Question about dollar sign coding

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41

At the upper left of the edit input window is a slide switch with two positions.

“Slid” to the left you see a dark M and down arrown. That stands for “markdown”, the formatting syntax Discourse uses. While the edit window is in that mode, you have mostly WYSISYG. Which is really IMO a bad way for any markup language editor to display anything.

To the right is a plan sans serif A. When you slide the switch to the right, Discourse works like it did a year or more ago. Namely that your input window occupies the left half of the bottom of the screen and just displays the raw text you type, and meanwhile there’s a preview window over on the right half that displays how the output will look to your audience.

You really ought to be in that A mode.

42

First, if you don’t see the formatting when you edit, and you aren’t seeing the preview, you are probably in WSYIWYG (what you see is what you get) mode. You need to click the little button in the top-left corner of the edit window, and that will solve both your problems; you will be able to see the actual characters you are putting in (and not just the end result) and you will also have the option to see a preview on the right side so that you can see before you submit the code if you need to correct something. (I assume you are posting on a computer and not a mobile device.)

43

\LaTeX introduced an alternative: \( and \) to surround inline math and \[ and \] for displayed math. The first of those also works here: \sqrt{a+b}, but the latter doesn’t. That’s strange, as my experience is that people still use dollar signs for inline math but many have switched for displayed math.

But I believe this is baked into MathJax (which is widely used around the 'net) and not at the discretion of the Discourse devs.

44

Not quite. WYSIWIG mode still accepts keystrokes that markdown interprets as display codes. Which is exactly the problem Dinsdale has. And which many other people have been baffled about. If the WYSYWIG editor auto-escaped every markdown-significant keystroke like: *, #, $, etc., then it’d be true WYSIWYG.

The way it works now is Sometimes you get what you typed, and sometimes you don’t. Which is a recipe for utter confusion.

45

I would not expect (and would be hugely disappointed) the math text capabilities to trigger from dollar signs keyed into the editor windows in “Composer” mode (what Discourse calls the WSYIWYG mode).

Let me test that here: dollars

stuff

Count me disappointed :face_with_symbols_on_mouth: . The math addon is triggering in Composer mode, which absolutely feels like a bug. The idea of using Composer to allow the poster to use and abuse dollar signs to their heart’s content is not working out.

46

So, it comes down to disabling the math addon or @Dinsdale learning to escape stuff when it gets misinterpreted by the editor.

47

Yeah.

IMO the WYSIWIG editor is so leaky that it should be disabled. IMO you should not be able to type asterisk, asterisk, T, E, S, T, asterisk, asterisk in WYSIWIG mode and get this:
TEST
Instead that set of 8 keystrokes should result in this:
**TEST**
because the WYSYWIG editor should have escaped your asterisks. And your pound signs, and your dollar signs, and any angle-brackets, and any square brackets, and, and, and.

Then, and only then, is it a real WYSIWYG editor. Now it’s just a broken quagmire of traps for the unwary.

48

With all your explanations, I’m more confused than ever. Will have to check it in the morning.

As I type this, top left button is cap “A” - there is NO PREVIEW window I can see. This kinda shit really drives me insane. There actually are one or two areas in my life in which I am not considered incompetent. Yet here my brain hurts from trying to follow how many steps I don’t understand to keep this computer from doing something I don’t want it to do.

The simplest approach is for me to use dollar signs less frequently. I really do dislike this type of thing about tech - the burden it places on the least sophisticated users.

49

Are you on a phone or a computer?

If computer, the A is the right half of a horizontal slide switch. There’s an M and a down arrow to the left of that. Click the A and see what changes. I bet you’re in M mode which is the f-ed up WYSIWYG editor w no preview.

50

@Dinsdale, first, no need to bother with the “cap A” button — unfortunately, that won’t actually help you here because the other editing mode still has the same issue :frowning: Not your fault; it’s just a software flaw.

I can sympathize. It sucks having these little unexpected gotcha “landmines” all over the place. My own, similar pet peeve for this forum is when you try to end a sentence with a : (colon)… it thinks you’re trying to make a smiley and auto-incorrects it into :slight_smile:, even though I’m just trying to make a new list after the colon. That, and the inability to post images easily.

The thing is… we as SDMB users are kinda caught in a convoluted three-way bind, with no easy way to change anything about the forum:

For one thing, the forum itself (as in its current owner, the Chicago Sun Times), does not make or maintain this forum software. That’s a third-party forum program, Discourse, made by a company who sells it to hundreds of thousands of communities and millions of users. They try to target a middle ground between adding features and maintaining simplicity, but they can’t please everyone. I personally wish they leaned more towards simplicity and ease of use, but we don’t get to make that call. They do have their own forum at https://meta.discourse.org/ if you want to complain about the software itself. Myself and other SDMB posters have brought up a few issues there in the past, to mixed success.

For another thing, Discourse itself is usually highly configurable, but in our specific case, our owner-administrators are not around very much to change small nitty-gritty technical details like this. My understanding is that they are involved in major, high-level decisions (like our move from the previous forum software to Discourse, years and years ago) or major changes to the rules and such. But otherwise they are normally absent. But hey, they also pay the bills and keep this forum alive at no charge to us!

And lastly, there’s always going to be different ideas within the SDMB poster base about how to deal with any situation like this. Should we turn off dollar signs for everyone so users don’t accidentally enter the math mode? Should we leave it on for the convenience for the people who do frequently type math, especially in General Questions? It’s necessarily a compromise with tradeoffs. Maybe there are some more custom solutions (like fixing the WYSIWYG editor so that the dollar signs don’t work there), but again, without the admins present, we can’t do anything of the sort anyway, so it’s a moot point.

So as free users of a beloved forum without any tech admins around, we’re just kinda stuck with its (numerous and annoying!) quirks. This is just one of them :frowning:

It sucks, but there it is…

If I were you, I’d just keep the backslash character in mind, like \$. The \ is Discourse’s universal “escape” character that disables the “magic” of the subsequent character, whether that’s a $ or a - (for forming lists) or ** (for bolding). It’s an extra step, yes, but at least it beats never being able to use certain punctuation marks…

But anyway, I feel ya. I think it’s just one of those “pick your battles” moments.

51

Always computer. I have NEVER posted to the Dope from a phone. I’m the fucking luddite who actually uses his phone to make phone calls - and occasionally text. Anytime I can avoid doing anything more on my phone until I get to a computer, I do. I am not well suited for this world!

The A is shaded - which makes me assume it is “active.”

I just clicked on the M, and the image changed to show [quote] [/quote] stuff. (That’s the kinda stuff I learned once and had no difficulty with. Until that was no longer how things were done.)

Switched back to A, and the [quote] disappeared, and the quoted material is “boxed.”

I recall back in the late 80s when we first got computers at work. All these people would customize their word processing - which just made it difficult to share text and cut and paste. And any time I tried to add my own macros or anything, they were lost with the next “upgrade.” So I became the master of the low-tech workaround. Never desired to express my individuality through formatting, or to learn how to make this thing work like a smart typewriter.

Sorry for yet another of my endless rants about my tech incompetence. Really makes me want to turn the computer off, go play some music, swing a golf club, ride my bike, or dig in the dirt!

52

I / we can’t talk about which option is light or dark or shaded or not since we have some themes which reverse all that versus other themes.

But I can say you’re reading the cues backwards. In A mode, the [quote …] etc stuff is visible as such. In M = WYSIWYG mode they are not.

You’re probably more comfortable in the A = “reveal codes” mode where you can see all the codes and see the separate preview where you can look at how those codes translate into WYSYWIG.

I personally use A mode with the preview display alongside the input display. Because WYSIWYG mode grinds my gears the way that some inputs are obvious, some are ignored, and others are not. I think of WYSISYG mode as kindergarten mode, A mode as grad degree or higher mode, and they forgot to include a mode for the 90% of folks in the middle. But IMO you personally will be happier in A mode where you can at least see what the consequences, good or ill, of your typing is.

53

In the theme I use, the preview is toggled by the double arrow >> in the lower-right corner of the editing panel. And you should be aware that to avoid other bugs, whenever you want to post a youtube video, disable the preview first before you paste the url into your post, and leave it that way until you’ve posted. There are workarounds that let you keep the preview on when posting a youtube video, but they’re a bit hairy.

54

OK. I guess I’ve been using the WYSIWYG mode.

I never intentionally chose a “theme”. As I type this response, there is now >>in the lower ight.

Thanks for the responses, all. I’ll just try to remember the \, and delete any posts that get fucked p that I don’t care to retype.

TEST:

10k test test

test test

10k test test \\

test test \\

I typed 4 different things there - the second trying to use the \ before the 2d dollar sign. I’ll just try to remember to not use dollar signs.