BSV Forum - Support - Wishlist

New RTF Editor

Nov 15 2007 10:52 pm   #1Diabola

You can use this thread to talk about the new editor I mentioned in the news. The link to test it was here.

Like I said, the most important thing is that you're able to copy&paste your text directly from your word-processor, and the result looks like it should. This is supposed to make things easier, if it doesn't, we can just stick with manually adding the HTML tags.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 16 2007 01:14 am   #2Blood Faerie

I didn't see the button you mentioned. Let me look again..

Um, when I do that it removes all my other formatting and puts the text all in one big block *sigh*

Unfortunately, we had big vampires in the next room, and I didn't think they'd wait while we had hot monkey sex. ~Cerulean Sins :: (Anita to Jean-Claude)“Is there anything your bloodline does that doesn’t involve getting naked?" ~Danse Macabre :: I’m dating three men, living with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That’s seven men. I’m like a pornographic Snow White. I think seven is plenty. ~Danse Macabre
Nov 16 2007 01:19 am   #3Diabola

Ok, can you email me an example of your text so I can experiment some? The editor is open source, so I can play with the code and change stuff.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 16 2007 01:33 am   #4Blood Faerie

Emailed you ^.^

Unfortunately, we had big vampires in the next room, and I didn't think they'd wait while we had hot monkey sex. ~Cerulean Sins :: (Anita to Jean-Claude)“Is there anything your bloodline does that doesn’t involve getting naked?" ~Danse Macabre :: I’m dating three men, living with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That’s seven men. I’m like a pornographic Snow White. I think seven is plenty. ~Danse Macabre
Nov 16 2007 01:48 am   #5Eowyn315

I just tried it... other than adding extra space between paragraphs, it seemed fine. Although, this was really weird... when I hit "submit" and the preview text section came up, the text there was fine, but the text that was in the text box, for some reason now every few words I'd get two words that are smushed together without a space. But like I said, it looked fine in the preview text, so I don't know....

Writing should feel easy, like a monkey driving a speed boat.
Nov 16 2007 02:19 am   #6Always_jbj

LOL..Just please tell me you won't be getting rid of the old one altogether... *whines* because I like it and it works just fine for me! And I don't cope well with change... lol

I'll have a play with the new one a bit later and see how it goes.

ETA It works fine for posting straight from Word or copied from my site, but loses all the italics when I copy straight from DW.

Aim from the heart
Some will love and some will curse you, baby
You can go to war
But only if you have to 


Fanfic ~*~ Artwork ~*~ Live Journal
Nov 16 2007 04:30 am   #7slaymesoftly

I copy/pasted from my Word document and it worked just fine. Came out looking like the web pages that Word makes for me.

I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Nov 16 2007 10:44 am   #8LadyYashka

I copied and pasted from Microsoft Works Word and it worked just fine for me.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters. — Neil Gaiman
Nov 16 2007 11:06 am   #9Lilachigh
I copied and pasted from Word for Mac and the double space between paras became doubled again and the line width went from one side of page to another. I like the old method! Whines pathetically. When I post to other sites, I have to go through and put in the line breaks. Our existing system here just prints it as I paste it.
 Lilachigh
Nov 16 2007 03:42 pm   #10Diabola

*lol* Nice to know how many of you like the current form. If I decide to use this editor (that is, if I can work out the kinks), I will still only be an alternative. Putting plain old HTML-coded text into the box will still be an option. I prefer that as well to tell the truth, but not allowing Richtext is rather archaic, and new members who are used to editors like this may not know the necessary HTML-tags/ have to put in a lot of work just to be able to post here.

I kind of hope that I'll be able to modify this editor in a way that makes its HTML-Mode behave the same way as our current text-box. Then I'd make the HTML-Mode the default, and unless you choose to switch to Richtext-Mode, everything will be the same as it is now.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 16 2007 04:59 pm   #11Caro Mio

I had to learn the HTML for here and LJ, as I'm a Word user - not a big deal now, since only one place I post (ff.net) takes a Word file as-is, but it was definitely appreciative to have an editor that accepted Word as written at the first site I started at. I probably wouldn't have started sharing fanfic if it hadn't been that easy at the start. (FF.net confused me to begin with, way back when.)

Just my input, since I don't have a chapter to upload at the moment. :)

What If I'm Not the Slayer? now updated with chapters 22 and 23.
Nov 16 2007 10:38 pm   #12DarkApple

It seems to work for me.

Also, I would love it if there were a way to post in Rich Text. I have a nearly completed 300,000 word novel that I would probably post to BSV if it were possible to do so in Rich Text. My html skills are far from proficient, and the idea of trying to redo my story in html is completely daunting.

Nov 16 2007 11:16 pm   #13Diabola

What do you think of this? Pretty much the same principle as on lj, you have tabs with which you choose the editor. HTML would be the plain old text-box we have right now, and RichText the editor. After you hit Submit (or rather Preview once it is part of the submission-form), you can even switch between the tabs and see your code/text in whichever form you like. That might be helpful if something doesn't look like it should.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 16 2007 11:23 pm   #14slaymesoftly

I'm a little confused about the html issues. This is coming from someone who is a complete doofus about that stuff - BTW. You don't have to "know" html to post things - all you have to know how to do is write the 3 digit code for italics, bold, underline - and that's only if you want to have any of those things.  None of those are complicated and they are easily-learned. I put them into my stories as I'm typing and then remove them before I make a word web page to go up on my site. The only one I don't use and haven't bothered to learn is the paragraph indentation code.  However, I do have a "save as rich-text"  option on here somewhere, so either way will probably work for me. Since I have to use the code for both LJ and SR, it won't help me that much. I'll still be putting it in and taking it out. :)

We can easily put the commonly used html codes in a forum post in the help section if we are getting a lot of new writers who don't know how to do it.

I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Nov 16 2007 11:32 pm   #15Diabola

I agree with you Patti, but seeing how I like my codes, I'm not sure how much my opinion is worth in this case. ;-)

This was mostly brought on by some comments about the "archaic" submission-forms most fiction-archives use, that I stumbled across. Since we're not bound by a script written by strangers, we do have the option to be more "modern".

Have to say, I'm rather fond of the version that's up (on the demo-page) right now. It wasn't even intentional, but it looks a lot like the "Post to Journal" bit on lj, and I've never had any problems with that one.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 17 2007 12:13 am   #16Eowyn315

Uh... I just tried it again, and now it's completely not working in the rich text version. It won't let me type directly in the text box or paste from Word. When I click the "paste from Word" button, the box pops up, I paste the text (which loses all the formatting), I click "OK," and then nothing shows up in the text box.

Just to throw in my opinion, as someone who knows basic code, I've never had any problems putting it in manually when I post here. (Although, you're right, Patti, it hardly requires any knowledge at all.)

I am, however, lazy. Since I type my stories in Word, and BSV is the only place I post that doesn't have a rich text option, I don't put in the html as I'm typing. So, I'd probably use the rich text if it's available, but not if it's more work than just adding in a few bold or italics tags.

Writing should feel easy, like a monkey driving a speed boat.
Nov 17 2007 12:32 am   #17Diabola

Yeah, it works fine on IE (Windows) and Safari (Windows). FF, not so much. I only just installed FF, so I didn't notice that before. I'll try to fix it. Opera messes up too. Different error than FF though.

Found the problem, FF messes up a path. I changed it to an absolute path, and now even FF can't get confused.

Edit: Or not? *is confused* I swear it worked a moment ago and I didn't change a thing since. Grr, I know why I like me my IE. Anyway, I'll let you know when I found the prob.

Btw, when you report on whether it works for you or not, it'd be very helpful if you'd mention which browser (and operating system) you use. Especially if you're telling me something DOESN'T work. Ta.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 17 2007 03:42 am   #18Eowyn315

Yep, I'm using Firefox... and it's still not working for me.

Writing should feel easy, like a monkey driving a speed boat.
Nov 17 2007 03:54 am   #19Always_jbj

LOL Well as you know, I'm using IE6 and it works fine for everything I've tried except posting straight from Dreamweaver (Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Version 6).

Aim from the heart
Some will love and some will curse you, baby
You can go to war
But only if you have to 


Fanfic ~*~ Artwork ~*~ Live Journal
Nov 17 2007 11:35 pm   #20slaymesoftly

Okay, I am using FF and the first time I did it, it was fine. Just tried again, puttingin my html codes and it was also fine.  I get nothing when I try rich text and "paste from word".  It's blank, even though it gives me a little box to post in.  That's probably my not knowing how to use rich text.  I think it's my Apple word processing program that allows me the option of saving in "rich text". I can't find that option in Word.

I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Nov 18 2007 04:08 am   #21Eowyn315

You shouldn't need to save it any differently in Word in order to use the rich text form. Unless this program is different from LJ or other archives that have the option... 

You can save a file as an rtf in Word, but I've always saved my files as regular Word documents, and never had this problem anywhere else.

Writing should feel easy, like a monkey driving a speed boat.
Nov 18 2007 11:10 am   #22Diabola

If you're using FireFox and the editor is not working for you, you're not doing anything wrong. There is a bug in FF that's causing that trouble. I'm working on it, but when I found out what it was (after my last post), it was already 1:50am and I went to bed shortly after. Yesterday (Saturday) I was at work from 10:00am to 10:00 pm, and I really didn't have the energy to work on the editor when I got home. I just got up, and I'll look into it now. I'll let you know from when on you should expect it to work.

RTF in this case simply means a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. You copy text in italics from anywhere into the editor, it still has italics. Doesn't matter in what format you saved it, or if at all. (Well, apperantly you can't copy from Dreamweaver, dunno what's up with that, but I'll deal with that once I wrestled FF into submission.)

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 18 2007 11:21 pm   #23Spikez_tart

Hi Dia - I copied/pasted from Word 2003 Small Business Edition.  No italics or bold came through, but it looked okay otherwise.

When I saved as RTF and put in RTF editor tab it came out fine.:dance:

If we want her to be exactly she'll never be exactly I know the only really real Buffy is really Buffy and she's gone' who?
Nov 18 2007 11:43 pm   #24Diabola

Did you put the stuff from Word into the box on the RichText tab too? If yes the italics and bolds really should have come through, how odd. I tested it with some crap I wrote in Word 2003 Professional (not saved or anything) and it looked fine.

Unless you accidentialy put it in the box on the HTML tag. That's just a plain text-box, kinda like copying your document into Notepad, it loses most of the formatting.

:sigh: I probably should take the announcement down until I've got this working on all browsers, but it's already out there anyway and I so love complaining about stupid browsers with stupid bugs while wresteling with said bugs. Much better way to let of steam than yelling at the computer.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein
Nov 19 2007 01:28 am   #25slaymesoftly

Oh, okay, thanks all. That would make life so much easier not to have to put in the code. I'm going to try that Rich Text option the next time I post to LJ and see what happens.  I think I can work around the issues of having to put in code on other archives by copy/pasting from here. Not sure if that will work with Rich Text too, but I guess I'll play around with it and try to find out.  I'll just have to remember to use a different browser...

I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Nov 19 2007 01:51 am   #26Diabola

Well, if I can get this working the way it is supposed to, then you'd indeed be able to use the code from here to post on other sites. The two fields are linked, so if you put something into the RichText one and hit Preview (Submit in the demo), you'll see the finished text like it will appear on the site (the actual preview), the text in the RichText editor (in case you want to edit), and in the HTML text-box the text with added html-tags (in case you prefer to edit that version). You should even be able to open an older chapter for editing, and get the two versions in the different editors.

The RichText editor could also be useful if after hitting Preview you notice that your text doesn't look like it should - like when you forgot to close a tag. The problem should be easier to fix that way than having to search the code for the missing or wrong html-tag.

But I'm rambling again; and trying to sell you something that's not even working properly yet. I really need to stop doing that.

As for the browser, I wouldn't worry too much if it's not working yet. I won't implement it until it's working correctly for all the Windows based browsers. Chances are any problems Mac or Unix browsers have at the moment are caused by the same thing that's bothering Firefox and Opera. Plus, my boss is considering buying a MacOS for testing at the office, so in the future I may be able to make sure those work properly as well. (And we got us a copy of Open SuSE, so once that's installed somewhere I'll be able to check Conquerer and Mozilla (Linux), too.)

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." - Albert Einstein

 Closed