A request to ALL POSTERS and Tuba

About This Message Board
1

Pretty, pretty, PRETTY please put the following in your posts:

[/sup] [/sub] [/i] [/b] [**/url]

It will not harm your post OR your sig, but when someone uses the “printable page” thingie, if there are coding errors they flourish all throughout the page forever unless someone was dumb/smart/lucky enough to have made a coding error which would cancel it out.

If we always put that at the end there are never any problems.

Oh wait, if we all previewed there wouldn’t be any problems either. Why do I tackle such hopeless causes??? :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

So, let it be said: if you see a coding error, put the above in yours to stop it before it spreads too far. When I print out a five page thread, by the end the whole thing is italicized, subscripted, and bolded. The [**/quote] would help to, but that only indents and isn’t a big deal, and that would cause a noticible change in the apearance of a post.

If any moderator would be so kind as to eliminate coding errors from this thread it would be much appreciated. I’d do it myself, but I am not a mod, and would likely not be accepted to be a mod even if I did apply, which is why I don’t (self-fulfilling prophecy? you don’t say!)

My humble TubaDiva, is it possible to change the template to include some proactive coding fixers like this? Is it terribly difficult?

~~erl, who does print out threads for viewing at his offline liesure in an attempt to better understand other poster’s opinions, even after any debate is over
*[sub]

2

For demonstrative purposes only.
[/sub][/sup]***

3

If you look at the above, no problems, right? Ah, but if you “Show a printable version” of this you’ll see my second post is all messed up by carried-over coding errors!

I also happened to fix it in the second post, which you should see if you quote it.

Anyway, a humble request…

4

what about the cases where there’s multiple coding errors (like some of the GD threads I’ve seen where the reply keeps getting narrower and narrower, like the TV version of movies screen credits)???

besides, - how often are you printing out threads anyhow??? (I remember doing that with the Iron Chef judging, and maybe one other? certainly not frequently)

5

I found one coding error in that thread, but things are too slow to fix it right now. I’ll try again tonight. It would have been a lot easier to find if I knew which post it was in. If there are any more coding errors in that thread, please provide a link to the specific posts. To do that, put your cursor over the quote button of that post to get the postid, and then substiute that number for 953520 in both places in the URL below (which links to the post I found)

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=953520#post953520

6

Would this still work if the close tags were included at the end of a .sig file? If so, that would be an easy way of un-mucking things up.

Here’s a test:
***Words with no closing tag…

7

And these should be mucked up on printing, but fixed by the sig:

8

And these should be fixed now. Well, erislover? OK?

9

All right, the [**url] tag isn’t being read correctly in the sig. Anyone know why?

10

No, but lemme look at some things here . … I may do a little testing in this thread, too, so bear with me and anything strange you may see. Well, stranger than usual, anyway.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

11

Actually, if you find a coding error you should always let us know so we can fix it, not just now but for all those in future. Just because we’re dealing with a thread today doesn’t mean it won’t be around a year from now, for example.

From what I can see putting those stop codes in your sig file makes no difference to the thread. Maybe putting 'em in at the end of your post, BEFORE the sig. Lemme try that.

As to why the /url command shows up as plaintext in the sig file, perhaps it’s because it has no start code to connect to.

your humble TubaDiva

12

[/sup][/sub]***

(BTW, I have a line of stop codes just before this text and it makes no difference in the appearance in the thread. I deliberately left /b out after the bolded quote . . . the system’s not picking it up.)

The /url always looks for a starting statement to parse the address, so one all by itself is just seen as text. But the other statements are accepted as code and therefore don’t show. Lemme see how this looks in print. . .

It appears that testing with the stop codes thrown in by themselves shows no difference in the appearance of the post on the board OR in the printable version.

Just ask us to fix problems as you find them, that’s part of our job here as moderators, we don’t mind doing it. And, of course, preview is our bestest friend.

[Edited by TubaDiva on 09-27-2001 at 10:45 AM]

13

But erislover is seeing a difference in the printable version, yes? However, I don’t see anything wrong in Netscape “Print Preview”. Is this difference one of those Mac/PC or Netscape/Explorer issues?

14

A request: If you’re going to put closing tags in all of your posts, please do it at the end, so that it doesn’t screw up your own post. A closing bold or italic tag, by itself, will cause everything after it to be displayed in a different font, at least in some browsers, as anyone who frequents ATMB would know. It gets annoying, and offhandedly, I’d guess that there’s more people who use Netscape than who use “Show Printable Version”.

15

Oh, I forgot to mention: If you want to unindent without the horizontal line, you could use [[sup][/sup]/list] tag.

zut, we’re not talking about “print preview”, but about the “show a printable version” link at the top of the page. It simplifies the structure of the page and removes the background shading, to make it more printer-friendly.

16

Yeah, I noticed the thing too when I saw it up above in my post. Interesting. Shame it can recognize that, but not unclosed tags.

I wonder if I should email vBulletin and suggest that they include that in their template automatically in some further upgrade.

And the “print preview” is yucky… all those graphics! :stuck_out_tongue:

Ah, I suppose I could email mods to fix errors, but that just feels… annoying. :slight_smile:

17

No promises that it’ll work, but I’ll look at the situation and see what I can do to fix things, might be something I can add to the reply template, for instance.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

18

Here’s one. Incorrect /b and incorrect URL link coding. The printable version is entirely bold from that post down.

And this one has an incorrect /b in the OP, causing the entire thread to be bold in the printable version.
Thanks, Tuba!

I really appreciate your consideration in avoiding stepping on my penis - Spiny Norman
Jeg elsker dig, Thomas

19

I fixed them. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.

20

You’re welcome, and thank you! :slight_smile: