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Horizontal Rule Issues

  1. shortexact
    Member

    I've experienced an issue with using horizontal rules in posts. I already emailed support about it, but I was wondering if anyone else has noticed the same problem.

    I inserted a horizontal rule tag in a post I'm writing, and I thought I read that horizontal rule tags were allowed. However, all text in the post located after the horizontal rule had spacing problems, and none of the paragraph structure was saved. The exact way in which paragraphs and images were spaced would change, each time I saved the post. But more often than not, everything would bunch up, and the paragraph spacing entirely ignored.

    However, after deleting the horizontal rule and replacing it with a makeshift text equivalent, the spacing is fine and everything looks exactly how I saved it.

    Has anyone else run into this?

  2. drmike
    Member

    You need to point to a place on your site where this is occuring so we can see it for ourselves.

  3. shortexact
    Member

    I'm not ready to publish the post yet, but here is a screenshot that shows what it looks like, right after saving the post draft:

    http://shortexact.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/spacing.jpg

    In this image, after the horizontal rule, there should be paragraph spacing between the stars and "1412", another paragraph space between "10:00 pm" and the dollar signs, and one last paragraph between the dollar signs and the word "cuisine". No matter whether I type the tags into the code editor, or simply put the spaces in the WYSIWYG editor, I get an incorrect result, which looks like (or very similar to) that screenshot.

  4. drmike
    Member

    Afraid we can't do anything until we see the HTML to see what's going on.

  5. shortexact
    Member

    Here is the HTML for the problem area:

    <p><hr />
    <img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q59/MorphedGypsy/stars_35.jpg" height="20" />1412 Polk Street (between California St. and Pine St.)
    San Francisco, CA 94109
    <u>Phone:</u> 415.359.1236
    <u>Hours:</u> Daily, 11:00 am - 10:00 pm.<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q59/MorphedGypsy/dollars_15.jpg" />Cuisine: Indian/Pakistani
    Neighborhood: Polk Gulch/Van NessHow to get there: Darbar is located right on Muni line 19 and is less than a block south of the California Street cable car line. Within about four blocks are lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 27, 38, 47, 49, and 76.</p>

    Copied and pasted from the post. This is the HTML that was saved. Initially, I put in <p> tags at the appropriate spots (which I mentioned above) for where I needed more space. Then, HTML editor didn't save these extra tags, and put in an extra tag or two on its own.

    For some reason, removing the horizontal rule tag completely solves this whole problem, but I'm not clear on why that should be the case.

  6. shortexact
    Member

    The forum automatically converted <b> and <i> tags to bold and italics, but other than that, the HTML is the same as what I see in the post editor.

  7. energetic
    Member

    Hi there,

    I came across exactly that same problem when I used the horizontal rule in one of my longer posts, which you can see here:

    http://roadsofstone.wordpress.com/2006/04/23/116-london-is-olympic/ .

    I used multiple hr tags in that article, and each time I edited my post, I lost all of the subsequent formatting, all the way down. Very frustrating.

    I think it's something to do with the way that WordPress treats that hr tag together with the implicit (but stripped out) line break (br/) or paragraph (p) tag which must sit alongside it invisibly somewhere within the foggy world of the 'code' editor.

    This means that it's not really dependent on your own html code, so that it's very hard to fix, as no doubt you've already discovered !

    The truth is that the problem keeps reappearing even if you do work in the 'code' editor.

    There is a workaround, and it revolves around adding some extra blank lines to your post.

    Of course, you can't simply add these as br/ or p tags, because WP strips all of those out. Tricky.

    So - here's how you do it:

    either:

    using the code editor, you can add an extra line break or two above the subsequent text, and then remove those, right at the end of your edit process (I don't think even this always works, actually), or;

    you can fiddle around to solve the problem within the visual editor. If you experiment a bit, I think you'll see that you can generate two different widths of line break, depending on whether you place the cursor on the first or second subsequent lines after the horizontal rule before you hit 'return'.

    Sometimes you can produce what looks like a double width line break - WP must see that as a paragraph, I think.

    Then, if you back delete one space from there, you will have generated a single line break which is for some reason now stable enough not to break all of the formatting which follows it.

    That sounds unlikely, but it worked for me. I hope this helps to save you at least some of the hours of frustration it cost me to fix ...

    And once it is fixed, I'll wager you probably won't ever want to risk editing that post again.

    Just get back to me via http://roadsofstone.com if you get stuck, bearing in mind that I'm on GMT here.

    Good luck !
    - Roads

  8. shortexact
    Member

    Roads,

    Thanks for your detailed reply! The "foggy" HTML issues you've been describing are exactly the same ones I've been running into. Since HTML wasn't cutting it, I also tried fiddling around with spaces in the visual editor, and even there it didn't work, but I also didn't try that exact sequence of steps you described.

    I will definitely try out your recommendation. Thanks again!

  9. energetic
    Member

    Crikey - you may be right, since I took another look at that post of mine:

    http://roadsofstone.wordpress.com/2006/04/23/116-london-is-olympic/ .

    and, suddenly, in this (BlackBerry) browser at least, the initial line formatting after each hr tags is broken all over again, although at least it's not yet propagating errors all the way down, this time.

    That's frustrating, since it looked fine last time I edited it, a few weeks ago. Maybe that trick has been lost in some server re-load or site upgrade somewhere.

    I'll try again tomorrow evening, and see if I can make it stick, one more time. I'm rather less confident now, though, than I was an hour ago.

    Meanwhile, do give my regards to San Francisco. I may need a break in California if ever I crack this one ....

    Hey, but at least we learn something along the way. I hope.
    - Roads

  10. raincoaster
    Member

    I'm wondering if you could do it in Latex...would that be easier?

  11. darro
    Member

    How can I get a coloured horizontal rule? I can get it to appear in colour when I write the post but when I publish, it reverts to the original colour. The <hr color="red"/> code doesn't seem to work. What am I doing wrong?

  12. drmike
    Member

    From above:

    You need to point to a place on your site where this is occuring so we can see it for ourselves.

    What happens to the code when you get it in there? I see a hr tag in this post. Is this where you tried it?

  13. darro
    Member

    Yes that's where i tried it, but the color reference is removed when I click publish. I enter the above code in the code section of write a post and when I look at it i n the visual it's in the colour i want but when I save or publish the color is gone.

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