Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Fronds

WP:FRONDS

Find/Replace ON Demand Services (FRONDS) are collaboratively-created blocks (or modules) of Find-Replace combinations for AutoWikiBrowser. The system is still young, and desperately needs contributors in order to further the usefulness of the plugin for other users. Be brave, and take that first step.

Why?

The main driver of these developments is WikiProject Check Wikipedia, which lists syntax and other errors, many of which can be easily fixed en-masse using AWB using custom built regular expressions (regexes) which editors add to their find/replace list (see right). Over time, they spend time developing and improving the regexes they need to fix the error in which they are most interested, oblivious to the regexes being used by other editors. Likewise, this is probably the case with other projects, where editing by regular expression is common.

By sharing community lists of regexes, and editor can quickly start work on a new error, working with the most efficient regexes i.e. the ones that will save them the most time. Meanwhile, someone fixing one error can also fix another while they are going along, reducing history clutter and time spent editing that one page.

Getting started with Fronds

Installing

Firstly, remember that Fronds is still young. For now, one must follow this simple process:

Right click on this link, and select an option that involves saving the target;
When prompted, choose to save it into the same directory as the main .exe associated with your installation of AWB (not the plugins folder);
Load up AWB;

On the Plugins menu, click on "Fronds plugin" to enable it (top right);
Then, in the submenu that appears when you hover over "Frond plugin", select "Configuration" (also top right).
Tick all those you wish to use (probably at this early stage, the majority of them) and press "Okay".
Save your settings using the "File" menu.
Edit with AWB as you would normally. All settings will be remembered between sessions (assuming you followed the previous step), so there's no need to go through all that ^ rigmarole every time.

Fronds are automatically updated every time you load AWB, or you can force an edit by pressing "Okay" in the configuration window.

Follow the steps below to add and contribute, please!

Contributing

Load this toolserver page or follow the link in the "Configuration" window;
Select one of the lists, or apply to User:Jarry1250 for a new list;
Edit or add to the selection;
Save your changes.

Updating Fronds

To update your version of the fronds plugin, overwrite your existing Fronds.dll (which should be in the same directory as AutoWikiBrowser.exe) with the latest version (right click, save as).

Due to the nature of Fronds, updates to the main plugin will be few and far between. Therefore, one can safely assume that the update is an important one; it may contain major bugfixes or other improvements. This would suggest that it's advisable to update whenever prompted to do so, especially as the project is now only in its beta phase.

Removing Fronds

Delete Fronds.dll from the main AWB installation directory.
Er...
That's it.

Known issues

Users can overwrite other users' changes on the web interface, because there is no "edit conflict" type checking,

The concept

Differences from a plugin

At the end of the day, users of the Fronds system have to install a plugin to get the main interface, but the intention is to make the regexes themselves as easily updatable as possible. (See below for more.)

Differences from a general fix

General fixes are required to have a very low false positive rate, because most editors will assume that AWB has got it right; this is not negligence on the part of the human editor, merely, it is an understandable consequence of performing the same edit over and over again. By opting in, a higher level of care is (hopefully) maintained and false positives more likely to be spotted.

More importantly though is the speed with which updated and fixed regexes can be delivered to the end-user - every time they use AWB, or something similar; this is compared to the several week delay for general fixes that the novice end-user receives. (Bot operators frequently download svn snapshots, but even these are not that frequent.)