I do not like the way the quote function works on this board. I am not talking about the ongoing discussion over nested quotes. Nosiree.
My complaint is that if I use the quote button on a post, or if I use the manual quote tags and insert the username of the quoted poster, the quote is returned automatically formatted in italics. The whole quote.
Boo, hiss. I and several other people use italics in posting for emphasis. This feature can [del]destroy[/del] disturb the quoted material by removing/changing the emphasis. I find it very annoying. So much so that I manually quote.
When I manually quote tag or use the quote button to make a quote without attributing the source, I get the material in plain text that I can then format to match the original, including selective italics.
The downside is I do not get to use the nifty features like linkbacks (breadcrumbs) or multiquoting. I have not attempted the multiquote feature because I don’t like the format of automatic quotes.
Is there a reason vB does this? Is there a simple fix (like a toggle in the code) that would make this not default to italics? There’s no reason the quote has to be in italics, it is already set off from the rest of the post content by the quote box.
It’d be great if they would then un-italicize previously italicized text within a quote block, so as to preserve the distinction.
Though, as this is (or should be) a client-side rendering decision, we should all be able to set our individual preferences as to how the text within a quote block should be formatted.
I wouldn’t mind italicized quotes if it would do the proper thing and un-italicize words that were originally in italics.
That’s also the problem with my preferred solution to fixing things on this board: using a user-side script. Even if I break the italics, I still will not be able to see the emphasized words. I might as well just click that little blue button if I need to read the post as it was originally written.
ETA:I’d say great minds think alike, Indistinguishable, but mine’s not doing that well lately.
The solution is simple: remove the “Quote=” bit, then wrap the entire post in URL tags that point to the post you’re quoting (you can get that link by copying the post number in the upper right of each post). PITA, yes, but simple, and shouldn’t be noticed by those who prefer manually nesting quotes to the restored nesting function.
Italics isn’t required for that. There’s already a box around the quoted text to set it off.
That’s the point - to spot emphasize a particular word here and there. Or to list a book title. Blanket italicizing of quoted text kills the ability to use italics for selective emphasis.
Rhythmdvl said:
That is a PITA, way too much trouble. I’ve functioned for years on this board without links, that’s likely why I quote so much. Hell, it would be a lot simpler to just post like this:
Rhythmdvl said in post 8:
That’s plenty of cross reference. Sure, it’s not clickable, but people can find it easily.
I’m not sure what you would like done about it. A change would require the vBulletin code to be edited, and the Staff are loath to do so… especially now, while they’re still catching flak over the last alterations.
I’m talking about a minor change that doesn’t affect bandwidth and improves readability, a much cleaner result than nested quotes.
I am asking
Why does it do this?
Can we change it?
Will we change it?
Why not?
Seems to me there should be a simple line in the coding for quote attribution that defines how the text is formatted. That should be a simpler change than the one that restored nested quoting, for much greater gain in improvement and less to argue over. If people prefer their quotes to be in italics, it is simple enough to highlight the whole quote and hit the italics button. But I am unable to unitalicize the auto format.
It seems a no brainer to me, yet there hasn’t been any official response to indicate yes, no, maybe, we’re considering it, hey look over there at that shiny rock!
A couple of educated guesses:
Q: Why does it do this?
A:
When you hit the quote button, you see something like
where 99999 is the post number.
when you look at the source code of the page, you see that vbulletin changes this to:
<div>
Originally Posted by <strong>postername</strong>
<a href="showthread.php?p=99999#post99999" rel="nofollow"><img class="inlineimg" src="images/buttons/viewpost.gif" border="0" alt="View Post" /></a>
</div>
<div style="font-style:italic">some text</div>
We see that vBulletin puts all the quoted text inside an HTML div that has font-style:italic in it, so all the <i> </i> tags inside the quoted text don’t do much.
Q: Can we change it?
A: You would have to find the function that is called when you hit the quote button, and change the HTML code generated by that function.
Q: Will we change it?
A: Don’t know.
Q: Why not?
A: If the answer is No, then my guess as to the justification would be, same as it’s always been: we don’t customize vBulletin because we don’t want to have to mess with reapplying the changes after every upgrade.
