FlightAware starts using :disco: :horse: Sadness ensues
-
@raceprouk It really boggles my mind how anybody defends Markdown.
-
@blakeyrat The more I push it, the harder it breaks. Sometimes I think why anyone would come up with this shit, then I remember that the favoured version was created by everyone's favourite DiscoDev, Jeff 'I'm Better Than All of You' Atwood.
-
@raceprouk said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
then I remember that the favoured version
Legitimate question -- favoured by whom?
Before the controversy with John Gruber and Jeff Atwood started, we didn't have "CommonMark" or Standard Markdown, or whatever it was called. We used
chjj/marked
which was an implementation of Gruber's markdown rules, and after it was deemed to be unsupported, we switched over to markdown-it, a hostile fork ofchjj/marked
(I think), and supported by a Russian dude who swears more than a sailor on leave.To my knowledge, he's not associated with Mr. Atwood and he's been doing a bang up job maintaining
markdown-it
.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
making decision on behalf of the user is like 90% of software development
Yes, indeed it is, and because I don't want to be wholly responsible for forcing a paradigm on users, and excusing my sometimes-short-sighted design implementations with "this is the way it is, deal with it", NodeBB is built so that many parts of it can be removed and swapped out with something you like.
So yes, I made a decision about text formatting that I'll wager greater than 90% of installs are perfectly fine with. For the remaining <10%, they are free to swap it out with an alternative.
We have a BBCode plugin too, although I have a feeling it is quite out of date. Might still work though.
To your point that the plugin system is cancer, what would you have me do? I have a feeling your answer would be "to pick a sensible solution in the first place", except no matter what I choose, someone will have a problem with it and call me out as a short-sighted open-source-y asshole who couldn't think farther than his own IDE.
So, correct, I put my money on Markdown, and you didn't like that choice, but I think I offended the fewest people going in that direction.
- Lastly, I fucking hate the auto-numbering in Markdown.
- test. Hm, okay.
-
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
To my knowledge, he's not associated with Mr. Atwood and he's been doing a bang up job maintaining markdown-it.
Then why does it suck so much?
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Yes, indeed it is, and because I don't want to be wholly responsible for forcing a paradigm on users, and excusing my sometimes-short-sighted design implementations with "this is the way it is, deal with it", NodeBB is built so that many parts of it can be removed and swapped out with something you like.
Usually also a bad idea.
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
So yes, I made a decision about text formatting that I'll wager greater than 90% of installs are perfectly fine with.
A lot of people are fine with shitty software. A lot of people eat McDonalds every day.
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
To your point that the plugin system is cancer, what would you have me do?
Figure out the objectively best method of formatting text using scientific usability testing, then implement that.
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
I have a feeling your answer would be "to pick a sensible solution in the first place", except no matter what I choose, someone will have a problem with it and call me out as a short-sighted open-source-y asshole who couldn't think farther than his own IDE.
That's why you need to build up evidence that it's the best one before you make your choice.
What evidence do you have now that Markdown is better than any alternative?
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
So, correct, I put my money on Markdown, and you didn't like that choice, but I think I offended the fewest people going in that direction.
Prove it with evidence.
My point isn't even that Markdown is bad. My point is that people like you keep picking it despite the fact that there's no studies of whether it actually is superior.
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Lastly, I fucking hate the auto-numbering in Markdown.
You're the one shoveling this shit at us.
"
50.
" is a perfectly valid English sentence that can not be typed for love nor money in Markdown. Do you even understand how shitty that makes Markdown?
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Because if I type test I expect that text to be underlined.
It's not that underline is common, it's that the OBVIOUS way to do underline, the way people have been doing underline in plain text for over 20 years, instead does italicsUpcoming and qft. When people are used to Something so much that it's an obvious, defacto standard that even non techie people understand, don't change it. There's a reason it's that way, and if you can't think of the reason, then you don't understand the problem well enough to make a change. You'll just end up repeating mistakes that we're already solved.
-
@heterodox said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
WYSIWYG... preview pane
I don't think you understand what "wysiwyg" is...
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
A lot of people are fine with shitty software. A lot of people eat McDonalds every day.
Respectfully, your argument via analogy is not correct. NodeBB doesn't cause physical harm to anybody. Mental harm, maybe, but I don't know anybody who's gone crazy because they're forced to use Markdown.
Inconvenienced, yes...
-
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
supported by a Russian dude who swears more than a sailor on leave.
For fuck's sake I'm a goddamn CANADIAN you crumpet-shitter. Get your cold northern countries fucking straight for fuck's sake, you asshole flavored cunt burp!
Filed under: I just taught my spellchecker several new words
-
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Respectfully, your argument via analogy is not correct. NodeBB doesn't cause physical harm to anybody.
Neither does eating at McDonalds.
Oh let me guess, you're also one of those "oh I watched this documentary where they ignored 95% of the MacDonalds menu and acted like it was only possible to order hamburgers there and guess what I got fat!!!" people too. Ugh.
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Mental harm, maybe, but I don't know anybody who's gone crazy because they're forced to use Markdown.
Harm is harm.
Markdown makes me angry because it's so poorly-designed and poorly-implemented. I don't like being angry. You're harming me.
And let's be clear here: that's only a small part of the pie. Your broken-ass way of changing to a mobile layout made me angry because the layout on a desktop computer was so obviously shitty and broken. Your janky-ass network code that fails all the time makes me angry when I hit the "Submit" button and my posts disappears into the ether. Your shitty lack of any kind of database competence makes me angry when we have "magical" posts you can't scroll past because their DB entries are corrupted and Ben L has to go in and manually fix them up.
Even ignoring Markdown specifically, your software is causing a lot of suffering. You're not up to Lotus Notes level, but you're way fucking higher than you should be.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Then why does it suck so much?
Brain worms.
-
@blakeyrat
How many @blakeyrats does it take to exhaust specious arguments? 50. We hope it's no more than that, anyway.(Though, yes, I know I'm being a bit obtuse, since I know what you mean is "
50.
is a perfectly valid English sentence that cannot be typed at the beginning of a new line without doing a little bit of escaping magic, which non-technical people probably wouldn't be able to do without asking for help, so it gets a bit frustrating, but I'm a software developer that knows all about escape characters and as such am probably being just a bit hyperbolic at the moment")50.
-
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Legitimate question -- favoured by whom?
My understanding is CommonMark is the most popular version of Markdown currently in use. Not everyone uses it (Slack doesn't), but it does seem to be the most common.
-
Also, within standard English style rules that you
learnedslept through in grade school, you wouldn't write a sentence of50.
anyway. Small numbers under 100 should generally be written out. And it's not like just a number as the entirety of a sentence comes up in written English anyway.Filed under: The more you
-
@izzion said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
And it's not like just a number as the entirety of a sentence comes up in written English anyway.
All the fucking time.
"What time is the party?"
"5:00.""How many of those balloons do you need?"
"10."
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
"What time is the party?"
"5:00."5PM."How many of those balloons do you need?"
"10."Ten.FTFY
-
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Are you fucking kidding me? You can't either:
- Throw it into a prepared statement, like every query should be doing?
- base64 encode the fucker, then base64 decode on the way out?
Getting the data back to a client, trivial. Getting formatted text submitted by someone not entirely trusted to be handled correctly by some other user who doesn't really want to see HTML rendered as plain text? Rather more tricky. (I suppose I can read
<b>Status:</b> This <i>really</i> sucks.
well enough, but I doubt most people would be happy.) By the time you've worked out how to make a really good whitelisting solution work reliably, you might as well have stuck with some kind of markdown variant which doesn't have the same level of crazy.
-
@jaloopa said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
except underlines which are inexplicably omitted
Underlines suck in anything other than hand-written text. Just sayin'…
-
@heterodox said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
MediaWiki does it as well, though IIRC when I last used it it still showed you the MediaWiki markup. I'm sure that's changed by now since it was so long ago (and that was so terrible).
I don't think it really has changed. You might have your own plugin installed to give the illusion of a WYSIWYG editor with it, but since one of the big selling points of mediawiki is its widespread support for user-defined macros, doing a full editor for it that doesn't show the actual markup is going to be an exercise in intense frustration. At best, it'd be like training wheels on a bicycle…
-
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
For fuck's sake I'm a goddamn CANADIAN you crumpet-shitter.
But are you supporting a markdown rendering engine? If not, your ability to turn the air icy blue is irrelephant.
-
@julianlam said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
supported by a Russian dude who swears more than a sailor on leave
The second part of your sentence is redundant.
-
@timebandit said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
"What time is the party?"
"5:00."5PM.17:00FTFY
FTFTFY
-
@izzion said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
And it's not like just a number as the entirety of a sentence comes up in written English anyway.
But it does a lot in spoken English, and forum posts are spoken English, just written down. It's dialogue without the quote marks.
-
@onyx said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
FTFTFY
That was my first reaction, but he's American, so I adjusted
-
Obviously we should be writing all forum posts in RST.
-
@raceprouk said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
What's the Markdown for tables?
th_1 | th_2 | th_3 --- | --- | --- td_11 | td_12 | td_13 td_21 | td_22 | td_23 td_31 | td_32 | td_33 td_41 | td_42 | td_43
th_1 th_2 th_3 td_11 td_12 td_13 td_21 td_22 td_23 td_31 td_32 td_33 td_41 td_42 td_43
-
@djls45 Hm, I think I prefer the twiki syntax.
| *th_1* | *th_2* | *th_3* | | td_11 | td_12 | td_13 | | td_21 | td_22 | td_23 |
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Markdown's specifically designed by lazy-ass open source coders who don't give a shit for usability and thus is actually meant to be typed in plain text. Because it's fucking 1978 again in the open source world.
By WYSIWYG, do you mean you want to see something like MS Word? For writing up a piece of web content? You'd rather that the developers come up with a reliable way to maintain editor state* across all browsers as well as content?
* "Am I in bold mode right now or italics? Or maybe
strikethrough? Or underline? Or maybeall of the above?
Or maybe I'm in
? How can I easily and quickly find the start or end of any of those? If I'm using formatting, how do I know whether editing at the edge of the formatting will be in the formatted state or the unformatted state? If it's the wrong one, I'll have to go back and edit it. Whereas with Markdown, I can easily see where the formatting begins and ends. Unless you use both a raw (editing) and preview frame, but then what's the point of state-based editing?table mode
Edit: Oh, you already mentioned MS Word, so everything I just said has probably also already been 'd.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@raceprouk That fucking "every time you type
47.
on a new line it turns into1.
, even though47.
is a perfectly valid sentence" bug was responsible for more puppy-kicking than I can even count. And still not fixed, BTW. The number at least doesn't change now, but it's still tabbed-in like I'm starting a list even when I had no intention of starting a list.47.
47.47\.
47.Edit: Escape syntax exists for a reason: sometimes you want exactly what you wrote and either you don't want it to follow the special rules or you want it to follow different rules. Programmers have been using it for years now, and it has even existed before programmers thought it up — quotation marks, tabs (all whitespace, actually), capital/lowercase letters, and pretty much every other sort of formatting adds additional meaning to the actual letters/words themselves.
Edit edit: Many ancient languages weren't written down with any sort of meaningful formatting. Greek was ALLCAPSWITHNOSPACES and wove back-and-forth as you move down through the text. Egyptian hieroglyphics and many Asian languages could be written in any direction.
-
@djls45 said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Escape syntax exists for a reason
How many lists consist of a single numbered item?
@djls45 said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Many ancient languages weren't written down with any sort of meaningful formatting.
Ever wonder why modern languages have clear formatting rules?
-
@raceprouk said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Ever wonder why modern languages have clear formatting rules?
TIL that HTML is not a modern language.
-
@dkf said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@raceprouk said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Ever wonder why modern languages have clear formatting rules?
TIL that HTML is not a modern language.
I find HTML very easy to format. Also, I was talking about natural languages.
-
@raceprouk said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@dkf said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@raceprouk said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Ever wonder why modern languages have clear formatting rules?
TIL that HTML is not a modern language.
I find HTML very easy to format. Also, I was talking about natural languages.
What sort of formatting rules? Like...left to right? Spaces between words?
-
@boomzilla said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
What sort of formatting rules?
-
@raceprouk Now you weren't talking about natural languages?
-
@boomzilla said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@raceprouk Now you weren't talking about natural languages?
Oh, I thought you were asking about HTML.
And yes, I was talking about such rules as left-to-right, word spacing, punctuation, and stuff like that.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Figure out the objectively best method of formatting text using scientific usability testing, then implement that.
...on what budget?
You keep saying open-source devs are lazy for not doing stuff like this, but do you realize that that costs a whole friggin' lot of money to get right, to take it beyond just asking people who you work with, which is essentially the very definition of "an echo chamber" and thus likely to give bad results?
-
@masonwheeler said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
...on what budget?
The volunteer coding, they can volunteer running usability studies. The latter would probably give a lot more bang-for-the-buck anyway.
@masonwheeler said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
You keep saying open-source devs are lazy for not doing stuff like this, but do you realize that that costs a whole friggin' lot of money to get right,
No it doesn't.
@masonwheeler said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
to take it beyond just asking people who you work with, which is essentially the very definition of "an echo chamber" and thus likely to give bad results?
Every city in the US has like 20 retirement homes and a couple libraries, all filled with bored people who'd sign up for something like this in an instant.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Every city in the US has like 20 retirement homes
They all just use whatsapp
-
@timebandit said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@abarker said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
We screwed up! Can you guys please come back and do our testing again?"
?
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
WYSIWYG is a perfected technology
citation needed.
-
@jazzyjosh said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@arantor If I have to push a button outside the text area what happens to my mobile keyboard
Some have been able to do this without issue. I know the comment box on a fiction site I frequent does this just fine. It blasts all the emoji images in all at once, but clicking them doesn't close the keyboard or anything weird....
-
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
It's almost as if
websockets are dumb or something.FTFY. Physically changing a socket connection to a different interface with a different gateway on a different service transparently and seamlessly without application intervention (i.e. session layer or higher on OSI) is still very much a pipe dream.
-
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
wat. Do you know that sometimes people will do something odd like read a post? Or take a couple minutes to masturbate to a picture from the "Post Yourself"... I mean NSFW thread? So by using the forum, it breaks the forum?
I assume wiggling the page or doing anything to it (clicking link, moving mouse, whatever) wakes it up and "un-breaks" the forum.
-
@pie_flavor said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@pie_flavor said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
You may not see it. I see it. I don't see it on Discourse.
Yup, either
- a Discodev troll failing to trolling or
- Someone who was told they were using Discourse, but a smart web admin just installed PHPBB and skinned it to look like Discourse.
I take offense at statement #1, and it's definitely not #2
That site has, what, 12k posts? Come back when it's 10x that much.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Because it's fucking 1978 again in the open source world.
Oh, so you'd rather we use RTF then. Yes. So much better...
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
Microsoft Word is great WYSIWYG editor. Have you ever spent even a fraction of a millisecond thinking about how it stores its text and formatting? No? Then they're doing it right.
It's currently stored in XML. Natch.
-
@blakeyrat said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@masonwheeler said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
...on what budget?
The volunteer coding, they can volunteer running usability studies. The latter would probably give a lot more bang-for-the-buck anyway.
@masonwheeler said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
You keep saying open-source devs are lazy for not doing stuff like this, but do you realize that that costs a whole friggin' lot of money to get right,
No it doesn't.
@masonwheeler said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
to take it beyond just asking people who you work with, which is essentially the very definition of "an echo chamber" and thus likely to give bad results?
Every city in the US has like 20 retirement homes and a couple libraries, all filled with bored people who'd sign up for something like this in an instant.
Sweet! So it sounds like you're all set up with a plan and everything!
When can we expect your results?
-
@tsaukpaetra said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
wat. Do you know that sometimes people will do something odd like read a post? Or take a couple minutes to masturbate to a picture from the "Post Yourself"... I mean NSFW thread? So by using the forum, it breaks the forum?
I assume wiggling the page or doing anything to it (clicking link, moving mouse, whatever) wakes it up and "un-breaks" the forum.
That is a poor assumption.
-
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@tsaukpaetra said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
@lorne-kates said in FlightAware starts using Sadness ensues:
wat. Do you know that sometimes people will do something odd like read a post? Or take a couple minutes to masturbate to a picture from the "Post Yourself"... I mean NSFW thread? So by using the forum, it breaks the forum?
I assume wiggling the page or doing anything to it (clicking link, moving mouse, whatever) wakes it up and "un-breaks" the forum.
That is a poor assumption.
I know; my assumptions need more muns.