ask.openstack - options for code/predefined text formatting are not clear to users

[Tom Fifield]

Based on in-person discussion with real users of ask.openstack today, the options for code/predefined text formatting are not clear.

Especially, the <pre> tag should be made more prominent.

In such a code/predefined text heavy community, we need to make it as easy as possible to allow text in questions and answers to come accross without the formatting engine interfering with the content.

The current toolbar suggestion of four spaces is inappropriate for large blocks of text, and particularly error prone for python code.

[Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli)]

I find that there are many bad formatting on the questions and answers, too. I'm tempted to switch the formatting from markdown to pure html with the wysiwyg editor and see if that helps. If you don't disagree we can make an experiment.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

Sounds good to me :)

[Evgeny Fadeev (evgeny-fadeev)]

The problem is that it won't be easy to convert posts from HTML to Markdown.

Please consider this: StackOverflow uses Markdown as well as all StackExchange sites.
They do it for a good reason and they will not switch to wisywig any time soon.

In this case it might be more appropriate to educate the users better.

In order to insert a block of code they need:
* copy/paste the block
* highlight it
* hit the <code> button (it has binary code on the button)

Maybe we should change appearance of the button?

Alternatively - for a couple of word snippets - surround code with backticks inline.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

See also:

GitHub Flavored Markdown

https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown

[Evgeny Fadeev (evgeny-fadeev)]

Tom, looked at the github flavored markdown, it's very close to the original + some githubby mods.

I see they allow <pre> tag, I can work on that actually and modify our markdown converter, I've looked at the parser code recently.

Also I have added info for the "code" button in the instructions on how to ask the question, let's see if this makes any impact on th e quality of formatting of the questions in the coming week or two.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

Thanks Evgeny, really appreciate it :)