Splitting quotes

[regex]

This forum software is utter crap for splitting up quotes and handling multi-quotes, I cannot put it in any better words.  It is nearly impossible to address quotes in a point-by-point manner, remove unwanted parts of quotes, or even clear out a quoted post in order to start over.  It's not even a problem with mobile in specific, I can't count the number of posts I have simply abandoned, helpful or not, because dealing with the quoting system was so painful on Chrome desktop or mobile.  Can we please get BBCode or some other solution implemented?

Edited March 15, 2016 by regex

[HebaruSan]

17 minutes ago, regex said:

This forum software is utter crap for splitting up quotes and handling multi-quotes, I cannot put it in any better words.  It is nearly impossible to address quotes in a point-by-point manner

Try adding a blank line inside the quote, then put the cursor on it and press enter. It's worked for me so far.

17 minutes ago, regex said:

remove unwanted parts of quotes

This should be as easy as putting the cursor after the unwanted part and pressing backspace until it's gone. I've used this to remove the commas from this part of your sentence.

17 minutes ago, regex said:

or even clear out a quoted post in order to start over.

Ctrl-right click the quote header, "Remove Quote". Quite annoying (and I have no idea if it's possible on mobile), but it's there.

I hope some of that helps. I had a few frustrating moments with it, but after some time I've found it manageable.

[regex]

1 minute ago, HebaruSan said:

I hope some of that helps. I had a few frustrating moments with it, but after some time I've found it manageable.

I've learned all of those tricks and this forum software still messes it up on occasion.  It's terrible, utter crap, completely unfriendly, and there is no excuse for it.  I have no idea why this particular editor/forum software was chosen over one that supported BBCode.  Not to mention the way it handles (or rather, doesn't) removing centered or indented quoted text.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, regex said:

I've learned all of those tricks and this forum software still messes it up on occasion.  It's terrible, utter crap, completely unfriendly, and there is no excuse for it.  I have no idea why this particular editor/forum software was chosen over one that supported BBCode.  Not to mention the way it handles (or rather, doesn't) removing centered or indented quoted text.

Unfortunately, BBCode is really starting to die.  I like BBCode, but we're going to have to move on, sadly.  When CDs came out, people hated that things stopped supporting records, and that they needed to use CDs.

[Tex_NL]

16 hours ago, regex said:

This forum software is utter crap for splitting up quotes and handling multi-quotes, I cannot put it in any better words.  It is nearly impossible to address quotes in a point-by-point manner, remove unwanted parts of quotes, or even clear out a quoted post in order to start over.  It's not even a problem with mobile in specific, I can't count the number of posts I have simply abandoned, helpful or not, because dealing with the quoting system was so painful on Chrome desktop or mobile.  Can we please get BBCode or some other solution implemented?

You're preaching to the choir my friend. But sadly the powers that be are not listening.
Instead of listening and dealing with all the complaints they seem to have adopted a passive strategy. When they realize complaining won't help people eventually will stop. It would not surprise me if at that time the powers that be start patting themselves on the back: "Everything is solved, not body is complaining any more."

[Red Iron Crown]

That's hardly fair, Tex_NL. The fact is that it doesn't seem to be possible to implement full BBCode under IPS4 (there are some editor plugins that allow output of BBCode but that's not what we're looking for). Currently the only option is to allow raw HTML source editing, which is highly undesirable for reasons which I hope are obvious. We continue to look at options here as we know that some people are very dissatisfied by the new editor, but we can't promise anything nor do we want to say it will never happen. In the meantime, we continue to try to improve the forum and its configuration as best we can using the tools available to us. 

[Frybert]

20 hours ago, regex said:

It is nearly impossible to address quotes in a point-by-point manner, remove unwanted parts of quotes, or even clear out a quoted post in order to start over.

Does the highlighting quoting not work on chrome?

 

20 hours ago, regex said:

 It's not even a problem with mobile in specific, I can't count the number of posts I have simply abandoned, helpful or not, because dealing with the quoting system was so painful on Chrome desktop or mobile.

Because quoting by highlighting makes splitting quotes fairly easy.

[Padishar]

On ‎16‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 6:41 PM, Frybert said:

Because quoting by highlighting makes splitting quotes fairly easy.

No, it makes creating quotes that are split fairly easy.  It doesn't allow you to split an existing quote.  I often want to quote the entire message but have it split into 5 or more parts and having to do each part using a mouse driven interface is slow and cumbersome, especially when the post is a way up the page and you have to keep scrolling back up to it to quote the next bit (and the editor sometimes sticks the quote in a stupid place that requires more mouse work to correct).  The old BBCode system was much easier, quote whole post, easily delete chunks of the quote using just the keyboard, split the quote using just the keyboard by copying and pasting the quote tag, edit content of quotes using just the keyboard (this editor doesn't reliably let you move the caret into and out of quotes with the keyboard forcing you to click with the mouse instead).

Also, you can't edit a post and add new quotes to it, they get added to the "thread reply" editor rather than the "edit post" editor.  This makes it more trouble than it's worth to avoid double positing, e.g. if I post a reply to someone's message and another message is posted while I was typing, then it is much easier to post a new quoted reply to the new post than try to get a quote from it into the original reply.

Creating a decent WYSIWYG text editor on the web is difficult and most of them out there aren't really worth using.  This is especially true since the shift towards making things more usable on touch devices.  If there is a "plain text with markup" alternative editor then I will almost always use it in preference.

[Columbia]

This is an issue which has really been.. well, irritating. There have been occasions where I was forced to just quote it via text and then tagging the user from which the quote originated from, because of problems with the quoting system, especially on mobile.

And surely, the tons of people (myself included) that have been seen to accidentally tag old quotes from the same thread and can't delete them (mobile) have to be some indication that there's something wrong with how quotes work.. say, deleting them in the mobile version? In the first place, why are they even still preserved in a new post in the same thread?

And quote-splitting was a very efficient way to argue one side and get your point across. I don't see why that has become such a difficult thing in the new forums. Well, lack of BBCode, I guess.

Edited March 19, 2016 by Columbia

[Camacha]

On 16/03/2016 at 6:18 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

That's hardly fair, Tex_NL. The fact is that it doesn't seem to be possible to implement full BBCode under IPS4 (there are some editor plugins that allow output of BBCode but that's not what we're looking for). Currently the only option is to allow raw HTML source editing, which is highly undesirable for reasons which I hope are obvious.

Is that not something that should have been considered and tested before doing a huge and slow migration? Without wanting to sound disrespectful or ungrateful for all the effort and work put it, the way the KSP forums are run from a technical point of view seems to be somewhat haphazard. Yes, I do realize it is something Squad does voluntarily and for free Those are two largely different matters.

[Red Iron Crown]

Sorry @Camacha, I can't really comment on those decisions as they are above my paygrade.

[Snark]

On 3/18/2016 at 3:10 AM, Padishar said:

Also, you can't edit a post and add new quotes to it, they get added to the "thread reply" editor rather than the "edit post" editor.  This makes it more trouble than it's worth to avoid double positing, e.g. if I post a reply to someone's message and another message is posted while I was typing, then it is much easier to post a new quoted reply to the new post than try to get a quote from it into the original reply.

Incidentally, there's a simple workaround for this particular issue-- go ahead and do the quote, and when it gets added to "thread reply", mouse over the quote, click the little "four arrows" box at its top left, then cut it to the clipboard.  Then you can paste it into your "edit post" editor.

Yes, it's annoying, and yes, you shouldn't have to do this, and yes, it should "just work."  But it can be a handy workaround.

[Padishar]

Thanks very much for that workaround, more mouse work but at least it's possible.  They really should indicate it more clearly that the whole quote gets selected when you click the icon.

Another thing that really irritates me is when you edit a post and click cancel.  It shows a confirmation dialog asking "Are you sure?" and it has Cancel and OK buttons.  This is a cardinal UI sin, no mention of what it is confirming and potential confusion about whether the cancel button will cancel the cancellation or the edit.  Also, to make it even worse, the OK and Cancel buttons are the opposite way around to most other dialogs.

[jwbrase]

On Wednesday March 16, 2016 at 0:18 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's hardly fair, Tex_NL. The fact is that it doesn't seem to be possible to implement full BBCode under IPS4 (there are some editor plugins that allow output of BBCode but that's not what we're looking for). Currently the only option is to allow raw HTML source editing, which is highly undesirable for reasons which I hope are obvious.

If that is the case, and if no solution that will support BBCode is acceptable for technical/administrative reasons, then I *strongly* believe that it would be preferable to go with a solution that forgoes formatting and just does plain text with ">" at the beginning of every line in a quote (like mail clients often do with plain text e-mails). The WYSIWYG editor for the current software is unusable, and often even enter and backspace don't always behave as expected. In fact, I am trying to insert a couple of newlines for a paragraph break as I type, and every time I press enter it just moves the cursor to the beginning of the quote (*up* the page from where I'm typing). So I'll have to insert a poor man's paragraph break to separate thoughts. ======================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================== I seem to recall (please correct me if I'm misremembering) that when the forums first switched over and we were all first reacting to the new software, one of the justifications given for the switch was that the old software was no longer supported, with consequent security implications. It is thus understandable, and, indeed, professionally to be expected that you would look for something that was still supported by its vendor. But regarding this particular software I would like to say that if the vendor's quality control is so lax that such blatant UI bugs are getting through, it is likely letting security bugs through in droves. If the obvious and incredibly annoying problems aren't being caught, the sneaky, insidious ones certainly won't be (and that's ignoring that the possibility that some of the UI bugs could also have security implications). So this software, at best, is almost certainly not any better, security-wise than what we had previously and may be worse. From a UI perspective this software is solidly worse. Now, I'm not saying "you must go back to the old software immediately", I'm more saying "there is as much, if not more, of a case for abandoning this software as there was for the old software". And in saying that, I'm not even saying "we have to find something else immediately", because we'll certainly want the new-new solution to be thoroughly vetted to insure it isn't just as much of a fiasco as the current software. But something certainly needs to be done about finding an alternative.