all wep-files (i.e. "c:\tmp").

Using the configuration dialog

by clicking left on the WEP sign,
activating the context menu of the same gadget,
under the context menu of the wikieditpuffer entry of the add-ons configuration dialog (tools->add-ons)

another directory may be chosen. For each article a unique one - if desired.

Recovery action

Once your contribution has been lost, damaged or destroyed, there is the need of restoring the content of the Wikiepedia editor text box by picking up one of the wep-files.

Using the "restore last backup" entry in the WEP sign context menu (status bar while editing some wikipedia contributions) the last saved file will be read and put into the editors text box, overwriting any further modifications.

The "restore ..." entry of the same menu strip shows up a file picker dialog. The chosen file will become content of the Wikipedia editor text box. There's no limitation to wep-files, every text file goes.

Intended Improvements

error management has to be established
the context menu of the wikipedia editor text box has to be enriched by wep-entries concerning storing and restoring
WEP sign and configuration dialog should be provided with meaningful tool tips.

Any suggestions are welcomed.

License

WikiEditPuffer is free and licensed under the terms of creative commons 3.0.

Weblinks

http://www.wikieditpuffer.net Homepage of the Wikieditpuffers project

User:Dhu-en/wikieditpuffer