Thanks, glad to help! There is still a lot left to do though.
I think the advanced forum editor is really not that much advanced for anyone with a computer background. But my heartbeat increases when I have to switch to the advanced editor to reach for the “remove formatting” button. So If you ask me, please make the advanced editor the default.
Regarding Syntax Highlighting, I prefer a button solution, which makes selected text appear similar to the previous forum when using the {code} tags. It made text appear in a fixed-width font and added a frame with a grey background and horizontal scroll bar when necessary to prevent automatic line wrapping. I do not want any line numbers to be added and no suppressing of empty lines or computer paper background. I would however like to be able to change the font style and color of individual text fragments.
moniquevdb_oracle wrote:
Holy.... wow, this is helpful, thank you so much for kicking this off, Dude!
BluShadow I know you are in favor of reenabling code formatting and ditching the Syntax Highlighter altogether. I've also heard that users would prefer the advanced editor to open by default. Anything else on the wishlist?
correction, I would certainly be in favour (favor to you 
) of reenabling code tags, mainly because I work quicker by copy/paste and by keyboard than by having to click through a load of buttons (that currently don't do what they should). I've not said that syntax highlighting should be ditched altogether, and I'd certainly be in favour of it being there, just so long as it provided a decent formatting that was appropriate, so code actually looked like code, and the ability for people to copy/paste the code out of the forum to their own environment wasn't corrupted with double line spacing (as dude has already mentioned) and the addition of the line numbers it puts in (the line numbers are useful for reference on the forum, e.g. when we want to say "you're problem is on line X", but not good when you copy/paste code out to your environment and have to spend ages deleting them all to get the code to do anything). If it's too difficult, then removing the line numbers from the code formatting would be preferable to having them there and not being able to copy the code out without them.
I agree with dude that it would be good to be able to highlight portions of code with bold or colours, which the old forum didn't allow, but this one does, so it's really a combination of old and new that's needed. And as dude highlights, the supressing of blank lines is a pain as it can make the posting of multiple code commands become all compressed and difficult to read, and is not representative of what we have in our interfaces such as SQL*Plus etc.
Basic example:
Copy paste from my SQL*Plus window into the forum (and me applying courier new and quoting it)...
SQL> select * from emp;
EMPNO ENAME JOB MGR HIREDATE SAL COMM DEPTNO
---------- ---------- --------- ---------- -------------------- ---------- ---------- ----------
7369 SMITH CLERK 7902 17-DEC-1980 00:00:00 800 20
7499 ALLEN SALESMAN 7698 20-FEB-1981 00:00:00 1600 300 30
7521 WARD SALESMAN 7698 22-FEB-1981 00:00:00 1250 500 30
7566 JONES MANAGER 7839 02-APR-1981 00:00:00 2975 20
7654 MARTIN SALESMAN 7698 28-SEP-1981 00:00:00 1250 1400 30
7698 BLAKE MANAGER 7839 01-MAY-1981 00:00:00 2850 30
7782 CLARK MANAGER 7839 09-JUN-1981 00:00:00 2450 10
7788 SCOTT ANALYST 7566 19-APR-1987 00:00:00 3000 20
7839 KING PRESIDENT 17-NOV-1981 00:00:00 5000 10
7844 TURNER SALESMAN 7698 08-SEP-1981 00:00:00 1500 0 30
7876 ADAMS CLERK 7788 23-MAY-1987 00:00:00 1100 20
7900 JAMES CLERK 7698 03-DEC-1981 00:00:00 950 30
7902 FORD ANALYST 7566 03-DEC-1981 00:00:00 3000 20
7934 MILLER CLERK 7782 23-JAN-1982 00:00:00 1300 1014 rows selected.
SQL> select * from dept;
DEPTNO DNAME LOC
---------- -------------- -------------
10 ACCOUNTING NEW YORK
20 RESEARCH DALLAS
30 SALES CHICAGO
40 OPERATIONS BOSTONSQL>
but in my SQL*Plus window it looks like.
SQL> select * from emp;
EMPNO ENAME JOB MGR HIREDATE SAL COMM DEPTNO
---------- ---------- --------- ---------- -------------------- ---------- ---------- ----------
7369 SMITH CLERK 7902 17-DEC-1980 00:00:00 800 20
7499 ALLEN SALESMAN 7698 20-FEB-1981 00:00:00 1600 300 30
7521 WARD SALESMAN 7698 22-FEB-1981 00:00:00 1250 500 30
7566 JONES MANAGER 7839 02-APR-1981 00:00:00 2975 20
7654 MARTIN SALESMAN 7698 28-SEP-1981 00:00:00 1250 1400 30
7698 BLAKE MANAGER 7839 01-MAY-1981 00:00:00 2850 30
7782 CLARK MANAGER 7839 09-JUN-1981 00:00:00 2450 10
7788 SCOTT ANALYST 7566 19-APR-1987 00:00:00 3000 20
7839 KING PRESIDENT 17-NOV-1981 00:00:00 5000 10
7844 TURNER SALESMAN 7698 08-SEP-1981 00:00:00 1500 0 30
7876 ADAMS CLERK 7788 23-MAY-1987 00:00:00 1100 20
7900 JAMES CLERK 7698 03-DEC-1981 00:00:00 950 30
7902 FORD ANALYST 7566 03-DEC-1981 00:00:00 3000 20
7934 MILLER CLERK 7782 23-JAN-1982 00:00:00 1300 10
14 rows selected.
SQL> select * from dept;
DEPTNO DNAME LOC
---------- -------------- -------------
10 ACCOUNTING NEW YORK
20 RESEARCH DALLAS
30 SALES CHICAGO
40 OPERATIONS BOSTON
SQL>
Obviously that's a basic example; in reality we can be providing a solution to someone, explaining multiple steps and commands to demonstrate their issue and the solution, and having to go back through the code once we've pasted it adding back in all the line spacings, is a real pain and time consuming.
Certainly, having the advanced editor options available immediately for replying would be better than having to switch to it manually, especially as most people using these forums are going to want to paste code in (what with it being a technical forum and not really a social forum), and the basic editor just doesn't allow for any suitable code formatting (unless the person is mad enough to switch to HTML mode).
I would certainly be in favour (favor to you
+1. I really miss the [code] (or {code}) tags.
Just a wish for the syntax highlighting (I understand if it isn't possible at all): it might be plagiarism, but the code plugin of dokuwiki allows to set the used syntax highlighting in the code tag as well like:
<code plsql>
some_plsql_code;
</code>
or
<code cpp>
some_cplusplus_code;
</code>
maybe something like that could prove useful to the non-WYSIWYG editor zealots like me?
cheers
Code must also not be wrapped and may need a horizontal scroll bar depending on the width of the browser window. It should also allow any character and should not call special internal functions when running into @ and # signs.
The tags used in the previous forum actually made it difficult to maintain useful copies for my own archive. So I usually ended up editing two versions of one and the same document: a forum version and a local copy. I was happy to see that the new forum uses HTML and is WYSIWIG, so I thought I could standardize on HTML. In practice however, copying HTML between the forum and any other editor produces unpredictable results because the forum editor is stripping and converting HTML.
Whether to type {code} tags or selecting text and pushing a button does not really make a different to me. Typing {code} tags as opposed to pushing a button may conflict with the WYSIWIG feature of the editor. I doubt that you can have both options at the same time.
Btw, speaking of WYSIWG, what you edit is not necessarily what you get because the discussion browser is about 1/3 smaller than the editor window due to the action items shown at the right hand side. This means there is going to be automatic wrapping of text, which is bad for tables and code.
Dude! wrote:
Whether to type {code} tags or selecting text and pushing a button does not really make a different to me. Typing {code} tags as opposed to pushing a button may conflict with the WYSIWIG feature of the editor. I doubt that you can have both options at the same time.
No reason you can't have both options. After all the editor seems quite happy to convert : ) into 
as you type.
BluShadow wrote:
Certainly, having the advanced editor options available immediately for replying would be better than having to switch to it manually, especially as most people using these forums are going to want to paste code in (what with it being a technical forum and not really a social forum), and the basic editor just doesn't allow for any suitable code formatting (unless the person is mad enough to switch to HTML mode).
It looks to me like switching into the advanced editor is actually doing some HTML pre-processing (that window that appears on the left with a bunch of HTML code, before it presents the post in the editor). Perhaps that is the source of all the problems.
I'd like to have the advanced editor options available immediately too, just not an editor this "advanced." (Now humming "Jocko Homo.")
Well, I don't know, but I think catching keystrokes like , which gets converted right away might be different than more complex processing using {code} tags. Text between {code} tags will probably need to be converted to some html when submitting, then how can the editor rebuild the content using the original {code} tags when re-editing? Anyway, I would leave it up to the developer to think about it. Either way, button or tag is fine with me.
Thanks, this makes sense. Keep the ideas coming in this thread and in the meantime I will keep working on it from my end and see what we can do.
I think I'm pretty much done covering the issues I have run into without doing anything fancy or advanced. If anybody can add something to the list, please reply.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to continue to test the results in different browsers, because I think the editor should work with all common browsers and recent versions worth mentioning.
Dude! wrote:
I think I'm pretty much done covering the issues I have run into without doing anything fancy or advanced. If anybody can add something to the list, please reply.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to continue to test the results in different browsers, because I think the editor should work with all common browsers and recent versions worth mentioning.
Yeah, a lot of the issues you've posted for Firefox I see in Internet Explorer 9.
I think it's just a case of indicating what issues have been found, and that those issues have are reproduced in one of the 'standard' web browsers.
Let's hope the crosslinking of this thread has been fixed for good now.
+1 for improving syntax highlighting process. It's fundamental to the operation of the site and should be made as simple as can be to apply, but options available.
I'm in favour of bringing back the {code} option, but also having a one click icon to apply the same formatting via the default menu.
Monospace characters is a must, but perhaps allow for varation in formatting with tags like {sql} {css} ?
