Forum / Formatting Posts

  • Wbi_-_relaxed_edited_edited.thumb
    Wilmot B. Irvin
    Jul 20, 10:56am

    I'm sorry if this is a duplication, but I don't see that it went through the first time.

    We are new to posting on Fictionaut and tried this morning (by cut and paste) to post a story in .doc and .pdf into the body of the post. Much of the formatting was turned into machine language in both forms of files.

    Is there a thread that gives details on how to post properly for newbies like us?

    Thanks for your help.

    Wilmot

  • Author_wide.thumb
    Jürgen Fauth
    Jul 20, 12:15pm

    Hi Wilmot,
    sorry about the problems. Cutting and pasting from a Word document *should* work at this point. If you're getting strange code, you might want to try to save the file as text-only, reopen it, and paste it into Fictionaut then.

    Let me know if you have any more problems. We're working on an upload function that will let you add Word files directly, but in the meantime, cutting and pasting is supposed to work...

    Thanks,
    Jurgen

  • Wbi_-_relaxed_edited_edited.thumb
    Wilmot B. Irvin
    Jul 20, 12:57pm

    Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I tried saving as a text-only file, using the instructions you gave above. Still no luck. I'm getting things like (and this is with every kind of file I've tried) "@" for the quotes, "=" for other symbols...that kind of thing. Do you know how long it might be before the upload function is online?

    Many thanks.

    Wilmot

  • Stephen_stark_web2.thumb
    Stephen Stark
    Jul 21, 11:32am

    Could be the font you're using in the word doc. Try using a "web-friendly" font, such as arial, times new roman, even courier. Could also be the browser you're using, although only Carson could tell you that.

    You could also save as a .txt file, then change the .txt to .html and open in your browser. If all looks good there, then cut and paste from the browser.

    Cheers,

    Steve

  • Wbi_-_relaxed_edited_edited.thumb
    Wilmot B. Irvin
    Jul 21, 02:32pm

    Steve:

    Many thanks for your suggestions. We found a way around the problem this morning and posted a story successfully.

    Best regards.

    Wilmot

  • Wbi_-_relaxed_edited_edited.thumb
    Wilmot B. Irvin
    Jul 21, 02:33pm

    Jurgen:

    The problem was on our end. We have solved it and posted a story!

    Best regards.

    Wilmot

  • 4586_550127587839_9801266_32663791_2858639_n.thumb
    Ben White
    Sep 29, 02:35am

    Any chance of formatting (limited html tags or whatever) for comments, profile, and message board posts etc.? It'd be nice to use italics and embed links into text instead of a long url and whatnot.

  • Yankee.thumb
    Carson Baker
    Sep 29, 01:18pm

    Hey Ben -- Yeah I think there's a good chance for that. There are the normal sanitization issues, but nothing that should prevent us from letting limited HTML go through. Would that be better than Markdown formatting?

  • 4586_550127587839_9801266_32663791_2858639_n.thumb
    Ben White
    Sep 30, 09:48pm

    I suppose markdown works, though I guess I'm just used to html and use it often for styling comments. I'm sure there are some people who might prefer the simplicity of markdown, but either way it would be important to make users aware of the formatting powers somewhere.

    I still think it'd be a pleasure to embed a link into text without the need to use the entire url. As in if I want to provide a link to Nanoism it would be great to just turn "Nanoism" into a link instead of needing to type "Nanoism (http://nanoism.net)." You know what I mean? Can't do that with markdown right?

  • 4586_550127587839_9801266_32663791_2858639_n.thumb
    Ben White
    Oct 15, 09:56pm

    Also, the parsing of URLs is messing a lot of people up, because it includes symbols (like parenthesis) that occur after the url is technically over. Notice that my link in the above post is actually broken. I'm seeing that all over the place. I don't what you use to build this site, but I'd think extra regular expression to catch inappropriate punctuation would be straightforward, no?

  • 4586_550127587839_9801266_32663791_2858639_n.thumb
    Ben White
    Oct 29, 09:58am

    Just a heads up to anyone browsing the forums that it appears as though basic html codes are now functioning in posts. So you can style using <strong>boldface</strong> and <em>italics</em> as well as <a href="http://nanoism.net">embed links within phrases</a>.

  • Yankee.thumb
    Carson Baker
    Oct 29, 11:14pm

    Yea. The problem with the Nanoism link above is that a parentheses is actually a valid character in a URI. For example, see: <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752574%28VS.85%29.aspx">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752574%28VS.85%29.aspx</a>. Yes, I can throw in some regular expressions and build logic to suss out what's intended, but that's just one corner case among hundreds of others.

    I'm trying to improve things in this regard, but it's going to happen slowly. Improving the core functionality of the site is my priority at the moment. However, if there are specific bugs that are really causing a problem, and you can reproduce them step by step, please please let me know and I'll fix them ASAP.

  • 4586_550127587839_9801266_32663791_2858639_n.thumb
    Ben White
    Nov 02, 04:49pm

    Now that it's possible to use html (and therefore to make the text and links appear as desired), I personally have no problems with letting the corner cases slide. I'd just as soon use the html to format anyway. No complaints here.

  • Markpritchard3_cropped.thumb
    Mark Pritchard
    Nov 04, 04:53pm

    I noticed that if you type a single asterisk, centered, on a line by itself, the editor turns it into a little graphic of three grey snowflakes. Which works for me as a section separator.

    If you type three asterisks like this:
    * * *
    You get three rows of the three-snowflake graphic.

  • You must log in to reply to this thread.