RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals
   4 setting since version 1.2.0. If you have it on, turn it *off* if you can.
   5
   6
   7 == MediaWiki 1.5 alpha 1 ==
   8
   9 May 3, 2005
  10
  11 This is a testing preview release, being put out mainly to aid testers in
  12 finding installation bugs and other major problems. It is strongly recommended
  13 NOT to run a live production web site on this alpha release.
  14
  15 **  WARNING: USE OF THIS ALPHA RELEASE MAY INFEST YOUR HOUSE WITH  **
  16 **  TERMITES, ROT YOUR TEETH,  GROW HAIR ON YOUR PALMS, AND PASTE  **
  17 **  INNUENDO  INTO  YOUR  C.V.  RIGHT  BEFORE  A  JOB  INTERVIEW!  **
  18 **  DON'T SAY WE DIDN'T WARN YOU, MAN. WE TOTALLY DID RIGHT HERE.  **
  19
  20
  21 === Big changes ===
  22
  23 Schema:
  24   The core table schema has changed significantly. This should make better
  25   use of the database's cache and disk I/O, and make significantly speed up
  26   rename and delete operations on pages with very long edit histories.
  27
  28   Unfortunately this does mean upgrading a wiki of size from 1.4 will require
  29   some downtime for the schema restructuring, but future storage backend
  30   changes should be able to integrate into the new system more easily.
  31
  32 Permalinks:
  33   The current revision of a page now has a permanent 'oldid' number assigned
  34   immediately, and the id numbers are now preserved across deletion/undeletion.
  35   A permanent reference to the current revision of a page is now just a matter
  36   of going to the 'history' tab and copying the first link in the list.
  37
  38 Page move log:
  39   Renames of pages are now recorded in Special:Log and the page history.
  40   A handy revert link is available from the log for sysops.
  41
  42 Editing diff:
  43   Ever lost track of what you'd done so far during an edit? A 'Show diff'
  44   button on the edit page now makes it easy to remember.
  45
  46 Uploads:
  47   It's now possible to specify the final filename of an upload distinct
  48   from the original filename on your disk.
  49
  50   An image link for a missing file will now take you straight to the upload page.
  51
  52   More metadata is pre-extracted from uploaded images, which will ease pressure
  53   on disk or NFS volumes used to store images. EXIF metadata is displayed on
  54   the image description page if PHP is configured with the necessary module.
  55
  56 User accounts:
  57   There are some changes to the user permissions system, with assignable
  58   groups. This is still somewhat in flux; do not rely on the present system
  59   that you see in this alpha to still be there.
  60
  61 E-mail:
  62   User-to-user e-mail can now be restricted to require a mail-back confirmation
  63   first to reduce potential for abuse with false addresses.
  64
  65   Updates to user talk pages and watchlist entries can optionally send e-mail
  66   notifications.
  67
  68 External hooks:
  69   A somewhat experimental interface for hooking in an external editor
  70   application is included. This may not be on by default in final release,
  71   depending on support.
  72
  73 And...
  74   A bunch of stuff we forgot to mention.
  75
  76
  77 === What's gone? ===
  78
  79 Latin-1:
  80   Wikis must now be encoded in Unicode UTF-8; this has been the default for
  81   some time, but some languages could optionally be installed in Latin-1 mode.
  82   This is no longer supported.
  83
  84 MySQL 3.x:
  85   Some optimization hacks for MySQL 3.x have been removed as part of the schema
  86   clean-up (specifically, the inverse_timestamp fields). MediaWiki 1.5 should
  87   still run, but wikis of significant size should very seriously consider
  88   upgrading to a more modern release. MySQL 3.x support will probably be
  89   entirely dropped in the next major release later this year.
  90
  91 Special:Maintenance
  92   These tools were, ironically enough, not really maintained. This special
  93   page has been removed; insofar as some of its pieces were useful and haven't
  94   already been supplanted by other special pages they should be rewritten in
  95   an efficient and safe manner in the future.
  96
  97
  98 === What's still waiting? ===
  99
 100 These things should be fixed by the time 1.5.0 final is released:
 101
 102 Upgrade:
 103   Wikis in Latin-1 encoding are no longer supported; only Unicode UTF-8.
 104   A new option $wgLegacyEncoding is provided to allow on-the-fly recoding of
 105   old page text entries, but other metadata fields (titles, comments etc) need
 106   to be pre-converted. The upgrade process does not yet fully automate this.
 107
 108   In general the upgrade from 1.4 to 1.5 schema has not been tested for all
 109   cases, and there may be problems.
 110
 111 Backups:
 112   The text entries of deleted pages are no longer removed from the main
 113   text table on deletion. If you provide public backup dumps of your databases,
 114   you will probably want to use the new XML-format dump generator... but
 115   this hasn't been finished yet.
 116
 117 PostgreSQL:
 118   The table definitions for PostgreSQL install are out of date, and patches
 119   to support PostgreSQL from the main installer are still pending.
 120
 121 MySQL 4.1+:
 122   Proper charset encoding / collation configuration for installs on MySQL 4.1
 123   and higher still needs to be fiddled with. Some bits may fail on the UTF-8
 124   setting due to some long field keys.
 125
 126 Authentication plugin fixes:
 127   The AuthPlugin interface needs some improvements to work better with LDAP,
 128   HTTP basic auth, and other such environments. Some patches are pending.
 129
 130
 131 === Smaller changes ===
 132
 133 Various bugfixes, small features, and a few experimental things:
 134
 135 * 'live preview' reduces preview reload burden on supported browsers
 136 * Schema reworking: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Database_Schema_Changes/October_2004
 137 * New WikiSyntax: -- turns into &mdash; or &ndash; depending on context
 138 * (bug 15) Allow editors to view diff of their change before actually submitting an edit
 139 * (bug 190) Hide your own edits on the watchlist
 140 * (bug 510): Special:Randompage now works for other namespaces than NS_MAIN.
 141 * (bug 1015) support for the full wikisyntax in <gallery> captions.
 142 * (bug 1105) A "Destination filename" (save as) added to Special:Upload Upload.
 143 * (bug 1352) Images on description pages now get thumbnailed regardless of whether the thumbnail is larger than the original.
 144 * (bug 1662) A new magicword, {{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}} returns the abbreviation of the current month
 145 * (bug 1668) 'Date format' supported for other languages than English, see:
 146   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-March/028364.html
 147 * (bug 1739) A new magicword, {{REVISIONID}} give you the article or diff database
 148   revision id, useful for proper citation.
 149 * (bug 1998) Updated the Russian translation.
 150 * It's now possible to invert the namespace selection at Special:Allpages and Special:Contributions
 151 * No longer using sorbs.net to check for open proxies by default.
 152 * What was $wgDisableUploads is now $wgEnableUploads, and should be set to true if one wishes to enable uploads.
 153 * Supplying a reason for a block is no longer mandatory
 154 * Language conversion support for category pages
 155 * $wgStyleSheetDirectory is no longer an alias for $wgStyleDirectory;
 156 * ...and more!
 157
 158
 159
 160 === Caveats ===
 161
 162 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 163 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 164 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 165 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 166 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 167
 168
 169 For notes on 1.4.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 170
 171
 172 === Online documentation ===
 173
 174 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 175 built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 176 License:
 177
 178   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
 179
 180
 181 === Mailing list ===
 182
 183 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 184 wikitech-l list:
 185
 186   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 187
 188 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 189   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 190
 191 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 192 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 193
 194
 195 === IRC help ===
 196
 197 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net