New Discourse auto-formatting: Anyone else find this annoying?

General
1

The new Discourse UI here to compose a reply or post is pretty annoying, especially when using inline code via backticks.

Try typing:

`module->namespace`

You get: module→namespace. Some auto-ligature thing kicks in. This code example won’t work if people use it.

Also, try typing:

"file.rkt"

You get: ”file.rkt” with fancy quotes. This code example won’t work if people try it.

I kind of miss the older, “less fancy”, thing where it was less automagical, and you had a preview pane.

Today whenever I type “Discourse” I keep getting “Discourage”… but OK that one is from my unhappy brain, not from their software. :smile:

  • Does anyone else feel the same way?
  • If a majority do, is there a way to turn off these options in our Discourse instance?
2

The left side of the formatting bar should have a toggle to go back to the previous Markdown with preview pane editing mode:

image

Do these issues still occur even when in Markdown editing mode?

2 Likes
3

To answer your questions...

I also prefer the previous Markdown editing mode. As mentioned above, it should at least still be accessible to everyone via the toggle. They've just made the new rich text editor mode the default.

It should be possible for our Discourse admins to flip the default back to Markdown mode if desired. More info available here: Choosing the default composer mode for your community - Announcements - Discourse Meta

4

Oh! I see it now. Thanks!

1 Like
5

On my previous reply, I moved the slider toggle to Markdown. That was sticky, and persists at least for now into this other reply. Hooray!

Maybe my preference is being held only in a local cookie, and eventually I'll need to re-assert it. But that's OK. This is good enough, for me.

6

Although this isn't a super strong opinion: There might be some value to the admins setting the old way as the default.

I've noticed that especially users new to this community often post code without using code blocks.

Before, that was merely harder to read. But now, if that code is full of automatic pretty quotes and ligatures, it might also be tedious to fix up when copy-pasting into DrRacket or whatever.

(Sure there probably exists for Emacs, or I could write myself, some un-prettify command. But not everyone uses Emacs. Shocking, I know, right? :wink: )

2 Likes