ask.openstack - angle brackets, even inside <pre> tags are not printed in preview mode

[Tom Fifield]

On ask.openstack.org's text formatting preview box, if angle brackets are used together (i.e. '<text-goes-here>'), they and the text within them does not appear in the output.

This is true even if inside a code block, like <pre>

Example:

<pre>
<fifieldt> Tauqeer, have you read the keystone developer reference: http://docs.openstack.org/developer/keystone/ ?
<vkmc> Tauqeer, But to start from scratch, I would also suggest reading the administration guide here http://docs.openstack.org/grizzly/openstack-compute/admin/content/ch-identity-mgmt-config.html
<vkmc> Tauqeer, And... to get more details about it, the API reference http://docs.openstack.org/api/openstack-identity-service/2.0/content/
</pre>

will appear as:

 Tauqeer, have you read the keystone developer reference: http://docs.openstack.org/developer/keystone/ ?
 Tauqeer, But to start from scratch, I would also suggest reading the administration guide here http://docs.openstack.org/grizzly/openstack-compute/admin/content/ch-identity-mgmt-config.html
 Tauqeer, And... to get more details about it, the API reference http://docs.openstack.org/api/openstack-identity-service/2.0/content/

[Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli)]

would using the wysiwyg editor solve this problem?

[Evgeny Fadeev (evgeny-fadeev)]

@maffulli I don't recommend using Wysiwig editor, because your audience is very technical and Markdown formatting I think is more appropriate.

We could work on improving the "help" section of the editor.

Also we could work on proper implementation of the previewer that matches python Markdown converter exactly.

[Evgeny Fadeev (evgeny-fadeev)]

On top of that - people should not use html tags at all!!!

I'm thinking of actually prohibiting any HTML in the Markdown input.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

Hi,

I do not see any other way to make large blocks of text appear preformatted?

This is something that we need to do frequently. The "indented" style is not convenient enough for posting large log or configuration files, which if left plain are formatted very poorly.

[Evgeny Fadeev (evgeny-fadeev)]

Here is how it is intended to work:
* paste some code
* select it with mouse
* hit the "code" button and all appears indented.

StackOverflow and StackExchange work the same way.

It may be a good idea to remind people to paste just the relevant bits of the logs/config files.
Otherwise the content they generate will be scaring off the future visitors.

[Tom Fifield (fifieldt)]

Thanks for that!

So personally, I don't find that method obvious at all. I tried to use the code button a couple times previously and it didn't appear to have any effect because I just clicked it without highlighting anything.

Now I know how to use it, it seems clear (still not enough to validate removing <pre> IMO) - but the fact that I needed training indicates a problem :) I believe user interfaces of this nature should be intuitive and not require training.

So, how can we make it better? It's a function that gets used a _lot_, and many people are just creating poorly formatted posts right now - so our moderators are going crazy editing them and adding code blocks in. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution in my head right now ... *thinks*

I definitely agree that only pasting relevant bits of the logs/config is a good principle we should be communicating :)_

[Evgeny Fadeev (evgeny-fadeev)]

Added instruction message to "how to ask a question", hopefully this helps.

Markdown requires some training, no way around. An alternative would be to change the method of input.

[Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli)]

My personal opinion is that markdown is just useless in 2013 for in-browser editing. Markdown/up is the son of the ancient times when javascript didn't exist and it's still valid when you produce content offline (think a README) in emacs/vim and commit it to git. I think we should just use wysiwyg on Ask. I am happy to run this experiment with improved documentation but if we don't see changes we should switch to wysiwyg.

[Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli)]

isn't this a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-community/+bug/1190917 at this point?