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MNHQ

Bold and italics

19 replies

tech · 10/11/2004 21:25

We are thinking of letting members add bold and italics to messages for emphasis. Being of the old school I don't wholeheartedly approve of such new-fangl ednesses, but hmm... Anyway, I figured we'd use [b]bold section[/b] and [i]italic section[/i] for italics (too much WordPerfect reveal codes in my youth). Anyone have any better ideas?
Of course, they'd display as bold and italic in the message.

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MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 21:29

say does anyone have a better idea on how to delimit bold and italic sections is what I meant. I'm sure lots of people have lots of better ideas.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 21:32

won't work sadly. * can appear anywhere really. It'll be inappropriate winks all over again. we'd be bolding everyone's swear words. Or do you mean you think we shouldn't do it at all JanH?

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 21:35

Control-keys won't work without a major re-engineering project. If you press Ctrl-I while typing in internet explorer, you get the favourites bar popping up on the left.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 21:43

They are part of it. To start bold you would type [b] and then to end bold [/b]. start italic [i], end italic [/i]. If we didn't have the square brackets it would be very difficult to distinguish an I that says "go italic from here" from an I that just happens to mean I like in "I like chocolate" - if you see what I mean.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 21:50

No, JanH, it wouldn't matter. there could be whole sentences if you like. we'd have to also deal with the case where someone starts bold and doesn't end it or the rest of the page might go bold. It would actually be much easier if we limited it to single words. Hmm, there's a thought. maybe we should do
[b]word - does just one word
[b]a phrase[/b] - bold everything between.

It starts to get complicated quite quickly sadly (in the techno sense). I remember when we had the over-zealous profanity filter.... whole messages were turning into asterisks.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:05

OK, we'll maybe do that then.
bold
underine
/italic/

-- may as well do something people are used to. Easier to type as well.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:20

This is a test message But you can still put an and another and the odd / if you want. Not to mention as long as there are spaces between them.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:21

Now don't tell me I'm always slow. Try it out (waits for it to go wrong in spectacular fashion).

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:22

that would be it going wrong then. wrecking the pix. will fix now.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:24

sorry about wrecking the pix

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:30

It will only do single words.

SoThisWillWorkIfYouMustDoSentences

Probably shouldn't have told you that...

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:33

sorry MarsLady, my mind was changed. I'll add the instructions to the box on the right now.
It's word (without the spaces) for bold.
word for underline
/ word / for italics
No spaces or it won't work.

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:53

How'd you manage that coppertop? can you remember?

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 22:55

Ah yes, I can see why. Thanks, will fix.....

MNHQ

tech · 10/11/2004 23:00

It should all work now even links next to smileys.

It might still go a bit haywire if there are no spaces when a link follows a smiley. I'll look again. hmm.

MNHQ

tech · 11/11/2004 09:48

I had to turn italics off so that it didn't mess up links... if it saw a link like news.bbc.co.uk/a/b/c it was trying to put the a and b in italics, and breaking the link. I'm just fixing it

MNHQ

tech · 13/11/2004 14:14

Hello all,
Have turned italics back on, but using caret () instead of slash (/). So hello without the spaces gives hello^. I've updated the guide on the right to reflect this..... sorry this has been such an epic.

Regards,
Tech

MNHQ

tech · 13/11/2004 14:22

Hi JanH,

I'm just changing the way links are handled so that we take them out of the text before doing any fancy schmancy stuff with bold etc. Then put them back in at the end. So it should all settle down by Monday.... as vic and bob used to say, I didn't think it through, did i.

MNHQ

tech · 13/11/2004 14:53

Hesitate to say this, but it should all work now. I know JanH. In the real world you do "regression tests" to make sure anything new hasn't broken anything old. We don't have that ability though (resources innit), so i just have to try think of what might go wrong. oh woe is me.

Right,
this is a link to page with underscores and slashes galore.boldstill works as does the original italics and the new version and underline. Multiple links in the same message should be OK too. The missing spaces etc are deliberate by the way....

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