Topic: SMF 2.0.x puts extra tags everywhere

[BinkyM]

Hi, SMF peeps:

I'm sorry if this has been discussed before; I searched and can't find "extra tags," so I'm posting to ask about it.

When either someone:

1. posts a message with a lot of formatting in it or,

2. pastes some formatted paragraphs into a post,

the resulting post ends up with a lot if extraneous closing color and size tags after the formatted text, like this:

Code: [Select]

[/size][/font][/color]
[/size]
[/color]
It looks just dreadful, and is an editing nightmare. And here's an example of a list I pasted in from Wikipedia yesterday:

Main card
Heavyweight Championship bout:  Junior dos Santos (c) vs.  Frank Mir[1][10]
Heavyweight bout:  Cain Velasquez vs.  Antonio Silva[1]
Heavyweight bout:  Roy Nelson vs.  Gabriel Gonzaga[1]
Heavyweight bout:  Shane del Rosario vs.  Stipe Miocic[1]
Heavyweight bout:  Mark Hunt vs.  Stefan Struve[1]

I can kinda sorta see why the second example happens (well, the list florfing part anyway), but not the rest of the mess. And the crap that comes along from the first example? That part makes no sense at all. Surely this isn't something SMF users just live with, is it? Do I have a setting somewhere that's funky? If I do, would you tell me what it is, please? I'll be so very disappointed if you tell me I just need to live with it. I'll be ashamed if I let my users in and this is what they see.

Thanks,

Binky

Edit: Oh, that's fun; the formatting doesn't show up in my table because I gather it's turned off here, but it's a bulleted list with bolded text in my forum.

[BinkyM]

(bump)

I figger you need an example, so here's one for you:

http://snarkish.com/forum/index.php/topic,25.new.html

I pasted a formatted article in, and it came out a mess, with extraneous tags everywhere. I need for there not to be extraneous tags, obviously, and could use a suggestion to make the dumb things go away.

Thanks, peeps!

Binky

[Arantor]

The WYSIWYG editor is very, very buggy, that's the sort of thing that happens.

Use the regular bbcode editor, it works properly.

[BinkyM]

Oooh, Arantor! That sounds like a *great* idea (assuming the members can click buttons and not ype BBCode), but where the heck can I find the place to specify which editor to use? I'm going crazy looking! Thanks for the cool suggestion! Now if I can just locate the spot to shut off the WYSIWYG editor!

Binky

[BinkyM]

Oh, nuts. I'll bet it's in my Features area, which I can't currently get at because of http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=476048

I'm gonna go cry like a dirty baby now.

[Yoshi]

Nope, in your post, there's something like [ (arrow) ]. Smash that

[Arantor]

It should be in the themes area actually, as it's a theme option not a general option.

[BinkyM]

It sure isn't; the closest I can find is "Show BBC Buttons on Posting and PM Send Pages" in "Theme Settings." That's the only reference to BBCode I can find in any of the Theme pages.

Unless that's what you mean. We're using that now, but we're getting WYSIWYG. If I'm sposta be turning of WYSIWYG, then *that's* what I can't find.

[Arantor]

It's been a long time since I did this (since I totally gutted this area in my own sites) but it should be in Admin > Themes and Layout > Member Options where you can set that option.

[emanuele]

The WYSIWYG editor is very, very buggy, that's the sort of thing that happens.

Yep, true.

I tried to patch some of these strange behaviours, if you search through the bug reports and fixed/bogus bug reports, you should be able to find some of them with a "possible" fix proposed, if you are brave enough (actually you don't need to be *so* brave ), you can try to apply the fixes and see if they work:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=search2;search=WYSIWYG;brd=137
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=search2;search=WYSIWYG;brd=37

* emanuele always looks for more human guinea...

[BinkyM]

Hokay, peeps, I think I've been misunderstood. I *am* using the BBCode editor. The problem with extra tags all over the danged place arise when someone pastes formatted text in. If you look at my example post, http://snarkish.com/forum/index.php/topic,25.new.html you'll see the problem. That post was pasted in from Ars and had a lotta formatting in it.

The problem *also* occurs if someone created a message using BBCode and puts a lot of formatting in it, ie, he colors a lot of words for emphasis, makes a lot of bold words, makes a big headline, and so on. It's as if using too many tags makes the editor's head explode or something and it poops out a buttload of extra closing tags.

I hope this helps you understand what the problem is. There's no WYSIWYG going on here unless something formatted is pasted in from an external source.

Binky

[MrPhil]

Using the reply editor in WYSIWYG mode is prone to dropping a lot of Road Apples of extra tags. That's why I never use it in that mode. It also does not seem to cleanly cycle between WYSIWYG and non-WYSIWYG mode (they're not perfectly reversible). The developers have been discussing this behavior lately, and say that they have some code fixes, but those won't be available until SMF 2.0.3 at the earliest.

Pasting in text from elsewhere is not WYSIWYG, so please make sure you have your terminology correct. Any editor can do that. WYSIWYG is defined as, say, pressing the "italic" button and then text is italicized as you type it. Non-WYSIWYG would be typing in the text with manually-entered "i" tags, or highlighting it and pressing the "italic" button to add "i" tags, but you don't see italics until you ask for a Preview.

Now, if the text comes over with various control codes embedded in it, there's no telling what will happen on the SMF end, especially if the editor is in WYSIWYG mode. I don't think SMF's editor behavior is well defined for embedded control codes, and every word processor is going to have its own. If you're bringing over text from a web page, maybe it's bringing with it HTML tags (although I think they're not supposed to be picked up), and it's getting confused over whether there are "ending" tags or not.

My preference is to stay out of WYSIWYG mode, as it does more harm than good, and just frequently Preview the post to see how it looks. You want to make a habit anyway of Previewing before Posting/Submitting, just to catch any glitches and see how the final formatting looks, something which the WYSIWYG mode doesn't always seem to do quite right.