setting since version 1.2.0. If you have it on, turn it *off* if you can.
+== MediaWiki 1.5 alpha 1 ==
+
+May 3, 2005
+
+This is a testing preview release, being put out mainly to aid testers in
+finding installation bugs and other major problems. It is strongly recommended
+NOT to run a live production web site on this alpha release.
+
+** WARNING: USE OF THIS ALPHA RELEASE MAY INFEST YOUR HOUSE WITH **
+** TERMITES, ROT YOUR TEETH, GROW HAIR ON YOUR PALMS, AND PASTE **
+** INNUENDO INTO YOUR C.V. RIGHT BEFORE A JOB INTERVIEW! **
+** DON'T SAY WE DIDN'T WARN YOU, MAN. WE TOTALLY DID RIGHT HERE. **
+
+
+=== Big changes ===
+
+Schema:
+ The core table schema has changed significantly. This should make better
+ use of the database's cache and disk I/O, and make significantly speed up
+ rename and delete operations on pages with very long edit histories.
+
+ Unfortunately this does mean upgrading a wiki of size from 1.4 will require
+ some downtime for the schema restructuring, but future storage backend
+ changes should be able to integrate into the new system more easily.
+
+Permalinks:
+ The current revision of a page now has a permanent 'oldid' number assigned
+ immediately, and the id numbers are now preserved across deletion/undeletion.
+ A permanent reference to the current revision of a page is now just a matter
+ of going to the 'history' tab and copying the first link in the list.
+
+Page move log:
+ Renames of pages are now recorded in Special:Log and the page history.
+ A handy revert link is available from the log for sysops.
+
+Editing diff:
+ Ever lost track of what you'd done so far during an edit? A 'Show diff'
+ button on the edit page now makes it easy to remember.
+
+Uploads:
+ It's now possible to specify the final filename of an upload distinct
+ from the original filename on your disk.
+
+ An image link for a missing file will now take you straight to the upload page.
+
+ More metadata is pre-extracted from uploaded images, which will ease pressure
+ on disk or NFS volumes used to store images. EXIF metadata is displayed on
+ the image description page if PHP is configured with the necessary module.
+
+User accounts:
+ There are some changes to the user permissions system, with assignable
+ groups. This is still somewhat in flux; do not rely on the present system
+ that you see in this alpha to still be there.
+
+E-mail:
+ User-to-user e-mail can now be restricted to require a mail-back confirmation
+ first to reduce potential for abuse with false addresses.
+
+ Updates to user talk pages and watchlist entries can optionally send e-mail
+ notifications.
+
+External hooks:
+ A somewhat experimental interface for hooking in an external editor
+ application is included. This may not be on by default in final release,
+ depending on support.
+
+And...
+ A bunch of stuff we forgot to mention.
+
+
+=== What's gone? ===
+
+Latin-1:
+ Wikis must now be encoded in Unicode UTF-8; this has been the default for
+ some time, but some languages could optionally be installed in Latin-1 mode.
+ This is no longer supported.
+
+MySQL 3.x:
+ Some optimization hacks for MySQL 3.x have been removed as part of the schema
+ clean-up (specifically, the inverse_timestamp fields). MediaWiki 1.5 should
+ still run, but wikis of significant size should very seriously consider
+ upgrading to a more modern release. MySQL 3.x support will probably be
+ entirely dropped in the next major release later this year.
+
+Special:Maintenance
+ These tools were, ironically enough, not really maintained. This special
+ page has been removed; insofar as some of its pieces were useful and haven't
+ already been supplanted by other special pages they should be rewritten in
+ an efficient and safe manner in the future.
+
+
+=== What's still waiting? ===
+
+These things should be fixed by the time 1.5.0 final is released:
+
+Upgrade:
+ Wikis in Latin-1 encoding are no longer supported; only Unicode UTF-8.
+ A new option $wgLegacyEncoding is provided to allow on-the-fly recoding of
+ old page text entries, but other metadata fields (titles, comments etc) need
+ to be pre-converted. The upgrade process does not yet fully automate this.
+
+ In general the upgrade from 1.4 to 1.5 schema has not been tested for all
+ cases, and there may be problems.
+
+Backups:
+ The text entries of deleted pages are no longer removed from the main
+ text table on deletion. If you provide public backup dumps of your databases,
+ you will probably want to use the new XML-format dump generator... but
+ this hasn't been finished yet.
+
+PostgreSQL:
+ The table definitions for PostgreSQL install are out of date, and patches
+ to support PostgreSQL from the main installer are still pending.
+
+MySQL 4.1+:
+ Proper charset encoding / collation configuration for installs on MySQL 4.1
+ and higher still needs to be fiddled with. Some bits may fail on the UTF-8
+ setting due to some long field keys.
+
+Authentication plugin fixes:
+ The AuthPlugin interface needs some improvements to work better with LDAP,
+ HTTP basic auth, and other such environments. Some patches are pending.
+
+
+=== Smaller changes ===
+
+Various bugfixes, small features, and a few experimental things:
+
+* 'live preview' reduces preview reload burden on supported browsers
+* Schema reworking: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Database_Schema_Changes/October_2004
+* New WikiSyntax: -- turns into — or – depending on context
+* (bug 15) Allow editors to view diff of their change before actually submitting an edit
+* (bug 190) Hide your own edits on the watchlist
+* (bug 510): Special:Randompage now works for other namespaces than NS_MAIN.
+* (bug 1015) support for the full wikisyntax in <gallery> captions.
+* (bug 1105) A "Destination filename" (save as) added to Special:Upload Upload.
+* (bug 1352) Images on description pages now get thumbnailed regardless of whether the thumbnail is larger than the original.
+* (bug 1662) A new magicword, {{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}} returns the abbreviation of the current month
+* (bug 1668) 'Date format' supported for other languages than English, see:
+ http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-March/028364.html
+* (bug 1739) A new magicword, {{REVISIONID}} give you the article or diff database
+ revision id, useful for proper citation.
+* (bug 1998) Updated the Russian translation.
+* It's now possible to invert the namespace selection at Special:Allpages and Special:Contributions
+* No longer using sorbs.net to check for open proxies by default.
+* What was $wgDisableUploads is now $wgEnableUploads, and should be set to true if one wishes to enable uploads.
+* Supplying a reason for a block is no longer mandatory
+* Language conversion support for category pages
+* $wgStyleSheetDirectory is no longer an alias for $wgStyleDirectory;
+* ...and more!
+
-**** THIS FILE IS NOT UP TO DATE *****
-**** BEFORE 1.4 RELEASE, BE SURE TO FIX IT *****
-
-== Version 1.3.1, 2004-08-?? ==
-
-Changes from 1.3.0:
-* Watchlist parameters now work with register_globals off
-* Fixed parsing of ''italics'' and '''bold''' mark-up (again)
-* Special:Allpages display is more sensible on smaller wikis
-* Fixed XHTML parsing error in classic skins
-* Moved pages update watchlist correctly
-* Fixed rebuildall.php on case-sensitive Unix filesystems
-* New magic word PAGENAMEE (URL-escaped version of PAGENAME)
-* Articles count now updated correctly when an article is moved
- in/out of the article namespace.
-
-== Version 1.3.0, 2004-08-11 ==
-
-Look & layout:
-* New default layout 'MonoBook' (available on PHP4 only currently)
-* Print stylesheet now built-in to every page
-* More or less correct XHTML 1.0 (served as text/html by default)
-
-Wiki features:
-* Image captions can now include links and other basic formatting
-* Image bounding box can be specified instead of width, e.g. as
- 100x100px, making the image not wider than 100px and not higher
- than 100px, keeping aspect ratio.
-* Templates have been expanded with parameters, and separated from
- the MediaWiki: localization scheme.
-* Categories more or less work
-* added a special page for listing users with sysop rights.
-
-Editing:
-* Automatic merging of edit conflicts that don't directly interfere
-* Edit summaries can now include basic formatting and links
-
-Metadata and output:
-* Linked Creative Commons copyright metadata (optional)
-* RSS 2.0 & Atom 0.3 feeds for Recent Changes, New Pages
-
-Optional modules:
-* WikiHiero hieroglyphic module can be added (separate download)
-* Timeline module can be added (separate download).
- Requires ploticus.
-* TeX now has an experimental MathML output mode (incomplete!)
-
-Installation and upgrading:
-* The old install.php and update.php have been removed. In-place
- installation introduced in 1.2 is now the standard installation
- and upgrade method, see INSTALL and UPGRADE for directions.
-
-Database:
-* The links table has been changed to use a cur_id for l_from.
- The link tables must be converted on upgrade, which may entail
- some downtime.
-
-Code and compatibility:
-* Should now run clean with error reporting set to E_ALL.
-* register_globals hack from 1.2 has been replaced with safer code
-* Bundled PHPTAL 0.7.0 from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/
- (with some patches)
-* Most image-related code moved to Image.php
-* More fixes for PHP 4.1.2 (thanks to Asheesh Laroia)
-* URL encoding fix for anchors
-* All languages now available in UTF-8 mode
-* Various other fixes
=== Caveats ===
cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
-The new 'MonoBook' skin is not compatible with PHP 5 due to bugs in the
-underlying PHPTAL library. It will be automatically disabled when running
-on PHP5; the older look and feel will be used instead.
-
-For notes on 1.2.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
+For notes on 1.4.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
=== Online documentation ===
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
+A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
+ http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
+
+It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
+going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
+
=== IRC help ===