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Author	Topic: Font variants (highlighting) in the forum	Post a Reply Back to Topics

kwzh Champion Author San Jose Posts:20,647 Points:3,681,695 Joined:Jul 2001	Message Posted: Apr 27, 2012 4:53:17 AM Ignore kwzh Report Abuse (This is a rewrite of a request from years ago.) I think the forum should recognize an internal syntax for a few simple font changes -- in particular, [B]...[/B] for bold, [I]...[/I] for italic, [U]...[/U] for underlined, [S]...[/S] for strikethrough, and [C]...[/C] for constant-width (aka code font). I believe these should be easy to implement; the forum software already does a "convert to html" step, and these would just have to be converted to the corresponding HTML tags <B>, <I>, <U>, <S>, and <CODE>. (I do not recommend including a blinking font.) I recognize that even if the internal syntax is easy to deal with, a corresponding UI change (convenience buttons) would probably require significantly more work. But I recommend rolling out the easy part anyway, and deferring the UI to a future release. I'd be OK with typing the brackets by hand (I already do that most of the time for links!), and it would give early adopters a chance to shake out any bugs before providing it to the masses by means of buttons.

kwzh

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San Jose

Posts:20,647
Points:3,681,695
Joined:Jul 2001

Message Posted: Apr 27, 2012 4:53:17 AM

Ignore kwzh Report Abuse

(This is a rewrite of a request from years ago.)

I think the forum should recognize an internal syntax for a few simple font changes -- in particular, [B]...[/B] for bold, [I]...[/I] for italic, [U]...[/U] for underlined, [S]...[/S] for strikethrough, and [C]...[/C] for constant-width (aka code font). I believe these should be easy to implement; the forum software already does a "convert to html" step, and these would just have to be converted to the corresponding HTML tags <B>, <I>, <U>, <S>, and <CODE>. (I do *not* recommend including a blinking font.)

I recognize that even if the internal syntax is easy to deal with, a corresponding UI change (convenience buttons) would probably require significantly more work. But I recommend rolling out the easy part anyway, and deferring the UI to a future release. I'd be OK with typing the brackets by hand (I already do that most of the time for links!), and it would give early adopters a chance to shake out any bugs before providing it to the masses by means of buttons.

REPLIES (newest first)Ignore Short Messages

kwzh Champion Author San Jose Posts:20,647 Points:3,681,695 Joined:Jul 2001	Message Posted: May 1, 2012 7:15:15 AM Ignore kwzh Report Abuse I'm pretty certain that the bracket versions would be easier to correctly implement.
jrsva Champion Author Virginia Posts:9,847 Points:1,612,025 Joined:Jan 2006	Message Posted: Apr 30, 2012 12:22:41 AM Ignore jrsva Report Abuse I agree with Scrap but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I would like to see the italic and bold but I would especially like to have a fixed-width font option so that it is possible to construct tables of data where the columns are aligned properly. Another way to achieve font enhancements is to use for bold and /for italic/ and _for underline_. I don’t know if this would be easier or harder to program than the pseudo-html tags.
Scrapheap Champion Author Virginia Posts:14,541 Points:2,357,855 Joined:Sep 2006	Message Posted: Apr 27, 2012 8:38:22 PM Ignore Scrapheap Report Abuse Another example of where commercially developed message board software would be far preferable to the home grown one here.
TxJeans Champion Author Tampa Posts:3,532 Points:368,430 Joined:May 2004	Message Posted: Apr 27, 2012 7:41:41 PM Ignore TxJeans Report Abuse 1+
CampKohler Champion Author Sacramento Posts:9,457 Points:1,562,315 Joined:May 2007	Message Posted: Apr 27, 2012 12:35:11 PM Ignore CampKohler Report Abuse This suggestion has been added to the Suggestion Tracking List as a new subject. I'm for it. I never understood why GB just didn't allow HTML in the first place. Every once in while you run into a person who has to jazz up every one of their posts with whacky size changes, etc., but for the most part, people are too lazy to do anything but type "plain-Jane."
scoutmaster Champion Author Pittsburgh Posts:81,253 Points:3,252,645 Joined:Mar 2003	Message Posted: Apr 27, 2012 5:09:24 AM Ignore scoutmaster Report Abuse Excellent idea!