The Board Improvement Request Thread

Subject: The Board Improvement Request Thread
Author: Thoth
Posted on: 2022-06-27 21:48:00 UTC

During the posting of the PG election thread to the Discord, there was some discussion about potential board improvements. As such, it was decided that we should have a proper board thread about this after the election ended. As the election has now ended, I am writing this post.

Currently existing thoughts on board improvement (that I actually remember) are as follows:

Discord integration. Some users find it difficult to remember to check the board, but are active on Discord. As such, the idea was raised to essentially provide latest posts directly to the Discord, by auto-posting updates about the newest posts to some kind of #board-posts channel or something. This is convenient for people who are on discord and want to be notified of board activity without configuring an RSS feed for it (which, by the way, if you're not on the discord but want to get a stream of the latest board posts for perusal at your convenience... we do actually have a feed for exactly that purpose).
Flat thread view. The traditional Board thread layout of nested response subthreads is great. However, it's not so great for some PPCers with small displays, vision impairment, or both (and also works poorly for deeply nested threads, as the entire layout begins to drift steadily rightwards... For these and several other reasons, a proposal arose to allow for an optional "conventional forum" thread view. In this view, messages would be displayed in chronological order, and which message was replying to what would be shown through backlinks (that is, links back to the prior message).
Markdown options? This was raised by Nesh while we were on a train through Chicago (yes, Gathering Report needs to be written up... hopefully that will happen at some point soon, we've all been a bit busy). Some boarders have typing habits that conflict with Markdown's markup, or might otherwise not want to use markdown for a given post. As such, we may want to add the ability to check a box to disable Markdown when writing a post.

As this is a general Improvement thread, if there's something you want to see changed about the board or a feature you'd like to have, please let us know! Obviously, I don't think I or anyone else can promise anything gets implemented (the T-Board Technical Committee is full of very busy people, alas), but we can see about getting in the things that people want to have.

--Thoth

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The Board Improvement Request Thread by Thoth on 2022-06-27 21:48:00 UTC

Regarding the enter key: by doctorlit on 2022-07-04 19:01:10 UTC Reply

Right now, doing a double enter after a paragraph codes for two paragraphs to appear with a space between them, which is quite reasonable and intuitive. But doing a single enter between paragraphs makes a single paragraph appear, which is rather unintuitive. This crops up when I'm pointing out errors in story reviews, which I usually format as:

"Bob drove a bar."
You wanted "Bob drove a car."

But I have to put (backwards) >rb< after the first line; otherwise, it displays as:

"Bob drove a bar." You wanted "Bob drove a car."

Could we maybe cause a single stroke of the enter key to produce a second paragraph with no space between? It would save a lot of html keystrokes for me on my reviews . . .

—doctorlit worries he's being overly selfish here . . .

I'd like that, too, if it's not too much trouble. by Neshomeh on 2022-07-04 20:52:05 UTC Reply

It's easy enough to get around if you're conversant with HTML, but not everyone is. Also, it's a pain in the butt to do HTML on a mobile.

~Neshomeh

So, this probably won't change. by Thoth on 2022-07-05 03:38:54 UTC Reply

Not, because it's inherently unreasonable, it's just that we're not rewriting the markdown parser, and that's probably buried too deep for a configuration change to fix it. I haven't fully investigated this yet, admittedly, mostly because I honestly know neither redcarpet nor the board codebase all that well, relatively speaking.

(If you're wondering why this is the behavior, it's because Markdown was designed with the goal that "a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions."—this is a direct quote from the original creator. And when publishing raw text files, it is expected that you will wrap the text yourself to fit a line width rather than trusting the reader's text editor to wrap on word breaks. Typically, this width is 80 columns, largely for historical reasons. As such, if Markdown interpreted a line break as a new paragraph, there would be a new paragraph roughly every 80 characters in many common usecases. Which would be bad.)

That seems odd from an HTML standpoint. by Neshomeh on 2022-07-05 05:18:42 UTC Reply

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about Markdown not interpreting line breaks as paragraphs. Currently, when you do an Enter Enter, it renders as a new paragraph (with  tags) in the post's source code. It's just that if you do a single Enter, it doesn't do anything; it ignores the newline and treats the text before and after the Enter as part of the same paragraph.

What we'd like it to do is render a single line break ( ), which is what we code in manually to not have the newline ignored. It comes in handy occasionally for things like sharing poetry. Example with desired paragraph and line-break HTML shown:

The rain in Spain 
stays mainly in the plain.

Just seems odd that it can interpret Enter Enter as "code for a new paragraph," but it can't interpret Enter as "code for a single line-break." If I understand you right, it sounds like it can't distinguish between a manually Entered newline and one generated by word-wrapping in the composition text box...?

~Neshomeh

Not exactly by Thoth on 2022-07-05 15:29:34 UTC Reply

What I mean is that when formatting plain-text documents, it's common for people to word-wrap by hand (well, they use automated tools usually, but the wrapping is physically present in the file). As a result, Markdown doesn't interpret a single newline as a break because that would break on people's text documents (Markdowns is very commonly used on things like READMEs, which tend to do this...).

I'm not sure if it's feasible to alter the markdown parser to interpret a single newline as , because we don't actually handle that directly: we're using redcarpet, which is written by other people. And while it is customizable, I don't yet know how easy or hard it would be to make that change.

While I was researching this, however, I did come across a way to actually get a linebreak in markdown without resorting to HTML tags: turns out, if you end a line with
two
or
more
spaces (that is, " "),
a linebreak will be inserted for you.

Well, by Linstar on 2022-07-05 16:25:20 UTC Edited Reply

I suppose that’s better than nothing.

(Wait, it doesn’t work.)

Huh? by Thoth on 2022-07-05 20:18:09 UTC Reply

worked
when
I
did
it.

So I have no clue why it wouldn't work for you... I mean, I don't doubt there IS a reason, to be clear, I just don't know what.

Further testing! by Neshomeh on 2022-07-05 22:54:21 UTC Reply

In case it matters,
I'm using a Windows laptop running Chrome,
typing two spacebar spaces at the end of each line.

And it seems to work! Yay!

~Neshomeh

I'll update the formatting info this evening (nm) by Tomash on 2022-07-06 14:58:39 UTC Reply

And done (nm) by Tomash on 2022-07-08 00:16:15 UTC Reply

I’m using Safari on a tablet. Is that why it won’t work for me? (nm) by Linstar on 2022-07-05 23:04:04 UTC Reply

Android phone gets weird about it. by Huinesoron on 2022-07-06 06:28:56 UTC Reply

It's totally unpredictable - sometimes hitting space twice gives two spaces, sometimes a full stop and one space, sometimes a full stop and no spaces. One test, I got full stop-space, deleted the full stop and added an extra space, and it didn't work. Another time, after full stop-space, I hit space again and it did nothing the first time, then added a second space when I hit it the fourth time overall.

My guess is that some or all of these spaces are actually coding differently. Could they be going in as nbsp and so not triggering the newline behaviour?

Typical (but not guaranteed) behaviour :

One space bar hit.

Two. Space. Bar. Hit.

Three. Space. Bar. Hit.

Four.
Space.
Bar.
Hit.

hS

Okay so... by Huinesoron on 2022-07-06 09:38:24 UTC Reply

... the parser is literally replacing "two space characters + one new line" with " ". It doesn't matter what you hit, just what prints out.

But it's also eliminating double spaces elsewhere. I wrote two in these gaps. And three in these. And ten here.

I think your parser just really hates multiple spaces in a row. ^_^ Though nbsp still works. A quick check shows that it's just rendered as a non-space character, so space-nbsp-space will make three spaces, but any extra spaces either side will be blipped.

I'm still reasonable sure I got my phone to do autofull-stop + two visible spaces and not convert to new line, but I can't replicate that behaviour, so maybe not.

hS

Yeah that figures... by Thoth on 2022-07-06 19:13:54 UTC Reply

It's likely trying to eliminate hand-justification.

No, it just gives me periods. by Linstar on 2022-07-05 22:36:38 UTC Reply

This. is. the. result. of. me. double. spacing.

—Ls.

Yes! by Linstar on 2022-07-04 19:05:42 UTC Reply

I totally agree! The current formatting makes no sense!

—Ls, overusing exclamation marks.

Can we get the links in the header fixed? by Huinesoron on 2022-06-29 18:49:23 UTC Reply

The TOS link currently goes to a redirect page, and realistically, there's no good reason not to point the Constitution link to the wiki page. I was being silly when I insisted we treat the GDoc as primary.

hS

Let's try you sending in the suggested changes? by Tomash on 2022-06-30 13:35:28 UTC Reply

The text of the header is stored [ in the highlighted part of thhis file, more or less. That page should have an edit button that'll allow you to make changes and then send in a "pull request" - or at least it did for me.

If we can get the editing thing to work, I think you sending in the changes you'd want to see in the header will go more smoothly than me trying to work out the exact tweaks you're after.

Edit button is greyed out. by Huinesoron on 2022-06-30 14:18:57 UTC Reply

And there are a lot of other, dangerous-looking buttons that I don't want to touch for fear of a "congratulations, you have deleted" message.

And... Tomash? That message feels very much like "irritated IT department to colleague who should know better". You're making me want to raise a ticket!

Your request has been logged with id ##hS-7219.

Title: Inhumed links

Description: PPC Board header (url: plotprotectors.org) contains obsolete links. Request correction of string "http://plotprotectors.tripod.com/TOS/" to "https://plotprotectors.neocities.org/TOS/", and "https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=18hztHpDehxcfrjaXoFUew1vb0BdZPDAusHxMHzHiCzM" to "https://ppc.fandom.com/wiki/PPC_Constitution". All other text to remain the same. Attempts to Do It Yourself via github have been unsuccessful (see previous ticket ##DIY-1666).

Submitted by: Huinesoron Eagleshade, etc etc

Click here to Close Request

Note: DoSAT reserves the right to close this ticket without notice or resolution at any time. For more information, please reread.

hS

And the links have been updated by Tomash on 2022-07-01 00:57:29 UTC Reply

(Having looked at the nearby buttons on the page, the fun one is probably the "Blame" button, for when you want a detailed history of exactly how all the code in that file is my fault)

Thank you! (nm) by Huinesoron on 2022-07-01 19:54:07 UTC Reply

Good to know by Tomash on 2022-06-30 14:35:31 UTC Reply

And since I don't know if the remedy to the edit button not working for you is "being logged in" or "Delta needs to tweak a setting" or what ... I'll fix the links this evening when I'm not at work.

Thanks for clearing up what you want the replacement to be, and I'm sorry for giving off the impression I was irritated with you.

It should be a login issue by Thoth on 2022-06-30 15:36:03 UTC Reply

I checked, and it will autofork and setup a PR if you don't have commit bits. I don't have privs on that repo, so it should be the same for me as anyone.

For future reference, Github, much like git itself, has a tendency to frighten and confuse our non-technical colleagues (I mean for that matter, git has a tendency to confuse our technical colleagues, hence James Mickens' aphorism about git being Donnie Darko as a service—i.e., a confusing movie about time travel that you put your source code into) and I would recommend against pushing people to interact with it directly (although of course everyone is welcome to get their hands dirty if they want to).

Yeah, good point by Tomash on 2022-07-01 00:54:11 UTC Reply

I figured hS had enough background to not run away screaming from "hey, here's how you propose edits to the HTML for the Board" but definitely underestimated the git/Github factor.

Markdown was a thing I mentioned, but not the big thing I'd like to change. by Neshomeh on 2022-06-28 04:29:32 UTC Reply

I'm actually fine with Markdown most of the time, and I know how to \escape it when I want to do things like *this.* {= )

The big thing, literally, is the excessively large font of blockquotes like this one:

Blockquotes really take over a post, and they shouldn't.

I think someone told me at some point that changing the appearance of these would be difficult, but I don't remember why, and it seems to me it ought to be a pretty simple CSS fix. So...?

Speaking of Markdown, though, a thing I've remembered just now: could we have the formatting guide open in a new tab by default? And maybe all external links in general?

~Neshomeh

The blockquotes are fixed - it was a one-line CSS change by Tomash on 2022-06-28 21:32:48 UTC Reply

For the morbidly curious this is the line (plus bonus blank space to improve readability while I was there)

I'm reluctant to set a default open-in-new-tab behavior, as I'd expect folks to want to manage that their own. Doing it for the formatting guide is a good call, though - I'll do that later today.

Formatting guide now opens in a new tab (nm) by Tomash on 2022-06-28 22:48:10 UTC Reply

Hooray, hooray! Thank you! (nm) by Neshomeh on 2022-06-29 03:49:22 UTC Reply

My personal thing is I wish it was easier to enter a spoiler and not have it confused with a link... by Kittyauthor on 2022-06-28 13:49:48 UTC Edited Reply

for forgetting one character.

I know the easy solution is to just use HTML or pay very close attention to what you're typing as far as code goes, but just like accidentally filling your canvas with black because a tiny space exists in your lines, sometimes it's just so tiny that you don't notice it until it posts like this and then it gets annoying (in this case, there's no space between #s and " and there are no ending quotes).

Perhaps something to catch small errors in Markdown that can be toggled? For example, if someone litters their posts with an * on every line and doesn't mean to italize, they can toggle that error thing off.

It's just an idea. Probably not a very plausible one because even Toyhouse doesn't have one for regular code, and TH is pretty popular.

-kA

(Edit: Spelling)

(Edit 2: Grammar.)

Re spoilers by Tomash on 2022-06-28 21:36:47 UTC Reply

The funny thing about them is that they are links, just links that don't go anywhere. Then, there's CSS and Javascript magic that digs out the "title" attribute of the link (the thing that, in Markdown, lives in quotes) and inserts it into the post as spoiler text.
Are you unable to preview a post before you make it? Or does it not help in that situation? (nm) by Neshomeh on 2022-06-28 14:40:05 UTC Reply

I am, but that doesn't necessarily help. by Kittyauthor on 2022-06-28 14:46:23 UTC Reply

I'm on mobile, so it's a pain to hit preview then scroll through (usually) a decent-size post to see "hmmm, did it spoiler?" And then check back to see what mistake I made in same said decent-size post. It gets more annoying the longer the post. So, it doesn't necessarily help.

-kA

Also, Murphy's Law. by Huinesoron on 2022-06-28 15:22:13 UTC Reply

The one time you're rattling out a quick one-liner using only code that you can do in your sleep, so you skip the preview...

... is the time you spontaneously lose the ability to spell and somehow drop a U 200F character in there along the way.

(I have got the spoilers - either kind - to work exactly once, and it took four gos. Blockquote I can't even find in the formatting list, but I remember repeatedly failing on that one too.)

hS

Same. by Linstar on 2022-06-28 15:34:38 UTC Reply

I’ve gotten spoilers to actually work maybe once, and only for my Bleepfic nomination. And I've never bothered with blockquotes, I find quotation marks work for me. Side note: how do you add an image that doesn’t have a website? I made a Mina and Carlisle height chart, but couldn’t figure out how to upload it.

—Ls

No, you do need to upload it. by Huinesoron on 2022-06-28 15:46:14 UTC Reply

The Board doesn't (as far as I know) host images, and we can't see them off your computer.

I've found Imgur works pretty well these days for image hosting, but you can always chuck it into a Google doc and link to that. (Not embed from that, though; that way lies madness.)

hS

Ok, then. by Linstar on 2022-06-28 15:52:05 UTC Reply

I’ll probably just go for Word, though

Blockquote took me looking it up to find out how. by Kittyauthor on 2022-06-28 15:31:29 UTC Reply

It's literally <blockquote></blockquote>. (stamps "not angry^tm" beneath this line)

IDK why I find it so funny that it is literally just typing "blockquote" in... sideways carrots/brackets/whatever-those-greater-or-less-than-signs-are-called, but I find it funny. :P

There's probably a shorter way of blockquoting, but that's the only way I can remember how to do it.

-kA, who now is also known as the Not Angry^tm PG

There is a shorthand in Discord. by Neshomeh on 2022-06-29 03:47:32 UTC Reply

You type a greater-than angle bracket ( > ) and a space, and whatever you enter on that line is a blockquote. It doesn't work here, but the angle bracket by itself is Ye Olde Internet signaling for a blockquote anyway.

> Who remembers that email replies
> used to be full of these? {= D

Anyway, I know about blockquotes in HTML because I use them for their intended purpose: to quote long passages from badfics in my missions. I started doing that with "Harry Potter and the Dragonriders of Pern," because there's a lot of bold and italics in the source material, so I couldn't use either of those; it was easier to find a way to offset quotations that preserved the original formatting. I kept doing it a) for consistency, and b) because I feel it's important to represent the source material as faithfully as possible, so y'all know I'm not making it up when I show you stuff like the bizarre line wrapping and spacing in "Full Metal and the Hogwarts Mishap."

This has been Trivia No One Asked for With:

~Neshomeh

So, that *would* work on the board... by Thoth on 2022-06-29 16:34:03 UTC Reply

...But we seem to have turned it off.

I asked Tomash why we did this, but neither of us actually remember. My best guess is that we wanted to avoid breaking emotes that start with "> " at the start of a line. This is particularly pertinant because of an implementation detail of the board: posts are stored to the database as written, and formatted on the way out. This is a Good Thing, by and large, but it does create a problem here: any adjustments we make to formatting apply retroactively to every post ever made. Making that not happen would... actually be a good bit of work, so we haven't and may not.

But yes, we can actually allow this relatively trivially, in theory. It's just that the consequences may be undesirable.

Yeah, I think I remember that. by Neshomeh on 2022-06-29 22:11:54 UTC Reply

Same reason we turned off superscript with ^ , because we go ^_^ far more often than we need superscript. And of course sometimes we also go >.> or even >.< at the start of a line, too. {= )

~Neshomeh

Annoyingly... by Thoth on 2022-06-30 15:38:08 UTC Reply

Most Markdown parsers actually won't turn things into blockquotes unless they actually start with a > followed by a space, for exactly this reason. Since we were hitting this issue, I assume that redcarpet (our markdown parser) doesn't do this.

... you're actually joking. by Huinesoron on 2022-06-28 15:44:49 UTC Reply

Are you joking?

Oh sweet burning stars you're not joking. -_-

(As an aside, typing "-\_-" makes the emoticon look like it has cool facial scarring, or maybe Ziggy Stardust makeup.)

hS

on the upside, you'll never forget it again by Vioven on 2022-06-28 19:11:21 UTC Reply

You'll go "oh, how do I blocktext" and have flashbacks to this post. Always. And have a mini-cry/rage about it

(memory only functional until you actually need it, obviously)

Questions from a non-techie by Cicada on 2022-06-27 22:48:23 UTC Reply

So, I'm not entirely certain what an RSS feed is, exactly. It might be nice to get alerts but I don't know entirely what that would entail. Other than that, I just want to tell the Board Improvers that I'm super grateful for all your work on this, seriously.

It's "Really Simple Syndication". by Lily Winterwood on 2022-06-27 23:34:38 UTC Reply

It's a way for people to get updates about websites by sending them a title, description, and link to the content. You can subscribe to an RSS feed for blogs and such and get those updates in your email.

The Discord Latest Posts bot would do something similar -- automated posts in the server about when someone has posted something on the Board.