Since I have noticed that many have trouble formatting their posts on this board, I thought it might be helpful to have a thread about formatting issues. Feel free to ask questions about it here or share helpful advice.

I personally find that it's by far easiest to format by using the source button and write the code directly, and I'm not a programmer. In a new thread, the source button is available on the menu. When you reply to a post, you first need to click on advanced reply for the option to show up. 

The code works with square brackets. For instance, with a quote, where the quote begins, you simply write "quote" within square brackets. More details are available if you want to contribute the quote to someone specific, but I'll keep to the basics in this initial post. At the end of the quote, you write the same thing, only with a "/" before the command within the square brackets to mark that the command shall stop. 

If you want to learn the commands, I find that the easiest way is to first just type a message as you normally would (one that does what you want it to do), with the functions you wish to use, and then click on source. Then the commands will show up and you can see exactly how to apply them. You can switch back to the display mode of the text by clicking on the source button again. 

If the formatting of your text is messed up, you can click on the source button to correct the code (for some formatting issues, that seems to be the only way to do it for some strange reason - probably a bug). If your text is too small, for instance, there is some unwanted code there making it small. Removing it takes care of the problem. 

I hope this is helpful. 

Also feel free to use this thread to ask for assistance. Moderators and technicians can help fix your code if you tell us what you want it to do, and we can explain how to do it. 

Edited to add: also, don't use emojis! Emojis that aren't supported by the forum engine (or whatever it should be called) make it impossible to post. 

BBCode tutorials:
https://www.bbcode.org/how-to-use-bbcode-a-complete-guide.php
https://www.phpbb.com/community/help/bbcode

Good Idea!
Another great idea is how to use Google to search the Dho - type this into google -
site:www.dharmaoverground.org (search term word without parenthesis)

menu button for source looks like this -   | <> Source |

square bracket not this line i'm using |quote| I'm so cool |/quote| will put |I'm so cool| in a box

Functions like- links bold underline etc - from the buttons menu

Fast way is to cut and paste into text editor and search and replace stuff messing it up. Paste back the clean stuff as unformatted text

Hope, yes, hope is good. Examples as Pictures would be better, but i'm lazy.

If it's simple, complicated stuff will cost you.... (wink)
​​​​​​​~D

Awesome! Thanks for the help, both of you!

Another trick: if you see somebody else use formatting in a way that you would like to be able to, you can check what coding they used. Click reply with quote, then advanced reply, then source. Then their coding will be visible. Just cancel the replying process when you are done checking. 

So, for instance, if you wish to reply with quotes and split the text you are replying to into several different quotes, with your own comments in between, you can learn how to do that by applying what I said here to the post by Dream Walker above it. 

And if you do reply with quote and find that you are dissatisfied with the way the quote shows the name of the poster you quoted, there are other formats available. When Dream Walker quoted me, the formatting of my name was a bit confusing, I find. Compare that to how his name is formatted when I quote him quoting me:




Check the differences in coding here:


To complicate things, when you shift back and forth between source and not source, the coding changes itself for some weird reason. If that happens, fix it by correcting it in source and then publishing directly.
​​​​​​​

Hey Siavash, if you read this, do you think it would be possible to do something about the weird bug that changes the coding back to inept quoting automatically? This is something that I think came with the platform upgrade. 

 Hi Linda,
Thank you for creating this thread, it's very helpful.

About the editor and formatting, I opened a task for it when doing the upgrade and worked for a few days on it, but it didn't help, because the new version of Liferay (7.3+ that we are using), is using a very simplified editor, and it's almost impossible to improve it. I tried to replace it with other built-in editors, for example the one that is used in the blogs section, but they are not better, and have similar problems, also certain functionalities about the editor is hard-coded in the Liferay, so without going deeper into its code, some replacements don't work. The only way that I know, is to customize the source code of Liferay's editor to use the full functionality of ckeditor, or alloy-editor that are used in Liferay, which can be done, but it would require a good amount of time. My original estimate for it was around 2-3 weeks full time work, but we never got the chance to work on that part, because there were more urgent issues.

Personally I'd like to improve the editor, but I don't know when and if I could get the time for it.

Thanks again.
 

Yes, there are one or two side effects in the editor that are the result of upgrade I think (Edit: As I remembered now, one of them existed before the upgrade, but the one you mentioned, could be because of the upgrade, not sure), because in order to get back the flat view that we currently have, we had to merge the source code of Liferay 6 with Liferay 7, which understandably would create problems. It was kind of out of the scope of the upgrade to fix all small problems, we just focused on the main functionalities and problems. 

I understand. This works, so no problem. You have done an amazing work with very scarce resources. 

A heisenbug!

This is a good topic.

There is an online BBCode Guide that includes examples, a tag reference table, advanced tag tutorial, and even a video:

BBCode.org

Sometimes when I edit a post all the paragraphs are compressed into one. When that happens I click the cancel button at the bottom and try again. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get the editor to show the paragraphs. 

Yes, that happens to me too. I'm afraid I don't know how to fix that. I suspect we will have to live with it, as forums of this format seem to have become unmodern and the web hotels only cater for the most minimal functions. 

 Jim,
About the problem that you mentioned, that after clicking Reply button, the text loses it formatting, I've noticed that if you cancel and refresh the page (hitting Ctrl+R or Command+R on the browser or clicking the reload button in the upper toolbar), it fixes the problem. Though not a fix, just a workaround!
 

Refresh doesn't always clear up the problem. I still had to cancel more than once.

Hi, I haven't find a way to contact a moderator, so writing here...
I am unable to create a new thread. I've tried several times and I'm just being returned to the main page. Is this a limitation on the new accounts?
Thanks..

edit: I found out what was wrong, apparently the engine cannot handle emojis

Oh, yes, that is true! Great that you figured that out. It's good to have that information in this thread. Thankyou! 

I'm a moderator here, so if you ever need to get in touch with one, you can message me. The message system is a bit clunky (and can't handle emojis either), so if that doesn't work, you can always leave me a message in my practice log and ask me to contact you. 

Best wishes for your practice and wellbeing,
​​​​​​​Linda

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