Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-04-23/Technology report

Just to say that because of publication deadlines, fallout from the 1.20wmf1 deployment to en.wp will be covered in next week's issue. Thanks! - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 00:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

• And just because it's never being mentioned, you can try out MathJax here for more than two years now using the mathJax user script. Nageh (talk) 10:28, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I did actually intend to give you a little nod for that in the piece; now clarified accordingly. Regards, - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 10:32, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Thanks, very much appreciated! Nageh (talk) 10:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Diff colors

Can we please have brighter diff colors? I can barely see these. For a small change like punctuation, it is very difficult to find the change. I know that most Wikipedians have young eyes, but have some compassion for us old folks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:55, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the new version can be easier to make out - see this diff and compare it replicated on a wiki which is currently MW 1.17, here. See the first paragraph of the diff on each - the new one highlights the differences rather than using red font, which can be easier to spot when the differences are in a single character, or punctuation (especially when a whitespace character is added or removed).

However, I'd also like a stronger color of highlighting. I usually have no trouble reading (I'm not quite an old fella yet) but brighter colors would make the diffs easier to make out.

Other than that the new diffs look good. Unfortunately they still sometimes struggle to compare equivalent paragraphs, when new paragraphs are added. That looks like a tricky problem - not sure what it would take to fix that. --Chriswaterguy talk 07:30, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

A new diff engine. They are available, but I think we use the one we do for efficiency purposes.

Incidentally, I'm sure the coloured border used to be wider - it must have been thinned for other reasons - which made the requisite paragraphs stand out more. Presumably the problem with increasing the vividness of the colours is the contrast with the black, though I can't say for sure. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 09:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)