[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #33300: More text patterns

[WordPress Trac]

#33300: More text patterns
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 Reporter:  iseulde                   |       Owner:  iseulde
     Type:  task (blessed)            |      Status:  accepted
 Priority:  normal                    |   Milestone:  4.5
Component:  TinyMCE                   |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                    |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch dev-feedback  |     Focuses:  javascript
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Comment (by helen):

 I've been using this for a bit and have the following thoughts. I would
 note that I am neither a fan nor a frequent user of Markdown and don't
 think that it should serve as a canonical source of patterns.

 * {{{`code`}}} is awesome for the fairly small subset of people who need
 it, and is a perfectly good place to include a little bonus for these
 users. :)
 * It does seem like it should convert text that's been pasted between
 open/close patterns. Not sure if this is what was meant by converting on
 paste; I had interpreted that feature as converting patterns contained
 within the paste, which I don't think should be done.
 * The open/close patterns seem a little too liberal with converting. I
 think there should be a space/newline before the start indicator and after
 the end indicator, with no space on the other side. Right now
 `wp_function_name` ends up as wp''function''name and `blah * blah * blah`
 ends up as blah ''blah'' blah, which seems a bit strange and very unlikely
 to actually be what most people want.
 * If there's only a single space between the open/close indicators,
 doesn't seem like it should convert. Right now it just ends up with your
 text disappearing, which is alarming.
 * Generally I dislike that there are multiple patterns for the same thing.
 We should pick one and stick with it, preferably one that is memorable but
 not something that would commonly be used for other reasons/habits.
 * Per above, for `<hr>` I would suggest just `---` and not `***`. Having
 it be of any length of 3 or more seems okay, though. I don't know if it's
 meant to work with spaces between the characters, but it doesn't make any
 sense to do so since they'll convert to an unordered list most of the time
 (exception is when you've backspaced to undo that conversion).
 * I am not very convinced of the utility of bold/italic.
 Asterisks/underscores are annoying to type on most of the touch screen
 keyboards I've used (where selecting text to format after the fact is
 burdensome), and the usual keyboard shortcuts when you can press multiple
 keys seem intuitive/generally learned enough. I can certainly be convinced
 that they are useful; would like to hear opinions on this.
 * If we keep bold/italic, I would again go with just one pattern for each,
 and would suggest `**bold**` and `__italic__`. I recognize that this is a
 pretty significant deviation from Markdown, but I think that the
 differentiation as well as the double characters make it more intentional.
 I am likely biased because I use `*thing*` frequently and hate when it
 converts. If you ever see something from me in Slack that is bold and
 struck out, it's because I was trying to be *~flippant~* :) And speaking
 of Slack, they have a great line on why they use `*bold*` and `_italic_`:
 "Our message formatting is similar to other popular services like Skype
 and Google Talk, and is intended for a majority of our users who are
 unfamiliar with Markdown."

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/33300#comment:27>
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