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Improving Mindat.orgBolding and Italicizing text

19th Oct 2019 12:33 UTCJamison K. Brizendine 🌟 Expert

Before the forums got a remake, it was possible to bold and italicize text, include "page breaks", etc. With the forum update, it is no longer possible to do this. Will this be available an upcoming update?

19th Oct 2019 12:49 UTCLarry Maltby Expert

I agree with Jamison on this. Some additional writing "tools" would be very helpful.

19th Oct 2019 12:57 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Is is still possible using the standard key combinations eg Ctrl+b on a PC.

The message board will continue to evolve and I am simply trying to find a balance between functionality and ease of use.

My concern is in part that people were using the messageboard for very long and detailed topics that were far more suited to an article. They were inevitably lost within the system after a short while.

I deliberately tried to make the new system in a format to encourage shorter more concise messages. In general, if you think you need a lot of formatting tools then you really need to stop and think whether you should be doing an article instead.

19th Oct 2019 15:53 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

What does simple functionality like the ability to bold and italicise certain words have to do with the length of a message? I don't believe people are asking for a lot of formatting tools, just the basic ones we see in a typical Word document (bold, italicise, underline) would suffice.

19th Oct 2019 16:01 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

I'm concerned people will do everything in bold if they are trying to make a point or simply want to be annoying. Formatting tools have vanished in modern social networks eg Facebook precisely because it is not a Word document and you really shouldn't be thinking about it in those terms.

19th Oct 2019 16:15 UTCDebbie Woolf Manager

Facebook does have bold and italics available for use (in files).

19th Oct 2019 17:53 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

And we have it available for use (in articles!)

19th Oct 2019 20:33 UTCFrank K. Mazdab 🌟 Manager

The inability to do basic formatting has been really annoying. The "Control-B/Command-B" methods are not consistent across different users' computers and operating systems (for example, I still can't do that with my Mac, whereas apparently others can) and need to be augmented with a user-friendly in-line way of doing it. I've resorted to doing *this* for bold or italics (which is it? who knows?). If people want to make a point or be annoying, THEY CAN WRITE IN ALL CAPS TOO, SO THE LACK OF BOLD OR ITALICS DOESN'T PREVENT THAT. On a discussion board people want to be able to convey some basic emotions ("Wow!, that is a *really* spectacular azurite crystal cluster you have there!"... bold or italics useful) and not just unformatted robotic expressions of fact ("Your azurite crystal cluster meets my aesthetic criteria"... bold or italics not necessary).

20th Oct 2019 02:24 UTCMartin Rich Expert

Mindat claims it is a scientific site. Jolyon why do you think people will use this basic possibilities for formating text inflationary? In the old forum it was able to use such tools and I can't remember that contributors used it extensivly.

Maybe the mainstream of forums do not use such tools, but in my opinion mindat should not run after the mainstream! Maybe I'm a dinosaur and I do not understand modern times, but I don't like the depletion of speech and writing.

20th Oct 2019 08:12 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

I am not ruling out adding formatting tools but to do so requires some work so that it's done properly and works well in mobile devices etc. The toolbar we use currently on editing pages is a horrible mess and I don't want it to look or work like that. It may be more sensible to build something that can work well for all our edit pages rather than something just for the messageboard.

Probably the smart way to avoid the problems I was describing is to have these tools only enabled for registered users who I would certainly trust more, however even some of our regular users are often heavy on the caps lock, so I'm not 100% convinced!

In the meantime selecting the text you want and hitting Ctrl-B on PC and Cmd-B on Mac should work. Unfortunately there is no way to do this currently on mobile.

20th Oct 2019 08:30 UTCFrank K. Mazdab 🌟 Manager

Cmd-B on Mac does not universally work. This has been brought up repeatedly in the past. For *some* (hmm, italics would have been useful there) users, there is currently *no* way to apply any bold or italics formatting.

And my workaround for random subscripts is to (1) enable web inspector (inserting a mineral formula doesn't work for me if I don't do that), (2) insert the formula for ice (nice easy mineral; can be inserted repeatedly as necessary), and then (3) edit the elements and subscript value of ice to what I need. If I need a vacancy, I use the formula for wiluite (and same process, plus lots of deleting). Summary of the method: pain-in-the-butt! Including additional formatting for subscripts and superscripts, in addition to bold and italics, would be greatly appreciated!

20th Oct 2019 08:37 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

Probably the smart way to avoid the problems I was describing is to have these tools only enabled for registered users who I would certainly trust more

Anyone who posts on the discussions has to be registered.

20th Oct 2019 10:57 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Sorry I meant level 1 upwards

20th Oct 2019 11:01 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

When does Cmd-B not work? Is it particular to your system and software? All the time or just with mindat? I know there are problems with some standard key options and the toolbar we have on some edit pages but I thought I had fixed most of the clashes with other key combinations.

You can always use insert formula as I'll attempt now:

He₂₅PuO₅ · 19.8D₂O

20th Oct 2019 11:40 UTCFrank K. Mazdab 🌟 Manager

I can't say when Cmd-B (or the like) works or doesn't work for me outside of mindat, because the new mindat messageboard is the only place where I would type something that benefits from formatting, but where a formatting button or the use of HTML isn't available. I don't recall ever using keystrokes to do formatting. In any case, it certainly doesn't work for me here. Elsewhere I use HTML tags (even here, in some of the text boxes on mineral pages where HTML tags are allowed), or dedicated formatting buttons (like in MS Word, or here back on the old messageboard).

Because this will be asked... MacBook Pro late 2012; MacOS Sierra (10.12.6); Safari 12.1.2. Perhaps it's an extension I'm using, or maybe my ad-blocker? There are perhaps a lot of experiments I could try, beyond the ones I already have that have offered me some of the workarounds I've discovered. But since others here are also pushing for formatting buttons, that seems like an easier global fix than diagnosing everyone's quirky settings that allow some functions to work on one machine but not another.

I still have other ongoing issues here beyond formatting, but I've kinda given up on re-iterating them after my first tries... for example, when I view a photo and click on the caption, I don't get a right-hand up-and-down scroll bar, so the only way I can access the editing functions (or the "start a discussion about this photo" box... for a long time I didn't even realize that existed!) at the bottom of the photo caption window is to shrink the text zoom on the page until the bottom items show up in the frame.

After just re-trying, the insert formula function does seem to work for me now (but it hasn't always, however). But, as with inserting a formula from a mineral, I still need to open the "show web inspector" in Safari's develop tab in order for it to work; otherwise nothing happens. That seems like an odd necessity, but it must also somehow hold a clue to the apparently atypical behavior of my system. I'm also willing to bet my experience is not unique... for every person who says, "this doesn't work for me", there are likely others who just haven't said anything.

20th Oct 2019 13:21 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

The issue with Safari is something I have been able to repeat (strangely, it seems ok on Safari on iOS), I apologise that I was unable to look into it more.

20th Oct 2019 13:24 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

It's undoubtedly a timing-releated issue where something in my code is trying to access a function or form element that hasn't been loaded/rendered at the time it's being executed on Safari, but with the developer console loaded the timings are different and it works. These things are not easy to debug, it's a matter of going through every line of code and checking if it's being called in the right order!

20th Oct 2019 20:57 UTCFrank K. Mazdab 🌟 Manager

I can appreciate that unexpected behaviors when executing code may not always be a trivial matter to track down and fix. And while frustrating for me at times, I've largely found workarounds or tricks (as in opening the developing console) that still let me do what I want to do... mostly. But let me re-iterate my enthusiasm for adding basic formatting utility here... it would be embraced, and likely mostly judiciously and appropriately... :-)

20th Oct 2019 08:18 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Bold, italic, underline, strike through, super and sub script, bullet lists, these are reasonably inoffensive and could be supported.

Fonts, colours and headings will not. (Possible exception of adding a fixed width Font option which may be useful)

20th Oct 2019 08:20 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Also for those who don't already know the hidden trick, when pasting content it's show formatted differently to indicate it's a quote and you can't edit it. Which is not good if you're composing your message elsewhere and pasting it in or using a translator.

In this case there's a hidden button clicking the 'please behave' button to clear the formatting and make it editable again.

21st Oct 2019 10:08 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

"Hidden" or visible? For all registered members or depending on status?

21st Oct 2019 11:54 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

the button is hidden and sitting underneath the 'please behave' text. but it works for all registered users.

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