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Enhanced message formatting BETA phase 2

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Gidday Jaysen

Here are two posts where very experienced posters are messing up the formatting, mainly by using the tilde character. Like this (tilde = approx) 10 metres ...

As I have said before, STRIKETHROUGH is just absolutely un-necessary (a bit like the Olympus xD card, lol!).

Bill Turner:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1022&message=32247649

Thom Hogan:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1022&message=32246769

PLEASE, give us back our TILDE, and drop the STRIKETHROUGH altogether : ) lol!

[edit] It is one thing to have the occasional redundant character, that is par for the course. It is quite another to have the message made almost illegible by having most of a paragraph struck through ... :-(

e.g. From this distance, It is one thing to have the occasional redundant character, that is par for the course. It is quite another to have the message made almost illegible by having most of a paragraph struck through.

[end edit]

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
 
John Bean (UK) said:
Steve Balcombe said:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1029&message=32237672

This is never going to work, guys.
Click to expand...
It could, but only if the parser does the sensible thing and checks for proper open/close pairs as I keep asking them to do. Your example would work perfectly, treating the isolated * characters as literals.

Aside: Jaysen, I'll keep banging on about the need for matching pairs until I see it finally happen... or you give up on formatting old text altogether as Steve just suggested. I know which I think is the better move.
Click to expand...
It is indeed going to take some getting used to. I'm frequently typing math expressions in which ~ means approximately. And I just finished a post talking about exposure compensation which came out + - 1/3 stop until I realized I was typing in italics and it should have been +/- 1/3 stop.

Perhaps a checkbox in the message composition frame allowing the user to turn off formatting would be helpful; then the software would be instructed to treat all special characters literally. It would save time for those who aren't using formatting but are using special characters.

--
emil
--



http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/
 
G'day again Jaysen

It seems that the code is stripping off the space before smileys :-). This one has a single space between it and the "s".

"before smileys :-)." This one has two spaces between it and the "s", giving a single-space distance between them in the resulting formatted text.

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
 
Steve Balcombe said:
Joseph S Wisniewski said:
And about the jumping cursors. (Thanks to Steve, for his explanation of why. What percentage of the world is still on dial-up?)
Click to expand...
Just for the record - I'm using 512k broadband on a Core i7 machine. It's neither my connection speed nor my browser speed, it's the ad server which is keeping us waiting.
Steve Balcombe said:
Top posting is just plain rude, and enforcing it is rude squared.
Click to expand...
To be fair, opinions are divided on that.
Click to expand...
I'm relieved to see that opinions are divided on top posting. If a memo went out saying that it was rude, it missed my inbox.

I have intentionally top posted for certain messages for two reasons. The first is to keep the message I'm responding to in some way connected to my post. I don't expect readers to work their way through the same copy for the umpteenth time, so I just "append" it.

The second is because I want to be able to readily refer to the original post without changing screens.

I never dreamed that anyone was experiencing my practical approach as rude.

--
http://www.pbase.com/soenda
 
The new Shortcut Keys are interfering with my ability to search for text within a page. My browser searches for text as it is typed, without going through a Find function box. The problem now is that every F, N, W, R, Q, B, and M character inputted is being redirected to DPR's scripts. I've had my message window disappear several times already because I typed one of the script's characters while I was searching for a text string.

There should be an option to turn off unwanted scripts when the user has no intention of using them.
 
Jaysen Marais said:
There has been a fair amount of feedback (both in the forums and in the feedback emails) regarding 'missing messages' whose content is mysteriously enveloped in a signature block.

To solve the issue we've pushed an update to the 'post message' page which forces all browsers to put the caret at the beginning of the textarea. With this change in place, post content will appear above the automatically inserted signature line for all users, instead of below. Hopefully we should see fewer messages inside signatures from here on out.
Click to expand...
It is still happening

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1018&message=32247819
Jaysen Marais said:
--
Jaysen Marais
Web Developer, dpreview.com
Click to expand...
 
Jaysen Marais said:
The new formatting characters are:
Click to expand...
Jaysen Marais said:
  • ~strikethrough~
Click to expand...
Just in case no one has mentioned it, non-US keyboards don't necessarily have all the extra characters available - particularly the tilde

~~~~

If there were an alternative......

Thanks, and sorry if this is already out of date!

Peter

--
Peter - on the green island of Ischia
http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde/recisch

TZ7 pictures: http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde/tz7pics
Using the TZ5: http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde/tz5
 
Gidday Peter
Isola Verde said:
Jaysen Marais said:
The new formatting characters are:
Click to expand...
Isola Verde said:
  • ~strikethrough~
Click to expand...
Just in case no one has mentioned it, non-US keyboards don't necessarily have all the extra characters available - particularly the tilde

~~~~

If there were an alternative......

Thanks, and sorry if this is already out of date!

Peter
Click to expand...
That's interesting (to me at least ... :) ).

I thought that all keyboards supported the tilde character, EVEN the US ones ... rotfl ...

Out of sheer curiosity, which one/s don't, Peter?

[edit] I didn't read the title of your post, did I ... doh !

BTW, Jaysen, the [EDIT] button is on the blink again ... :(

[end edit]

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
 
If you're on Windows holding down Alt and typing 126 should always work. In addition I've been told that AltGr+^ should produce a tilde on an Italian keyboard, but I don't have a suitable keyboard to try it.

--
John Bean [BST ('British Stupid Time' - GMT+1)]

 
Gidday John & Peter
John Bean (UK) said:
If you're on Windows holding down Alt and typing 126 should always work. In addition I've been told that AltGr+^ should produce a tilde on an Italian keyboard, but I don't have a suitable keyboard to try it.
Click to expand...
If you are using Unicode, the key sequence is Alt+0126, e.g. ~ :)

Thanks for that, John. I could not find the keycode without dragging out computer books in storage.

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
 
ARShutterbug said:
The new Shortcut Keys are interfering with my ability to search for text within a page. My browser searches for text as it is typed, without going through a Find function box. The problem now is that every F, N, W, R, Q, B, and M character inputted is being redirected to DPR's scripts. I've had my message window disappear several times already because I typed one of the script's characters while I was searching for a text string.

There should be an option to turn off unwanted scripts when the user has no intention of using them.
Click to expand...
Same here. Safari on Mac.

--
Richard
 
John King said:
John Bean (UK) said:
If you're on Windows holding down Alt and typing 126 should always work. In addition I've been told that AltGr+^ should produce a tilde on an Italian keyboard, but I don't have a suitable keyboard to try it.
Click to expand...
If you are using Unicode, the key sequence is Alt+0126, e.g. ~ :)

Thanks for that, John. I could not find the keycode without dragging out computer books in storage.

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
Click to expand...
Don't know if this helps but ~ is Alt+n on my Mac keyboard - almost logical.
--
Richard
 
Gidday Richard
sphexx said:
Don't know if this helps but ~ is Alt+n on my Mac keyboard - almost logical.
--
Richard
Click to expand...
Lol! What do you expect, Richard? "Logical"? They are computers, programmed by logical humans ...

In Windows, the tilde character is placed between Alt+0158 and Alt+0160 in the standard character set. Should be Alt+0159, right? Wrong ... as John B has correctly informed us all, it is Alt+0126 ... Oh ... riiiight ...

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
 
Soenda said:
Steve Balcombe said:
Joseph S Wisniewski said:
Top posting is just plain rude, and enforcing it is rude squared.
Click to expand...
To be fair, opinions are divided on that.
Click to expand...
I'm relieved to see that opinions are divided on top posting.
Click to expand...
They're not all that divided. ;)
Soenda said:
If a memo went out saying that it was rude, it missed my inbox.
Click to expand...
Google netiquette "top posting"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php
http://danielmiessler.com/blog/internet-ettiquete-top-posting
Soenda said:
I have intentionally top posted for certain messages for two reasons. The first is to keep the message I'm responding to in some way connected to my post.
Click to expand...
That is better served by replying inline.
Soenda said:
I don't expect readers to work their way through the same copy for the umpteenth time, so I just "append" it.
Click to expand...
Trim it, and reply inline. That way, they don't have to jump around when the topic changes.
Soenda said:
The second is because I want to be able to readily refer to the original post without changing screens.
Click to expand...
OK, you've lost me there.
Soenda said:
I never dreamed that anyone was experiencing my practical approach as rude.
Click to expand...
Well, it was basically created by Microsoft and Blackberry users. ;) ;)

A few choice quotes from the first five hits on that Google search I mentioned earlier.
  • annoying practice
  • a Bad Thing™
  • a practice spawned from Satan
  • confuses your readers
  • leads to reader irritation".
Since I broke my wrist back in January, I'm typing my posts mostly with a voice dictation system. It would be so easy to just leave the carat where the mail or forum software puts it. And it would be cruel to the readers...

--
Rahon Klavanian 1912-2008.

Armenian genocide survivor, amazing cook, scrabble master, and loving grandmother. You will be missed.

Ciao! Joseph

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
 
John King said:
In Windows, the tilde character is placed between Alt+0158 and Alt+0160 in the standard character set. Should be Alt+0159, right? Wrong ... as John B has correctly informed us all, it is Alt+0126 ... Oh ... riiiight ...
Click to expand...
The first 127 characters of modern extended character sets generally map to the same characters in the original 7-bit ASCII character set. This consists of the standard US letters, numbers, common punctuation characters and miscellaneous TTY control characters. The tilde belongs to this set; its ASCII code is 126.

--
John Bean [BST ('British Stupid Time' - GMT+1)]

 
G'day again John
John Bean (UK) said:
John King said:
In Windows, the tilde character is placed between Alt+0158 and Alt+0160 in the standard character set. Should be Alt+0159, right? Wrong ... as John B has correctly informed us all, it is Alt+0126 ... Oh ... riiiight ...
Click to expand...
The first 127 characters of modern extended character sets generally map to the same characters in the original 7-bit ASCII character set. This consists of the standard US letters, numbers, common punctuation characters and miscellaneous TTY control characters. The tilde belongs to this set; its ASCII code is 126.
Click to expand...
Yeah. I stem from the days when one had to write a CTT (character translate table, for those who are wondering; mapped the characters output from the computer to those in the printer's character set) for almost any printer, but specially when the first laser printers hit the streets here in the early 1980s. The one I wrote for the Canon LBP-8 for use with Wang PCs actually spread around this country fairly quickly. An arcane art. As was converting a 5 bit paper tape data base to 8 bit ...

Fascinating stuff really. I knew a bloke who spent his early days programming CSIRAC in binary, storing the intermediate results as wave motions in a column of mercury. And people complain about how computers work these days ...

Thanks again for that info, though. All my computer reference books are still packed in moving boxes ...

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group
 
..... and for me that will be fine - however, for many of the range of other nationals who struggle to write comprehensible messages here as it is, that won't necessarily be quite so easy!

Imagine the howls if the choice had been just a little bit more UK-centric still, and the sign for £ sterling had been included as a formatting instruction!

Is it too late to rethink this?

Previously the formatting characters were
  • -strikethrough-
The new formatting characters are:
  • ~strikethrough~
Peter
--
Peter - on the green island of Ischia
http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde/recisch

TZ7 pictures: http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde/tz7pics
Using the TZ5: http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde/tz5
 
John King said:
An arcane art. As was converting a 5 bit paper tape data base to 8 bit ...
Click to expand...
Doddle.

At the risk of sounding like "Topper" from the Dilbert cartoons....

Try reading a box full of EBCDIC cards from an IBM mainframe into a PDP11/70 that had only ASCII tape readers back in the early 70s. In the end I found someone with a Honeywell that had both tape and card devices to convert the data into a paper tape copy of the cards - which of course was a one-off format requiring some work at device level to persuade the PDP's reader to read the tape at all. After that the actual data translation - which my boss thought would be the hardest part of the job - was completely trivial.

Anyway, enough OT nostalgia for one thread. Good old days? You can keep 'em - I'll take modern computers any day :-)

--
John Bean [BST ('British Stupid Time' - GMT+1)]

 
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