New Feature Addition · Articles & templates · Created by
T. Mystery
closed
visual euclid wysiwyg convert-bbcode
What functionality is missing? What is unsatisfying with the current situation?
At present, the new editor basically breaks all BBCode formatting - bullet points, headers, spoiler tags, and the old BBCode tables. Sadly, in my 150k+ words world,
I used those functions a lot and now the new Editor will break all of that on switching. (I tested it using an old WYSIWYG world - the old tables just get deleted from existence because they're bbcode and bullet points, er... yeah they don't look great, not to mention the text formatting looked reaaaaaally bad) I 100% understand why it's happening (new system does not support bbcode) but 150k+ words of extra work is... not great. And I can imagine anyone who wants to switch from Euclid to Visual will encounter similar issues. :( Thus,
I can't switch to Visual from WYSIWYG, and Visual finally solves both of my biggest bugbears with WA's interface! (and before you say "use Euclid" - sorry, that's a no-go. It doesn't meet my needs.)
How does this feature request address the current situation?
I'm not sure of the logistics on this - my programming background is C++ over anything webdev - but a simple check at article load could search for instances of
or other BBCode formatting tags. Once the check detects the code, the system prompts "hey, I found some BBCode in your article - can I update this to our modern standard?" and then simply swaps the BBCode accordingly to whatever our new editor uses. Once the conversion is done, the system no longer needs to run the check.
It sounds simple in theory, but I'm 90% sure it'd be fairly complex in practice.
What are other uses for this feature request?
Primarily for now it'd be a great transition tool for any of us who used WYSIWYG and have fairly large amounts of articles etc, as well as anyone who wants to transition to Visual from Euclid. I can't imagine it'll be heavily used but it would be a lifesaver for the rest of us who need it.
Follow up
Thought about it overnight. Here's the logic I think it would use with some built in futureproofing. This will 100% be a lot of effort, but from a UX perspective it'd be appreciated. Mind you this is not refactored in any way, a more talented programmer than I could likely work out how best to do this in a way that has minimal server load. (Ideally you could do this all client-side but I'm not sure how to make that work offhand, again, no webdev background)
Flag Set On World Load: isBBCode (this would be a boolean set for every article, and simply flags "True" for everyone not on Visual for now. If the switch to visual was already made/it is a new world, this flag sets to False.)
CHECK AT ARTICLE LOAD: isBBCode? = True (offer to run conversion tool. If user says "yes", it searches for all instances of text in square brackets (which bbcode uses) and then loads the content of the square brackets into an array. The system then swaps out the square BBCode brackets for the equivalent in whatever code system our new editor uses. Once the tool no longer detects square brackets, system sets the BBcode flag for the article to false and presents the user with the fixed article. If the user says "no", the system shows the article as-is: ie, with the no longer functional bbcode intact, and simply lets them manually change it. There would be some modification required here to work around the BBcode tables vanishing (maybe just show the article's source page?) but this would at least greatly reduce the work of anyone who heavily uses tables like I do.)
EDGE CASES:
People who use square brackets in text for things other than BBCode - I'm honestly not sure how to handle this, it may just be best to throw a try-catch and if it sees square brackets that don't match known BBCode, spit the text back out as plaintext.
People who already switched to Visual from WYSIWYG - Maybe set the flag and run the tool anyway but I don't think there's anything we could do here. :(
People who switch from Visual to Euclid, work in Euclid a while, then back again - This can be handled via resetting the flag isBBCode once the switch to Euclid is made and setting it to True, thus when they swap back the Visual editor can check for BBCode again.
The Team's Response
Thanks for your suggestion! Please keep in mind that the Visual Editor is still on testing stages for older accounts (i.e. accounts created before its release), precisely for the reasons you mention! You have access to it because you're an Alchemist, which is how we call users who sign up to be beta testers. You probably noticed that, when you chose to switch to the Visual Editor, there was a very clear warning that you might have issues with formatting.
We're currently working on making the Visual Editor able to display BBCode tags. It will never support advanced BBCode, but things like lists, quotes, and so on will be supported. Note that this isn't a conversion issue either—nothing is being converted—, it's simply a display issue.
In any case, we're closing this because the feature is still in development. Once it's publicly available for everyone, feel free to check if the issue still occurs and we'll be happy to take a look then.
Current score
18/300 Votes · +3702 points
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+100
by
Amancham
on 2024-11-06 08:06
I never used WYSIWYG but opted fur the Euclid editor instead. I really like the new editor, but an option to transform old style pages to the new editor would be even more amazing. This conversion tool idea would be amazing.
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+300
by
ss2020
on 2024-10-25 21:16
I agree with the reasons, I have a over 1,000 articles now and the new wysiwyg would create more work for me that I just do not have time for.
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+300
by
MrGunn
on 2024-10-19 04:06
I am not a fan of the new Euclid editor. When the editor fails to display like I want it to, my default was to go into the code and write the article like I wanted, while tedious to write the BBCode being able to do so gives you a lot more control over what is displayed and how. I am an idiot looking for a village, so if I can figure it out, anyone can.
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+300
by
A Beloved Kobold
on 2024-10-13 20:55
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+300
by
hwcarver
on 2024-10-13 13:46
I don't have nearly as much in my worlds as T. Mystery, but this sounds like a swell idea. Of course, I have no idea how heavy the demands for coding and resources would be.
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