For me I’m still getting the no preview window, unless I click the markdown linked above, which does also change the font to a flavor of “IT BURNS!”. If I use the Quote feature, it’s the same as some reported above, the cursor is at the end of the text quoted and would easily lead to misquoting someone without care.
And I’m using Windows 11, Chrome, and Dark - not one of the older SDMB specific themes as I understand it. I suspect the Discourse team is having one of those ‘fix one problem, create two more’ days which I am more than familiar with, so I’ll give them a few days to get a complete fix.
In poking around just now, I’ve discovered that, at least for my setup, it’s still putting the reply cursor inside the quote box if the toggle for the preview window is turned off, but if you do have the preview window turned on, the reply cursor starts out in the correct spot.
Yes, that’s what I see. In code-edit, the cursor is under the quote. In WYSIWYG, it’s above.
Another quirk: if I highlight part of a post and click Reply, the cursor is within the text box. If I click Reply and then highlight text and click Quote, it puts the cursor outside the box where it should be.
Yes, all these problems are in WYSIWYG. It seems to work fine with code-edit/preview.
I’ve also noticed some strange quote behaviour, but the main thing that bothers me is the sudden disappearance of the preview window. The only way to get it now is to switch to the horrible “standard markdown editor”.
I get that the formatting change is now visible in the original edit window. This might seem like a more “elegant” approach, but I don’t like it because the individual formatting tags aren’t visible, just the results of it, so it’s harder to edit the formatting.
Fair enough. I suspect this is a change that people in software think nothing of, because it’s the standard for any kind of coding environment.
But that’s not good UX design when your users are primarily non-coders.
ETA: actually, I’m going to revise my statement a little. I assume their goal is for non-coders to use the WYSIWYG editor almost exclusively. Only people who want to play around with formatting should need the markup tool, and for those users, the monotype font is fine. The current problem is the WYSIWYG editor has enough problems that a lot of people are forced into the markup tool, and the monotype font is very jarring for them.
Any kind of structured code benefits from consistent indentation and alignment, which is probably the primary driver. That’s less of a concern with markdown text (or no concern at all), but I’d argue there’s still a benefit to the consistency of coding = monospace.
It’s less useful for Markdown, which barely counts as code, but in C/C++ there are many opportunities for lining up code in a way that’s more pleasing in a monospace font.
float x = v.extract(0);
float y = v.extract(1);
float z = v.extract(2);
float w = v.extract(3);
vs.:
float x = v.extract(0);
float y = v.extract(1);
float z = v.extract(2);
float w = v.extract(3);
There’s formally no such thing as FORTRAN V, though the name was informally adopted for some FORTRAN extensions by some vendors. The most widespread version before it got overtaken by other languages was FORTRAN IV. The only connection between old language syntax like that and monospaced fonts is that FORTRAN IV originated in the punchcard era and reserved the first 6 characters of each line for specific purposes (label, comment flag, or continuation flag). None of this has any relevance whatsoever to the way the older markdown editor is formatted.
Well, I just mistyped my response to Chronos’ comment about FORTRAN IV. The point is that all actual code is written in a monospace font even today (with the mild exception of ligatures, which are becoming more common, which transform 2-character combinations into double-wide single characters, therefore not actually changing the spacing).
TroutMan has it right. Code is in monospace, and Markdown is code-like, therefore Markdown is in monospace. It’s arguable whether Markdown should count as code, but that’s clearly the reasoning.
It’s not “arguable”, it’s bullshit. When I’m typing a response to someone on Discourse, I am not writing code, and I’m certainly not concerned with what characters I put into columns 1 to 6 on any line!
Yes, you are the perfect use case for the WYSIWYG editor.
Previously, the markdown editor was the only choice, so the best option was to use a proportional font to cover the widest range of use cases. With the addition of the WYSIWYG editor, the intent for the markdown editor is for those who actually want to play around with the code. Thus the change to monospace font.
Product managers are not designing the best software for wolfpup. They are attempting to fit a variety of use cases, and sometimes that means any one user persona gets the shaft in certain cases.
