Markup tags screwed up again

[Andy9o8 0]

It's doing that thing again where when people hit "quote" to reply to a post, it makes it look like the reply is part of the post that's being responded to (in the box with blue background and indented text), rather than the new post being separated in a fresh white background without indentations. Same/similar thing happened a couple of months ago shortly after the roll-out of the new format. Using Firefox; haven't checked it out in other browsers.

[unkulunkulu 0]

Andy9o8

It's doing that thing again where when people hit "quote" to reply to a post, it makes it look like the reply is part of the post that's being responded to (in the box with blue background and indented text), rather than the new post being separated in a fresh white background without indentations. Same/similar thing happened a couple of months ago shortly after the roll-out of the new format. Using Firefox; haven't checked it out in other browsers.

I've just hit a "quote" in firefox and responded. Actually, I saw this problem through these forums for years, some users were more consistent with it than others. I thought that some people just didn't quite understand the markup thing.

[Andy9o8 0]

unkulunkulu

***It's doing that thing again where when people hit "quote" to reply to a post, it makes it look like the reply is part of the post that's being responded to (in the box with blue background and indented text), rather than the new post being separated in a fresh white background without indentations. Same/similar thing happened a couple of months ago shortly after the roll-out of the new format. Using Firefox; haven't checked it out in other browsers.

I've just hit a "quote" in firefox and responded. Actually, I saw this problem through these forums for years, some users were more consistent with it than others. I thought that some people just didn't quite understand the markup thing.

Yeah, now it seems to be working ok. But yesterday I saw several peoples' posts w/that problem, and it happened to me earlier today. I had to go into edit & twiddle with stuff to separate my post from others'. Anyhow, I hope the powers that be keep an eye on this.

ETA: here's a post w/similar problem - see? http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4514194#4514194

[unkulunkulu 0]

Hmm, there's something quite interesting wrt that post!
When I press Quote on the lawrocket's post above, I get this:

************** cut here *************

lawrocket

Jury nullification presents a significant problem. What's the purpose of a law if it can either be applied or nullified on the basis of the whim of whomever happens to be there?

So three jurors disagree with the tax laws. And then they find a tax cheat not guilty. What the hell is the point of a law, then?[email]

************** cut here *************

Note the [email] tag just before ? Something is wrong there!

Maybe he misclicked the [email] button before posting?

Anyway, that should be considered a bug in the markup handling. Mismatched tags should be handled gracefully.

Maybe we should collect instances of this bug in this thread to try and trail the root cause.

[Meso 38]

You're correct unkulunkulu...

There haven't been any markup bugs, it's always been down to user error. Cases where someone forgets to close one of the tags, or accidentally adds another markup element by accident.

As can be seen in the example above, the user accidentally clicked the e-mail markup (And never closed it).

It may help to also understand how these markup tags work. Basically they're just shortcuts for CSS styling to be done. That is to say, if I type [.quote] - all that's essentially doing is pulling through some

code. And then when I type the [./quote] part, it closes that div by pulling through

. So if a user forgets at any point to close a tag, regardless of whether it's e-mail or quote or reply... It leaves one with an unclosed div and essentially breaks the styling.

It's why we urge users to double check their posts and should they notice a styling issue with regards to tags, when they make a post. They should first try edit the post and see if they missed a tag. :)

[unkulunkulu 0]

User error, right. But we users are humans, so we make mistakes. It's software's job to help us out. I understand that this is not a trivial problem, but something is better be done about it, because it makes it difficult to follow threads sometimes.

[Andy9o8 0]

Quote

There haven't been any markup bugs, it's always been down to user error. Cases where someone forgets to close one of the tags, or accidentally adds another markup element by accident.

Sorry, but although that that may often be the case, I'm not sure it's always the case. Sometimes I see it, so I hit "quote" just to look at the imbedded codes, and I don't see anything wrong; so the problem seems to be in the display, and not the markup tags. I don't have a specific post to link as an example at my fingertips, but I'm pretty sure of this.

But for discussion's sake, let's say I did miss a tag error on the occasional example I looked at. There's still the user-friendliness issue that Unku suggested.

Anyhow, I hope you take all this simply as folks trying to be constructive members of the team, because that's how it it's intended. We do appreciate all you do.

[Meso 38]

I agree, something does need to be done to try and make it easier. And we may work something into doing that, but the way this CMS's markup system works, we'd need to do quite a lot of work I think - in order to change it. But it's something I will discuss with the others and see what can be done.

And with regards to any of those other posts, if you come across any - be sure to fire them this way, because if there ever is any issues with the code, I'd like to get it sorted out Cheers

[Andy9o8 0]

Hi. The markups are screwing up again when you hit the "quote" button to reply to someone's post. This time it makes it seem as though the post you're responding to is part of your post...or something like that. I'm also seeing other people whose posts seem to be screwed up, one way or another, when they use the Quote button recently. It happens often enough that I wonder whether it can be attributable solely to user error or technique, or if there's either a code issue and/or a user-friendliness issue.

[unkulunkulu 0]

Can you provide links to the problem threads/posts? Is it reproducible for you, i.e. can you make a quote properly or is there some problem?

[Andy9o8 0]

Examples:

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4529708#4529708

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4529557#4529557

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4529585#4529585

[unkulunkulu 0]

It's not "The markups are screwing up again when you hit the "quote" button to reply to someone's post." They are screwed up when you reply to those specific posts that are malformed. If you wish, I could demonstrate this.

[unkulunkulu 0]

Try replying to this one with a "Quote" button

Quote

• Quote

[unkulunkulu 0]

Do you see what I did there?

The rest of this message is what I typed in the previous one verbatim:

Try replying to this one with a "Quote" button

Quote

• Quote

[unkulunkulu 0]

So I didn't close the reply block, see? And it screws up the engine. In the messages you linked users were making similar mistakes, unwillingly probably. The "new" part that you noticed, i.e. making the quoted text appear as though it's part of your message vs your message appearing as quoted is just an implication of different ways to trick the engine, it's not "new bugs". Meso is fully aware of this and mostly acknowledges the error, but it's not that trivial to fix really, some thought as well as programming is needed.
Yes, this is a user-friendliness issue, because users do make mistakes and the software should help us track them down and fix them. It's sometimes hard to follow the markup carefully when there's a lot of quoting/replying going on and it's quite easy to go wrong and miss a mismatched tag.

Hope this helps.

[Meso 38]

Unkulunkulu has accurately summed it up. In the latter two examples, for example - the user had written their post and then at the end of their post they had inserted a random [.reply] which didn't have a closing tag, which would result in the post turning any text further down in that post block into a reply box.

[Andy9o8 0]

I've seen it happening again in several posts just this past 2 or 3 days. Firefox, IE, and Samsung Galaxy Android. When you go into the text (of whatever post in question), you can see the "close quote" tag where it's supposed to be, but it seems to ignore that closing tag in display mode, so that the last quoted message appears to be part of the reply. That's the best way I can describe it.

[Meso 38]

Hey,

I am positive that again this is something to do with the incorrect tags being used, or some misuse of the shortcodes.

Can you please point me to a post where you see this happening, so that I can just double check it.

Reason I am convinced, is because if it was a system problem, where it was missing the tags, it would happen on every post.

[Andy9o8 0]

Quote

I am positive that again this is something to do with the incorrect tags being used, or some misuse of the shortcodes.

ok thanks