Re: Two Common Formatting Mistakes on the Forum
- Posted by DanM Nov 07, 2010
- 2402 views
I see some repeating patterns in some of the quotes I include in my forum replies. The biggest one is the improper use of a forced line break, \\. The second is not using verbatim tags {} around console type pastes, such as the output of a command line program.
Forced Line Break
\\
This should not be needed hardly ever in the forum. This is a forced line break. The forum is created in such a manner that it word wraps properly. If you want to make a new paragraph, you should put a blank line between your two paragraphs. For example:
Hello, World\\ \\ This is a message to the Euphoria Community.\\ \\ Goodbye!
That is way too much work! It need not be that complicated. Here is the output of the above text:
Hello, World
This is a message to the Euphoria Community.
Goodbye!
Looks fine, however this accomplishes the exact same result:
Hello, World This is a message to the Euphoria Community. Goodbye!
Here is the output of the above text:
Hello, World
This is a message to the Euphoria Community.
Goodbye!
Verbatim {{{
{{{ }}}
This causes two things to happen:
- Enter a pre-formatted mode <pre>...</pre>
- Disables all creole formatting so ** stays ** and doesn't trigger the bold attribute
Say you have the output of a dir command. You could enter it as:
C:\projects> dir CoolProject1 CoolProject2 CoolProject3
However, that's not right. It turns out like:
C:\projects> dir CoolProject1 CoolProject2 CoolProject3
You could use forced line breaks at the end of each line (\\) but again, that's too much work. Simply wrap the whole thing in {{{ }}} and it'll all just work. For example, it should be (minus the ~ on the ending tag, I had to add that for Creole to not end the verbatim at that point):
{{{
C:\projects> dir
CoolProject1
CoolProject2
CoolProject3
~}}}
That outputs as:
C:\projects> dir CoolProject1 CoolProject2 CoolProject3
I hope this has helped some spend less time on writing messages and more time using Euphoria!
Jeremy
ok, interesting and useful to know, but:
1. Sections of your post, when included in a reply, show up DIFFERENTLY than originally, with CROSSED OUT WORDS displayed instead of the original words NOT crossed out, which can be confusing to a person reading a reply, eg.:
Hello, World
This is a message to the Euphoria Community.
Goodbye!
I sorta understand why it happens, but I still suggest that it SHOULDN'T, because the QUOTED reply isn't actually QUOTED, ie, same as original.
[edit: well, when I PREVIEW this section, I see CROSSED OUT words, but when I see it POSTED, they're NOT crossed out, so maybe I DON'T "sorta" understand what's going on!]
2. And one of your examples of "similarity", ISN'T similar, eg.:
Here is the output of the above text:
Hello, World
This is a message to the Euphoria Community.
Goodbye!
Which ISN'T the same as:
Hello, World
This is a message to the Euphoria Community.
Goodbye!
And again, I sorta realize why this happens, but having an example of similarity NOT be similar sorta defeats the purpose of the example, therefore it shouldn't happen.
3. And putting a blank line doesn't always work as it should, I had to put the \\ for line break after the above "line boxed" example, to separate that example and my next text with a blank line, after 3 blank lines were ignored. (I presume that's because they were "naked" ENTER/RETURN keypresses, with no other text in the same line, but still, it's counter intuitive, making a "blank" line by hitting ENTER should YIELD a blank line, in the resulting post, I think.)
All in all, though, I have to say that the functionality of the forum is getting much better, good job!
Dan
