Extension:WikEdDiff

MediaWiki extensions manual

WikEdDiff Release status: stable
Implementation	User interface
Description	Inline-style difference engine with block move support
Author(s)	Cacycletalk
Latest version	1.2.5 (2015-07-20)
MediaWiki	1.17 - 1.25
PHP	5.3.0
Database changes	No
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review
Parameters $wgWikEdDiffFullDiff, $wgWikEdDiffShowBlockMoves, $wgWikEdDiffCharDiff, $wgWikEdDiffRepeatedDiff, $wgWikEdDiffRecursiveDiff, $wgWikEdDiffRecursionMax, $wgWikEdDiffUnlinkBlocks, $wgWikEdDiffUnlinkMax, $wgWikEdDiffBlockMinLength, $wgWikEdDiffColoredBlocks, $wgWikEdDiffNoUnicodeSymbols, $wgWikEdDiffStripTrailingNewline, $wgWikEdDiffDebug, $wgWikEdDiffTimer, $wgWikEdDiffUnitTesting
Hooks used GetDifferenceEngine
Hooks provided GetDiffEngineClass
Quarterly downloads	1 (Ranked 135th)
Translate the WikEdDiff extension
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

WikEdDiff example diff:
deleted text, inserted text, ▶ block move mark, moved block, single character changes, highlighted moved block and ◀ block mark, and ambiguous insertion aligned to line.

WikEdDiff is a visual inline-style difference engine with block move support. This extension is a feature-identical synced one-to-one PHP port of the JavaScript library wikEd diff that is used by the Wikipedia/MediaWiki in-browser editor wikEd and by the gadget wikEdDiff. You can test wikEdDiff by checking any of these gadgets in your English Wikipedia preferences. For testing the effects of different settings, you can also use the wikEd diff online tool and demo.

Features

• Visual inline style, changes are shown in a single output text
• Block move detection and highlighting
• Resolution down to characters level
• Unicode and multilingual support
• Stepwise split (paragraphs, lines, sentences, words, characters)
• Recursive diff
• Optimized code for resolving unmatched sequences
• Minimization of length of moved blocks
• Alignment of ambiguous unmatched sequences to next line break or word border
• Clipping of unchanged irrelevant parts from the output (optional)
• Fully customizable
• Text split optimized for MediaWiki source texts
• Well commented and documented code

Performance

The performance of wikEdDiff as compared to the MediaWiki bundled engine 'wikidiff3' (which is not used by default) depends mostly on the number of changes per text and text length. For typical comparisons, the MediaWiki default engine 'wikidiff3' is typically faster by a factor of up to 3 - 4-fold. For long and heavily changed articles, wikEdDiff can be slightly faster than 'wikidiff3'. These numbers are for wikEdDiff version 1.2.2 with default settings (i.e. optimal diff quality).

Installation

• Download and move the extracted WikEdDiff folder to your extensions/ directory.
  Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/WikEdDiff
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:

  wfLoadExtension( 'WikEdDiff' );
  # Optional customization options:
  
  # Show complete un-clipped diff text (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffFullDiff = false;
  
  # Enable block move layout with highlighted blocks and marks at their original positions (true)
  $wgWikEdDiffShowBlockMoves = true;
  
  # Enable character-refined diff (true)
  $wgWikEdDiffCharDiff = true;
  
  // Enable repeated diff to resolve problematic sequences (true)
  $wgWikEdDiffRepeatedDiff = true;
  
  # Enable recursive diff to resolve problematic sequences (true)
  $wgWikEdDiffRecursiveDiff = true;
  
  # Maximum recursion depth (10)
  $wgWikEdDiffRecursionMax = 10;
  
  # Reject blocks if they are too short and their words are not unique,
  # prevents fragmentated diffs for very different versions (true)
  $wgWikEdDiffUnlinkBlocks = true;
  
  # Maximum number of rejection cycles (5)
  $wgWikEdDiffUnlinkMax = 5;
  
  # Reject blocks if shorter than this number of real words (3)
  $wgWikEdDiffBlockMinLength = 3;
  
  # Display blocks in differing colors (rainbow color scheme) (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffColoredBlocks = false;
  
  # Do not use UniCode block move marks (legacy browsers) (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffNoUnicodeSymbols = false;
  
  # Strip trailing newline off of texts (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffStripTrailingNewline = true;
  
  # Show debug infos and stats (block, group, and fragment data objects) in debug console (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffDebug = false;
  
  # Show timing results in debug console (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffTimer = false;
  
  # Run unit tests to prove correct working, display results in debug console (false)
  $wgWikEdDiffUnitTesting = false;
  

•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

See also

• wikEdDiff gadget
• wikEd diff JavaScript library
• wikEd diff online tool and demo