Forum's too fancy, help a poor Catar out

[Catar]

So I posted my Yona release far too late, went to sleep and woke up to find out the formatting was nuts due to some copy-pasting snafus and the WYSIWYG editor. I'm wondering, is there a way to edit/use BBcode in posts on this forum? I vastly prefer that when available. If not, I'll just continue on as normal, copypasting from blank HTML pages whenever I need colours not in our colourpicker >.>

 

incidentally, is there a way to edit the background colour of text? Not that I want to; that's a terrible idea. But it would have saved me time fixing the post earlier.

 

 

 

 

also, mostly unrelated but the Meet & Greet board has a typo in the description.

[Tulio]

pretty sure bbcode is no longer available. system will autotranslate bbcode into WYSIWYG , but not vice versa

[Koby]

Unfortunately more modern software is rendering bb code obsolete. I do feel like old bb code editors were actually easier to work with in a forum environment to actually make things work as users intended, but eh, I'm not a software developer so what do I know right? Despite all the whining over at IPS support forums, they've been adamant that bb code is a thing of the past and working their way towards eventually doing away with it all together. The past few versions though they have ported some things that made what little bb code that does parse, do so a little better though. Unfortunately at this point you're better off stop trying to utilize bb code at this time.

 

As for copy/pasting other forum posts, it's a bit buggy in the regard that it seems to sometimes copy background color data that didn't actually exist with the original text. Fortunately I've been able to add a button that auto adds the template to your post, which should make things easier and not have such issues, but this also means unfortunately you can just copy your entire post from a Notepad file either.

 

I've fixed the typo in the Meet & Greet description, thank you for pointing it out.

[YukinoAi]

From what I can tell, the movement seems to be towards markdown. 

 

https://en.support.wordpress.com/markdown-quick-reference/

 

Is there any reason why Kametsu doesn't support it? Other forums do, so perhaps it's just a matter of deciding to enable it server side?

Edited June 9, 2016 by YukinoAi
clarification~

[Koby]

21 minutes ago, YukinoAi said:

From what I can tell, the movement seems to be towards markdown. 

 

https://en.support.wordpress.com/markdown-quick-reference/

 

Is there any reason why Kametsu doesn't support it? Other forums do, so perhaps it's just a matter of deciding to enable it server side?

Because we run IPS forum software, which utilizes a modified version of CKEditor for it's editor abilities. You can read up more about that here: http://ckeditor.com/

 

I haven't seen anything using markdown except for Wordpress and even then I've never utilized it for any of my Wordpress needs. Never been to a forum that has. Looks like just a slightly different version of BB coding really with various things being used instead of simply using brackets. So I'd think BB Code would be less complicated than 'markdown'... and the point is to simplify and make things easier, not force everyone to become semi-developers to be able to utilize the editor to make a post. Which is likely why IPS hasn't adopted it. We should be moving forward, not backward.

[YukinoAi]

Thanks for the ckeditor link, I'll read up on that.

 

I find markdown easier to use than BBC actually. BBC has just been around longer. Converting between the two is simple enough.

 

I'm not criticizing Kametsu, but it is worth noting that implementations exist where the client side javascript can handle multiple syntaxes. I'm not sure what forum.teksyndicate.com uses for their backend but they fully support Markdown/BBCode and HTML, along with drag-and-drop media content and of course CTRL commands for WYSIWG style editing.

 

 

Technical and practical implementation issues aside (there are many when not starting from scratch), backwards to me in this situation would older forums that limit the language(s) used for posted content. Doing so creates template issues Catar is currently experiencing, which in turn created this thread and this discussion.  Again, I'm not criticizing Kametsu, I understand there must be practical reasons for it, but the "limited" forum code (and lack full TLS) are aspects of Kametsu that other sites do not experience.

 

Edit: Alright I did some reading. TekSyndicate uses Discourse from discourse.org. Open source GPL v2, hosted on github, mature plugin system/data export etc so lots of green flags. It also looks like CKEditor supports bbc code meaning that if Kametsu is using invisionpower that uses CKEditor, then IP must be removing it. Removing features? Yeah that's a red flag.

Edited June 9, 2016 by YukinoAi
as above

[Koby]

Enabling full HTML has and will always be a security issue. Any site that takes security into mind wouldn't permit full html. If they allowed html, they should have some protocols in place to block specific types of HTML and only allow what would commonly be used for styling posts. We have html enabled here at Kametsu, but only for admins for that very reason. It's too easy to inject problem code into the site if left wide-open. We don't need to support 15 jillion languages for making a post. The way forward has always been to simplify things. Sure issues arise with change, but for the most part IPS has been working towards improving such issues. The latest IPS release introduced a preview post option with various ways of viewing it, as well as tweaked and optimized quite a bit of how it handles things and I can ensure you that they'll continue to move forward in this regard as they iron out any bugs and issues with each new release.

 

You keep going on about how Kametsu is the only site of it's kind.... when in reality this is more the norm than the use cases you display. All major forum software are moving in the same direction in terms of editor abilities: IPS, vBulletin, and xenforo.

 

MyBB, woltlab, SMF, zetaboards and phpBB need not apply. They're all antiques that haven't seen any modern updates in the past decade.

 

And the rest are so obscure they're not even worth mentioning as most forum communities these days will be utilizing IPS, vBulletin, or Xenforo. I honestly can't tell you of any board I frequently go to outside of private torrent trackers that don't utilize one of these.

 

As for client-side javascript. It's really better to utilize less of this. Javascript can really slow down the performance of a site and in the age of modern browsers, many users actually typically have javascript disabled for safety reasons. Relying solely on Javascript for a site to work can really cause more issues than it's worth in this regard when it ends up causing users to be unable to utilize the site or hinders the ability to post. Of course IPS still uses Javascript for a degree of things, but for the biggest part, they have fallbacks in place for when Javascript is disabled so that it doesn't break things.

 

When it comes down to it though, like in RPGs, you can either try to be everything and master nothing, or you can choose a specific route and eventually master it. Spread yourself too thin trying to support every thing in existence is only hampering the ability to really simplify things and ensure things work as well as they should. Adding support for new features can often break features of other things they wish to support, and in the end the issues that could arise and the time spent outweigh the benefits of trying to support everything. IPS took everything into consideration and went down the path they did after heavy consideration and client feedback. Unfortunately they must go where the majority of their clientele wishes and not every choice or path they take is going to please everyone. No matter how much they do, no matter how much I do, someone will always find reason to not like it.

[YukinoAi]

9 minutes ago, Koby said:

Enabling full HTML has and will always be a security issue. Any site that takes security into mind wouldn't permit full html. If they allowed html, they should have some protocols in place to block specific types of HTML and only allow what would commonly be used for styling posts.

1. Completely agree

2. But um...there's a slight...twilight moment going on when reading about security and seeing a non TLS connection in my browser bar...

 

If the response to that is "we don't need it" as it was to supporting "15 jillion languages" then why bring up that topic at all? Doing so implies that it's a detriment to Kametsu compared to other sites that do support it (both language agnosticism and TLS) even if most do not.

 

17 minutes ago, Koby said:

The way forward has always been to simplify things.

Simplify them for who? Ultimately, it must be simple for both, but in the mean time, simplifying things for the user takes precedence over for the developers. Trying to "simplify" the development side is usually a sign of unmaintainable (bad) code...

 

So I actually am I software developer. The way to write good software is to write it backwards based upon the user experience desired. Typically this involves doing something deliberately crazy/borderline insane, like supporting 15 jillion languages or making something platform agnostic or agreeing to write a parsing filter for raw HTML or.... The point being, if the developer cares, the user doesn't have to, thus making it simpler for the user and dramatically increasing development side complexity. It's actually very simple to maintain very complicated code even if is never to actually write it initially.

 

There's a strong argument from popularity going on with your post but I'll just go ahead and ignore that and say consider looking into Discourse. It has that "next gen" feeling to it and was written from scratch with the user in mind based upon the quick reading I did. While it is likely not practical for Kametsu to switch, I would argue that Discourse, or the development principles that went into it at least, is the way forward for new forum installations as it supports both BBC code and Markdown. In terms of this topic, supporting both languages could mean that all of the old templates that supported colors written in BBC/HTML would still work, providing for a seamless transition to the more simplified Markdown expressions.

[Catar]

oh god what have I done.

 

 

I've already gotten used to the WYSIWYG editor by now, some annoying trifles and I miss being able to just enter a hex code for a colour, but c'est la vie.  

[Moodkiller]

Background left (copy paste)

oh god what have I done.

I've already gotten used to the WYSIWYG editor by now, some annoying trifles and I miss being able to just enter a hex code for a colour, but c'est la vie.  

 

Background removed (copy paste)

oh god what have I done.

I've already gotten used to the WYSIWYG editor by now, some annoying trifles and I miss being able to just enter a hex code for a colour, but c'est la vie.  

 

Best thing I have found is to past what you want (i.e. template), inspect element (f12) then go and remove the background property:

 

 

Edited June 12, 2016 by Moodkiller

[Catar]

On 6/11/2016 at 6:08 PM, Moodkiller said:

Best thing I have found is to past what you want (i.e. template), inspect element (f12) then go and remove the background property:

So the WYSIWYG editor's lack of a background colour editor has forced me into actual HTML editing in order to fix formatting.

 

The irony is just glorious.

[Koby]

12 minutes ago, Catar said:

So the WYSIWYG editor's lack of a background colour editor has forced me into actual HTML editing in order to fix formatting.

 

The irony is just glorious.

Well it has one, but I removed it because I didn't want people randomly adding background colors everywhere... unfortunately this apparently has it's own set of problems as well. If only there was a way to make copying/pasting not carry over background colors randomly.

[Catar]

Just now, Koby said:

I didn't want people randomly adding background colors everywhere... 

Absolutely the worst, so I don't blame you. 

 

Ideally IPS would just block the ability to change background colours entirely, since you can easily workaround it in the method I've been accidentally using.

[PM62]

I often format my posts in BBCode, paste them here:

http://www.amigabounty.net/index.php?function=bbcodetest

And copy-paste the result to Kametsu. Especially useful when image hosting sites output thumbnails in BBCode.

Edited August 31, 2016 by PM62