Formatting with Markdown
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A Former User last edited by
If you want a line break you put two spaces and a carriage return
and text will continue on the next lineOutputs
If you want a line break you put two spaces and a carriage return
and text will continue on the next lineThis is all in the syntax guide by the way.
When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
A prime example of what I was saying earlier.
An average user will not know that, and will just type away, putting carriage returns in when they want a new paragraph, and instead will end up with a terrible mess and won't know why!
The carriage returns show OK in the input box.
Whatever happened to WYSIWYG!
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ruario last edited by
Actually most people do not do that. How many people actually aim for output like yours? For clarity, people generally enter two lines when they want a new paragraph (to give a little spacing). So it is WYSIWYG for most people.
I honestly don't believe this is the problem you are making it out to be. Sure, there are a fair number of posts with some "mistakes" but it doesn't look any worse than any other random forum, despite the lack of formatting buttons. This is because those who care about formatting will notice and click on the "You may use Markdown in your reply." link. Those who don't care don't need such buttons.
Why on earth can't we have a forum where you just type what you want into your posts, and there are buttons at the top of the text input field for doing things like inserting links or images and formatting text, just like every other forum I use on the web has?!
Have you ever heard of Reddit? I would guess so, given they have 174 million users. Their comment box also uses Markdown and only includes a simple link to formatting help. Is it chaos? Yes! But not because of the formatting!
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ruario last edited by
I decided to make this even simpler by adding a summary to the top (with tips). I expect most people could get by with just this and never need to scroll down into the details section.
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ruario last edited by
Let me see if I have this right.
In order to make things italic, I need to do this
To put in a link to the Opera blogs, I could do this: http://blogs.opera.com/news/
or
I could do it like this: blogs
- it's easy
- it's clean
- it makes sense
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A Former User last edited by
Leushino, the thread is about formatting with the Markdown on these forums these days. HTML analogies are given for the reference. As long as everybody knows it's not executable to do italics with Markdown on these forums these days, today in this board you seem to be a bit off the topic.
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Deleted User last edited by
Leushino, the thread is about formatting with the Markdown on these forums these days. HTML analogies are given for the reference. As long as everybody knows it's not executable to do italics with Markdown on these forums these days, today in this board you seem to be a bit off the topic.
He is just testing markdown, he is not off the topic.
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ruario last edited by
Leushino's post seems completely on topic to me. He is testing Markdown and tried one HTML tag. Using
*is not a massive problem because if support was dropped most posts would still make perfect sense, without the emphasis provided by italics.More risky, would be to use tables for layout (as I actually did in the initial post) or changing <font color="red">text</font> <font color="blue">colour</font> to indicate certain things. If these possibilities disappear your posting could potentially cease to make sense in the future.
These are the kinds of things to keep in mind if you choose to use additional HTML tags. If you know your posting will still work without them, then it doesn't really matter if you use them. On the flip side, perhaps you don't even need them in that case.
I risked using tables above because I am willing to maintain and update my posting if it breaks, since I intend it as a guide, rather than just a comment I later forget about.
P.S. @leushino You forgot to close your
*tag with*(once you were done with italicising text). It actually looked OK this time but could mess things up in some scenarios. I have added it for you now as a quick edit. -
ruario last edited by
HTML analogies are given for the reference.
Actually the ones that correspond directly to Markdown should be safe, so if you could use them directly if you prefer. Not sure why you would though. It takes much longer to write out all the tags.
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ruario last edited by
@joshl It is funny to see you tell Leushino he should only be using Markdown in this thread when you are abusing the
<abbr>tag to do things it is not intended for in one of the posts in this same thread.<abbr>is specifically designed for expanding abbreviations and acronyms. Not for displaying random, unrelated messages on mouseover. -
A Former User last edited by admin
Tell us about "calling Elvis" and using hash as it has output in this comment - are they part of this Markdown?
I already approached testing them in my thread, but it remained unclear about certain functionality. -
ruario last edited by
Calling Elvis???
You mean the fact that when he typed "#1" it generated a search link. Honestly I am not sure what that is about but I expect the poster did not intend it, so I have escaped it for him.
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ruario last edited by
Ok, I had a look, hashtag search links (making a search link by putting # in front) is a feature of the forum software we use.
It is <em style='font-style: italic'>definitely not</em> Markdown but can be escaped the same way, by putting a \ in front of the #.
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A Former User last edited by
Have you ever heard of Reddit? I would guess so, given they have 174 million users. Their comment box also uses Markdown and only includes a simple link to formatting help. Is it chaos? Yes! But not because of the formatting!
I have heard of Reddit, but I've never used it.
If they use Markdown then I guess it must be OK of course, but I still prefer traditional forum formatting controls I'm afraid!
How to achieve the desired formatting is much more obvious with those, to me at least.
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ruario last edited by
Ok, looks like we got to the bottom of the broken emphasis thing. I'm not going to promise it will be fixed shortly because fixes are rolled out in batches but hopefully it won't take too long. I'll explain in more detail when it is fixed. Its kinda silly.
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ruario last edited by
Whose silly?
It, not who is silly. In this case it meaning, "the mistake that caused the problem with missing emphasis".
Or to put that another way, perhaps I should have written:
The mistake that caused the problem (with missing emphasis), is silly.
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A Former User last edited by
Whose silly?
It, not who is silly. In this case it meaning,...
No, you didn't write that - you wrote "its silly", so my simple question stays valid. (And yes, if I wanted to write "who's" - I would have done exactly that. The question is - why would I have
(wanted to)?) -
ruario last edited by
It's meaning "it is" and yes I should have written an apostrophe. Are you purposely trying to misunderstand me? It feels like it.
so my simple question stays valid
Ok, I now think you meant to say "What's silly?".
In any case, I specifically said:
I'll explain in more detail when it is fixed.
That has not happened yet, so what exactly do you want?
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A Former User last edited by
Ok, I now think you meant to say "What's silly?".
Nope.
...I should have written an apostrophe. Are you purposely trying to misunderstand me? It feels like it.
They are "different words" in English. I do not purposely try to misunderstand - I try to understand what is literally written <q title="You're one IN CHARGE here, so you're not a simple user who can be let go on unnoticed, officer.">(I try not to let myself "understand" people's deviations - especially with native Brits and people in charge - by which allowing them to notice those themselves; nothing personal)</q>.
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blackbird71 last edited byThis seems to apply here:
“ I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant” - Alan Greenspan, Chairman, US Federal Reserve (1987-2006)
