New Editor

[Zakilevo]

Dam u Perth. Maibi U shood suk it up two eef wee get peeple spel like dis!

[De-Legro]

Yeah! Hey all you people who misspell words or make typos, go sit around for a few months and study the dictionary. Maybe when you learn how to spell you can come back to our game! Sheesh!

Oh, and let's not get started on all of those "But English isn't my first language" cry babies. How dare you ask for a spell checker? Too bad! Suck it up! Learn to spell!


::)

English is not my first language.

[Tom]

It is unfortunate that the choice to disable the editor has been taken from us. I'm perfectly fine with formatting my messages with HTML code tags myself, I don't need a WYSIWYG editor to do it for me. I'm certainly not ecstatic about having to run my own Javascript on the game to cleanse it because the only other alternative is to turn off Javascript for the entire site.

You could just click the "source" button (second from the right), which allows you to enter plain HTML...

I may return the choice - you'll notice it hasn't yet been removed from the preferences. The reason I force the change is that people resist change just because. The best way I know to get actualy change is to force it upon people, wait for a couple of days for the "something has changed! the world is ending!" whining to end, and then listen to the real, rational complaints. People are amazing at adapting, they just hate doing it. But we need this better editor.

[Lorgan]

The editor is all right I guess... I just hate that you have to do shift+enter to be able to just write on the next line. Which genius came up with that..

[fodder]

what if.... (once things have worked out) you flip the keyboard shortcuts?

ie.. paste as plain txt = crtl v
paste as fancy stuff = whatever other keyboard shortcut or even just mouse only

[vonGenf]

But we need this better editor.

Could you tell us why? I think the disadvantages of the new editor are not that bad.... but I can't find any advantage to it.

[Andrew]

Advantage: Quote blocks! :D

The only problems I have with it is that it won't process the old tags for italics and bold and that to type the tags in directly you have to be in the source editor.

I wonder if we can get strikethrough added now. That'd be nifty.

[vonGenf]

Advantage: Quote blocks! :D

I dislike people excessively quoting text in game. The letters we send are supposed to be letters, not forum replies.

[Andrew]

There are instances where it's useful. It definetly makes it easier to read messages that are shared by others. Rulers and Generals are the ones doing this the most (or at least, make the most sense to do it).

[Tom]

Could you tell us why? I think the disadvantages of the new editor are not that bad.... but I can't find any advantage to it.

For one, it works.
The main reason is that it degrades gracefully, is much easier to customize and once we're finished configuring it and fixing the issues that remain, you will see that it is a big step forward.
Oh, one other reason is that this is the editor I use on another big project, so anything I do there (say, write plugins), BM will profit from it as well.

[Ironsun]

Well, during the first days the new editor drove me crazy and I still have my share of problems with it.

Whenever I'm including scribe notes, I have to use the plain html option (or get crazy), which means my messages are more work to write. For an example, with the old system I didn't have to to use "br" or "p" for getting into the next line.

When I don't have to include scribe notes, the new editor is working ok and it's quite comfortable to create a nice layout for your letter.

Frankly, I'm in love with BM since several years, and this is the first time I'm thinking twice about  recommending the game. BM is based on letters and text. Now, if sending letters gets complicated and you have the choice of using html OR don't sending scribe notes at all ... well let's just say it's  very uncomfortable, especially for new players.  >:(

Greetings,

[Indirik]

One thing Tim has been talking about for a while is a better way to do scribe notes. The plug-in capability of the editor will allow that. And I think the plugins are just JavaScript, so hopefully it shouldn't be too hard for it to be written....

[Ironsun]

That certainly would be a good thing.

[Tom]

Whenever I'm including scribe notes, I have to use the plain html option (or get crazy), which means my messages are more work to write.

It would help if you could say what exactly the problem is.

[Indirik]

It would help if you could say what exactly the problem is.

When you copy a list of scribe notes from your scribe note page and paste them into the editor, they paste as a table. When you then send the message the table structure is stripped out. The links are then all sent as a single line, like this:

Note Index   Battle   Age   Scribe Note   Battle in Forguthrie   3 turns delete Scribe Note   Battle in Forguthrie   4 turns delete Scribe Note   Battle in Ienith   10 turns delete

In order to make it work properly you need to either paste as plain text (which is a bit clunky because of the need for the editor's pop up window), or paste normally, then preview and add line breaks.