Monday, November 18, 2013

Wikipedia sorting Greasemonkey script updated

The Greasemonkey script wiksort,  aka "Wikipedia Sorting", was updated and uploaded to the userscripts site. Version 2.0 adds support for https links and automatically set focus to the article word list, so that you don't have to click in the box to highlight any misspelled words. It has been tested with the English Wikipedia Cologne Blue skin, as well as the default Vector skin.

For those unfamiliar with wiksort, following is a description of what it does and how it is used.

wiksort is a script that sorts unique words in an English Wikipedia article to a separate browser page. All words over six characters are alphabetically listed in a text box of the new page as a single entry, followed by the usage count.

wiksort works quite well with the Firefox browser because Firefox's built-in spell checker can help one quickly locate misspelled words and inconsistent spelling within the word list. I find the alphabetically sorted word list very useful in rooting out typographical errors and inconsistent spelling, although one should always double-check that a possible misspelling is really incorrect in the article's context.

Once installed, the script will add a link titled "Sort words" to either the ''toolbox'' section (default Vector skin) or the ''Edit'' section (Cologne Blue skin). Click on the "Sort words" link to generate a page with the sorted word list. After a short delay while the page is processed, the page will either display in a new tab or a separate browser window, depending on the user-selected browser options.

You must enable popups for the Wikipedia site, because the newly generated page is considered a popup. Since Wikipedia does not use advertising popups, this permission should not be too onerous.

Please post here if you have any questions about using wiksort.

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