Support to format terminal commands in comments

[Jim Hutchinson]

When assisting users with problems, it is common to ask for the output from various terminal commands. These are to be posted back into Launchpad to help with diagnosing the problem. However, most terminal output is formatted with a mono spaced font. Launchpad doesn't have any method for entering mono spaced text and as a result the pasted output can be very difficult to read.

Adding support for either coding text in such a way that will output properly or using a secondary text box (perhaps one that is normally hidden unless needed) for pasting terminal output.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

This might also be fixable with attachments, which I believe has a moderate to high priority since we wish to convert some bugs to questions, and preserve the bug attachments.

[Jim Hutchinson (jphutch)]

I think that's an option and an improvement, but it might be more of a hassle than it needs to be - at least for the users :). They would have to copy output and then save to a file and then upload the file. Not a big deal but being able to do it right in launchpad would be nice. I've recently discovered the pastebin concept. I doubt it would be easy to implement but having a built-in pastebin (open with a drop down or something) would be really slick. However, any solution you come up will be an improvement. Thanks for your help.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I think there's a high correlation between those terminal commands for which monospace output is important, and those terminal commands that produce very long output, and that therefore attachments are the most appropriate solution here.

[Jim Hutchinson (jphutch)]

I don't disagree that using attachments is a good solution - only that it might not be the best from a user perspective. Maybe I've spent too much time on forums, but copy and paste is quite it a bit easier for a user than creating, saving and uploading a file. However, an attachment option is certainly better than nothing.

[Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini)]

Bug #435865 may be related.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Sorry, my title change did not take affect. We need to disregard the suggested solution and focus on why this bug exists; users need to provide example terminal commands in comments. The solution may be a text formatter like the used used to format quoted text. Those paragraphs would be given a different class. I this is not easy since we need a constant identifier for the command, and the out but cannot have blank lines. We may want a solution where the user can explicitly indicate the terminal text.