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Editing comments has become a bit more tedious

  1. growthmadness
    Member

    This is not a big deal but... Occasionally I want to go back and add something to my own comment, or perhaps to clean up some formatting problem in a visitor's comment. As of the last week or two I notice when I do this that when I click "edit" the editor that comes up with the comment contains some html code that I don't recall seeing in the past -- mostly <p>, </br>, etc. But in addition, the paragraphs are shoved together such that I have to manually hit the "enter" key at the start of every paragraph to separate them so the appropriate spaces appear between them after I edit. It's a minor inconvenience, but it did not happen previously. i.e., previously the paragraphs stayed correctly positioned, and I could just do my edit and hit the button and be done with it. What has changed?

    (Apologies if this has come up already. A quick search didn't turn it up.)

  2. dirkgently
    Member

    The code showing up simply tells you that you're in code view. <p> is a paragraph with everything between `</p> and
    </p>listed as one single paragraph.</br>is a line break. You may spot others likewhich is around bold text. Simple rule of thumb when dealing with html code......always close the tags. By this I mean if you start a new paragraph with a<p>always remember to end it with</p>`
    Also think of it as circles    with the closing tags in reverse order`

    Things look very different in code view to the way they will be displayed on the site too, so don't bother trying to arrange the look visually in code view, as long as the right html tags are applied in the right order....it'll display fine on the site.

  3. dirkgently
    Member

    OMG editing comments in the forums which include the backticks and code is a NIGHTMARE!!!! It gets stripped out, leaving you against the clock trying to reassemble what you had, re-inserting what you'd already written and it'd already accepted BEFORE you can make the slight alteration you intended. It is VERY difficult when the removal of backticks throws it all off......so my first post above is not quite how I intended, but I refuse to sit and fight with an unwieldy system just to get it better.

    Just thought I'd mention to anyone offering help involving the ` backticks......get it right first time, otherwise it's a mess.

  4. roadsofstone26
    Member

    I've noticed the same problems with editing comments, in particular with the stripping out of all line breaks between the paragraphs. It seems to strip out p and br tags progressively each time you edit.

    Until a month or so ago, that wasn't the case.

  5. dirkgently
    Member

    Yeah, I only wanted to add on the last paragraph in an edit, and found it had fu#ked up the rest....so I tried to remake what I'd just done as best as I could knowing that when the clock ticked over it'd refuse to accept an edit. As a result my answer looks confusing and probably won't help as much.

    At the moment I've decided not to bother fighting it, and let any questions that need the backticks be answered by those paid to deal with the system...unless it changes to stop hindering us.....and NO I will not be checking it again and again to see if it's changed.

  6. boles
    Member

    Several months ago we had the same problem with editing comments. A real nightmare.

    Then it was fixed.

    Now it's broken again. The nightmare returns.

  7. timethief
    Member

    @boles
    I remember the time to which you refer. Have you reported this to staff?

  8. growthmadness
    Member

    Okay, so I see others are having the problem. I could be wrong in my memory that the code didn't used to show up when editing comments (unless one was manually inserting code). The part that's the problem is the stuff like the stripping out of line breaks between paragraphs.

  9. timethief
    Member

    Just to be sure. Did you try
    <br />
    and
     

  10. dirkgently
    Member

    The forums are different from our individual blogs. They have different rules on what is accepted. Here you have to type any html code you want to include and you're stuck with a visual editor without even the luxury of BOLD, ITALIC etc options....just a line of text explaining what markup is allowed and how.

    In our blogs we have a choice of a visual editor like this or a code editor which I personally prefer. This is commenting on another blog which is extremely limited.

    Some code will be stripped for security reasons in your blog, while some will reformat itself to fit the theme you're using and have itself compatible with the stylesheet. I hate DIV tags but the wordpress themes seem to be rather obsessed with using them....it's a nightmare to keep fighting against that....as it takes it upon itself to throw away all the stuff I've chosen to edit, and replace it with DIV tags....which throws out all the formatting.

  11. timethief
    Member

    @everyone
    If you are experiencing the problem outlined above then please send in a feedback to staff including as much information as possible.

  12. knoizki
    Member

    I'm not surprised by this, every weekend, we always see changes here and there and before you know it, things will eventually look better - never fear, just sit back and relax, the admins are probably upgrading the system again. :)

  13. growthmadness
    Member

    Dirk, just to clarify, on comments on our blogs I think the only choice we get is the code editor. I usually keep the visual editor turned on as the default for posts (then go back and forth between editors, depending), but have never seen it as an option for comments. Am I missing a toggle somewhere? In any case, the code editor used not to strip out breaks between paragraphs as it has for the last week or two.

    As I said, it's a minor thing to me.

    [EDIT] By the way, I just tested it, and the comment editor here on the forum is not stripping them out either. Nor does paragraph or line break code etc. even show up in it when you go to edit. This is how comment editing used to behave on our blogs.

  14. dirkgently
    Member

    Yeah sorry, I meant the code editor just as you see in the forums. The visual one has the buttons. I knew what I meant, just got it mixed up a little. It means that when you post in here, or a comment on a blog you have to manually add any code you want without any buttons to make it easy or you can prepare your comments in an html editor beforehand, then copy and paste the code over.

  15. sangild
    Member

    This IS a big deal. Whenever I want to edit a comment I enter the "nightmare", as someone has called it. In order to get a proper edited version one has to manually delete ALL codes and reinsert them again in order to avoid typographic errors. I just (again) spent 20 minutes making a small correction to a comment. It should have taken 20 seconds.

    This is not about people not understanding the codes. This is a bug and it should be fixed.

    Details: It ignores paragraph spacing, links, italics and other codes that worked perfectly before editing. Sometimes it shows the code as text, sometimes it ignores it completely. Sometimes the text is an inexplicable mess after adding a minor change.

  16. timethief
    Member

    @sangild
    Volunteers answering questions on the forum do not have backend access to blogs and cannot "fix bugs". If you think one exists then the way to go is copying and pasting all your relevant information above into a feedback and sending it to staff.

  17. sangild
    Member

    Sure, I just thought it needed the right label here...;-)

  18. yexxle
    Member

    I was just going to post the same complaint. What's worse is editing a blog entry comment that has html in it. Every html special character is being double-escaped and you wind up with nasty-looking < and > everywhere. To the dev team, I would suggest taking out the htmlspecialchars() or htmlentities() call that is being applied to the comment text before it is displayed in the edit text box: obviously the html escaping has already been applied once.

  19. feartheseeds
    Member

    I've noticed the paragraph fomatting going screwy, but I just took a look and the code people input on their own (bold, etc) also gets messed up when I edit a comment... has there been any response to anyone's "feedback" or are we waiting?

  20. timethief
    Member

    @ feartheseeds
    Volunteers answering questions on the forum do not have backend access to blogs and cannot "fix bugs". If you think one exists then the way to go is copying and pasting all your relevant information above into a feedback and sending it to staff. Then waiting for staff to get back to you is what you must do.

    As Mark lives in the UK and there is a substantial time difference, and as there are probably matters of higher priority for him to attend to prior to dealing with yours, I suggest that you exercise some patience.

  21. feartheseeds
    Member

    "I suggest that you exercise some patience."

    If this was aimed at me, and I believe it was, I wasn't asking for a Volunteer to access anything... seeing as how the original question was posted nine days ago I thought I'd ask if anyone got a response before asking the same question again... if you can't help then stay out of the way and maybe, maybe, stop insulting me.

  22. feartheseeds
    Member

    Before this gets out of control, I don't mean any of this (except maybe the thanking Dr. comment on another page) to be a personal attack on TimeThief or any of the other volunteers or moderators or anyone else.

  23. raincoaster
    Member

    Then please stop doing it. Yes, it's out of control.

  24. atthe404
    Member

    Slighty OT for timethief: The practise of adding breaking and non breaking spaces into the markup as suggested is best avoided. The proper place for formatting is in the CSS. But of course the old dilemma is how the guy without the upgrade can hack a workaround. The issue for the poor volunteer is that they are proposing a solution which is best in the circumstances but may not be right in the long haul. It is a subtle distinction but many web standards designers who are interested in these things try and encourage other people to do things properly from the get go. Short cuts bite you in the a** somewhere.
    Just my two cents.

  25. raincoaster
    Member

    @ atthe404, would you mind taking a look at this thread and giving your opinion? It looks to me like the poster is trying to do formatting on the fly in the code editor, but he says no. Dunno what's up with it:

    http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=12117&page&replies=20

  26. atthe404
    Member

    @ raincoaster: My best guess is that is tabbing that is causing it. But I add a very big caveat. I am by no means an expert in the editing arrangements. My experience with the beast has taught me to tax it as little as possible by keeping everything simple because if the truth be known it is a monstrosity from hell. Incidentally there is no mention of the browser the guy is using. Could it be a Safari thing? Thanks for your confidence in my diagnostic skills. Probably misplaced in this instance. :)
    But we are in the wrong thread really. :)

  27. raincoaster
    Member

    No problem. I can't figure out if he's trying to format or not trying to format. But yeah, this is not a platform for typography or a format for showing off layout skills. Type, add pix, throw in a YouTube; that's blogging to me. If you want to change the shape of your periods or make your poems come out in tree shape, not so much. Also, he won't tell us what browser he's using. I hope Mark can figure out what's going on there.

  28. horseangels
    Member

    I wish I HAD some comments to edit ! :D

  29. timethief
    Member

    @atthe404
    Thanks for your post. :)

  30. carbontaxcenter
    Member

    This is a big deal. It has been brought up in the forums here and here. So far I haven't found a solution.

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