View source for Template talk:Text diff

== Lint errors ==

This template is causing missing end tag, stripped tag, and misnested tag lint errors, and it seems that this is associated with line breaks or multiple blocks in either or both of the main parameters. Here are some pages that use this templates and have such errors:

* [[Talk:Sri Sathya Sai International Organization]]: Missing end tag and Stripped tags for {{tag|ins}}.
* [[Talk:IHH Healthcare]]: Missing end tag and Stripped tags for {{tag|ins}}.
* [[Talk:Dog food]]: Missing end tag and Stripped tags for {{tag|del}}.
* [[Talk:American Foundation for Suicide Prevention]]: HTML5-misnesting and Stripped tags for {{tag|ins}}.
* [[Template talk:Non-free 2D art]]: HTML5-misnesting and Stripped tags for {{tag|ins}}.

If this can fixed, it should be fixed. If it can't be fixed, it should be documented what markup causes these problems. —[[User:Anomalocaris|Anomalocaris]] ([[User talk:Anomalocaris|talk]]) 00:34, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

[[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]]: Thank you for fixing [[Template:TextDiff/doc]] to acknowledge that this template is good for inline use only. Unfortunately, it is already widely deployed with multi-paragraph arguments, so it would be good if somebody gets this thing to work in such contexts. —[[User:Anomalocaris|Anomalocaris]] ([[User talk:Anomalocaris|talk]]) 22:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
:As you might have seen, I did some experimenting in the template sandbox and created a testcases page. It was not fruitful, for the most part. I don't know enough Lua or CSS, one of which might be able to help resolve the problem, to install a fix in the module. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 23:29, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
::I am returning to this issue after some time. It still exists. I have replaced the [[Template:Text_diff/testcases#Minimal_test_with_block_content|minimal block-content test case with a smaller example]] that still shows an error. The relevant bit of the rendered wikitext appears to be an untranslated line break after "1947)": <br><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word; direction: ltr;">Jane Doe<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline" style="background: var(--background-color-content-added,#a3d3ff); color: inherit; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: initial;">&#32;</ins><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline" style="background: var(--background-color-content-added,#a3d3ff); color: inherit; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: initial;">(born</ins>&#32;<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline" style="background: var(--background-color-content-added,#a3d3ff); color: inherit; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: initial;">1947)</ins><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline" style="background: var(--background-color-content-added,#a3d3ff); color: inherit; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: initial;">&#32; 
&#10;&#10;</ins><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline" style="background: var(--background-color-content-added,#a3d3ff); color: inherit; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: initial;">&#61;&#61;Early</ins>
</syntaxhighlight>

::Note the <code><nowiki>&amp;#32; </nowiki></code> (an encoded space followed by an unencoded space) followed by a line break in the rendered code, then <code><nowiki>&amp;#10;&amp;#10;</ins></nowiki></code>, which represents two encoded line breaks and then a closing ins tag. 

::The unencoded line break inside the {{tag|ins}} tag, which is an inline-only tag, as far as I know, may be the problem. I have a hypothesis that if the module code could encode the line break, the {{tag|ins}} tags would no longer contain line breaks and would not complain. If there are any Lua coders who can take a look at the sandbox module code and figure out a way to test this hypothesis, that may be helpful. 

::The translation from plain text to encoded text may be performed by [[:mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua_reference_manual#mw.text.nowiki|the Lua mw.text.nowiki]] function, if I am reading the code correctly. It may not be encoding enough of the line breaks. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 01:54, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
:::I'll try to look at this over the weekend. Meanwhile, see [[User:Johnuniq/sandbox2]] where I posted just the minimal test using {{tl|Text diff/sandbox}}, then added something to show the wikitext from the template (it looks ok on a big screen). Page information shows stripped-tag and html5-misnesting errors for ins. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 04:47, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
::::Thanks for looking at it. I wonder if that [[:Module:dump]] output is accurate. It does not have a line break in the <syntaxhighlight lang=wikitext>>&#32;  &#10;&#10;</ins></syntaxhighlight> code after "1947)" but [[Special:ExpandTemplates]] does have a line break, which is where the stripped-tag and html5-misnesting errors for {{tag|ins}} are. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 04:55, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::Hmmm, it might not be accurate about that because dumphtml tries to show formatted html and it could be skipping a newline. I'll think about that. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 05:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

This has also been previously brough up at [[Wikipedia talk:Linter/Archive 3#del and ins tag errors]]. All I really remember is something about newlines being part of the difference was causing issues, though I don't remember (or have) any ideas for a fix. [[User:Aidan9382|Aidan9382]] <sub>([[User talk:Aidan9382|talk]])</sub> 08:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

:I've come up with a potential fix idea [[Special:Diff/1257509654|here]]. Not sure if it's the cleanest way of fixing it, but it seems to solve the linter issues and still seems to render fine, if a little bit different (stacks of newlines are a bit shorter). [[User:Aidan9382|Aidan9382]] <sub>([[User talk:Aidan9382|talk]])</sub> 08:15, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
::That looks like a nice fix that targets the problem and does not affect anything else. It also appears to avoid displaying a spurious extra line break in the resulting diff. In the minimal case, the live template shows three line breaks after "Doe was born" in the diff, but the input contains only two line breaks, as does the sandbox diff. So the fix appears to be correcting a Linter error that was also resulting in a display error; two fixes! I'm happy with this change. I'll let {{U|Johnuniq}} take a look at it before making it live. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 14:01, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
:::I did a trivial edit to update how the original MediaWiki author appears for compatibility with [[c:Module:Diff]], and to remove trailing whitespace. Should I fix the indents to use tabs? That would be more normal but would complicate comparing enwiki version with [[c:Module:Diff]]. I will need another 24 hours to look at the substantive issues. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 02:31, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
::::Rather than doing any work, I fixed the indents. Revert if unwanted. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 03:48, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

===Block content aligned vertically at the top===
Just for the record, if we are going to support block content, it seemed to me that both blocks should start their text at the top of the table cell, instead of being aligned vertically in the center. I have made a minor change to the td style in the sandbox. You can see the effect in the minimal block test case. This change should have no effect on in-line diffs or on the Linter error described above. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 14:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
:I have finished examining the code and [[Module:Diff/sandbox]] is ready to be deployed. I haven't penetrated the module's innermost secrets but I got a fair understanding of what it is doing. I think Aidan9382's fix is all that's required for now. I wondered whether the algorithm could be improved to properly handle multiple lines but I think that would require quite a lot of pain. I gave up trying to fix the problem apparent in the simpler multiline demo at [[User:Johnuniq/sandbox2]] (it does not show "def hello" as being the same because some excess spaces confuse it). The module works well for its intended use. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 02:50, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
::I have updated the live module. Please report any errors here. Thanks to both of you for your clever and quick work! – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 04:21, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

== The highlighting doesn't always match MediaWiki's ==

Example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&diff=prev&oldid=1233276545&diffmode=source]

In the example, the template currently highlights "correspondence)" and the comma. However, both were untouched and should thus probably not be highlighted. MediaWiki gets it right, the template currently doesn't. [[User:ToBeFree|&#126; ToBeFree]] ([[User talk:ToBeFree|talk]]) 07:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

== Semi-protected edit request on 26 October 2025 ==

{{edit semi-protected|Template:Text diff|answered=yes}}
'''Please fix it so that common tools like these don't look so messy.'''

{{citation needed}}
{{text diff
| unsourced text. 
| unsourced text.{{citation needed}}
}}

{{additional citation needed}}
{{text diff
| poorly sourced text. 
| poorly sourced text.{{additional citation needed}}
}}

{{langx|de|Bayern}}
{{text diff
| Bayern
| {{langx|de|Bayern}}
}}

{{Interlanguage link|Bavaria in German Wikipedia|de|Bayern}}
{{text diff
| Bavaria in German Wikipedia
| {{Interlanguage link|Bavaria in German Wikipedia|de|Bayern}}
}}

{{see also|Bavaria #History}}
{{text diff
| [[Bavaria #History]]
| {{see also|Bavaria #History}}
}} [[Special:Contributions/2405:6E00:633:E7DF:24DD:ECDE:C536:C0E7|2405:6E00:633:E7DF:24DD:ECDE:C536:C0E7]] ([[User talk:2405:6E00:633:E7DF:24DD:ECDE:C536:C0E7|talk]]) 18:08, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
:{{Not done}}''':''' this is the [[Help:Talk pages|talk page]] for discussing improvements to the [[Help:Template|template]] {{tlx|Text diff}}. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned.<!-- Template:ESp --> – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 02:14, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

== Passing in rawcode ==

Is there a way to use textdiff while passing in a block of template code, such as {{tag|syntaxhighlight}} code? Cannot figure out how to make that work... Only work around is to escape everything with {{tl|!}} and {{tl|(}}, etc. '''[[User:Zackmann08|<span style="color:#00d5ff !important">Zack</span><span style="color:#007F94 !important">mann</span>]]''' (<sup>[[User_talk:Zackmann08|Talk to me]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Zackmann08|<span style="color:orange !important">What I been doing</span>]]</sub>) 19:03, 11 June 2026 (UTC)
:Textdiff is for text differences. For template changes, the sandbox should be used since the intent is clear and also can be tested directly. --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] &#x1f339; ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 08:37, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
::{{ping|Redrose64}} totally agree for templates to use the sandbox. The case I'm having is with a protected article [[Talk:Mahfiruz_Hatun#c-Zackmann08-20260611190600-Protected_edit_request_on_11_June_2026|here]]. Just trying to understand if there is a good way to do this without having to escape all the special characters. '''[[User:Zackmann08|<span style="color:#00d5ff !important">Zack</span><span style="color:#007F94 !important">mann</span>]]''' (<sup>[[User_talk:Zackmann08|Talk to me]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Zackmann08|<span style="color:orange !important">What I been doing</span>]]</sub>) 17:47, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
:::Personally I would word it as "Please amend two parameter names, as follows: {{para|full name}} to become {{para|full_name}}, and {{para|spouse-type}} to become {{para|spouse_type}}. Their respective values should remain unaltered." --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] &#x1f339; ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 23:17, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
::::Works for me! '''[[User:Zackmann08|<span style="color:#00d5ff !important">Zack</span><span style="color:#007F94 !important">mann</span>]]''' (<sup>[[User_talk:Zackmann08|Talk to me]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Zackmann08|<span style="color:orange !important">What I been doing</span>]]</sub>) 00:20, 13 June 2026 (UTC)