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Daisy Chain Format : The all-in-one "format comment as" parser (an idea)

lechlech ✭
edited July 2005 in Vanilla 1.0 Help

Ok... here's the main problem. We have all these formatters, but still, we can't seem to mix and match without making total conversion from one to the other. And in the end, they all spit out html... am I right?

I think this might be the easiest while stupidest solution so far as far as formatting a comment goes and since this would most likely be an extension like all of them are already besides plain text it could be the best solution overall. This came to me in the quoting discussion. To be reasonable, we only have 2 types of markup to really consider, that which is code, and that which isn't. The rest is just text.

Providing the core allows for it, the only issue would be intelligently switching between what is html, what is markdown and whatever else is plugged into this chain and switch between the appropriate parser as things get displayed. This way, you can mix and match all different types of markup (and hopefully still strip out the baddies) and not really have to worry about selecting which default format you need to post in for the desired result.

I think something along the lines of specifying entity blocks of what is in what format could help with specially defined opening and closing tags which would get weeded out as everything gets rendered. Else it could just do it on it's own. Otherwise it would default to just plain text. Then all we would need to worry about is plugging in other parsers into the main display runtime (my words) and stack things up from there. Mark this could play into the "weights" idea for extensions on which gets run through first.

like ... I think you get the idea by now... Does this sound sensible or just plain crazy? Because I can see after a while having a dozen or so radio buttons piling up down there as more extensions role out.

Comments

  • patrixpatrix
    As a user, I don't want to have to write <markdown> </markdown> around every text I write. Not to mention compatibility with all the markdown posts I wrote. Maybe what we need is 2 kinds of parsers. one that does general all-purpose stuff , and one kind that handles text/html/markdown/textile/etc. Dunno how complicated that would be - that's the idea i'm throwing out.
  • lechlech ✭
    well, I think you shouldn't really HAVE to be honest, hopefully the parser could be intelligently crafted to decipher what is what on it's on. I just threw that out there as an optional idea. However having just a text then a 1-in-all doing the trick wouldn't be too bad either.
  • sauceruneysauceruney
    how about two modes, set by a tab next to "big input"... n00b and advanced n00b gets all the buttons and bloat, and the advanced users get what you suggested in the first post?
  • lechlech ✭
    hahaha, I love it.
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    Or you could just have a "FancyPants" formatter that allows all of the stuff you're talking about and newbies just wouldn't use it.
  • lechlech ✭
    Is that what the "FancyPants" formatter idea is?
This discussion has been closed.