Text editor really lets the software down

[genrobgen]

Most users are not militant typographers.

And they are not attempting to write a book. They're just forum users writing a couple of sentences per post.

These users naturally expect the enter key to do the same thing as what the enter key has been doing the last 25 years.

[opentype]

Most users are not militant typographers.

That wasn’t my point. It’s up the software makers and forum admins to set up a system with the best possible and versatile structure for text storage and display—not the user. The current change is a step in that direction. 

These users naturally expect the enter key to do the same thing as what the enter key has been doing the last 25 years.

And what is that? Yes, that is a serious question. 

Again: please differentiate between structure and styling. Are you really suggesting the end of the paragraph should not encoded as a paragraph end? I am curious how you would explain that. Or do you have a problem with the paragraph spacing, which again would then just be global styling you could be set however you like. It would be pointless to discuss it, just as it would be pointless to discuss if blue is the right color for the default IPS theme. 

[genrobgen]

Every other text box that I use on the internet works the same.

Gmail, Google Docs, reddit, Disqus, ...

Are you seriously suggesting my chat forum should suddenly start behaving differently, and against the wishes of pretty much ALL the users? It's bananas.

[opentype]

I can’t and wont discuss with you if you just reject what I am saying. I asked you serious questions which are necessary to pin down what you are even talking about. Just repeating your opinion without being able to back it up through convincing arguments and ignoring the points I make wont get us anywhere. 

[Vikestart]

I agree with @Ralf H.

The point here is that paragraphs should be encoded as..... paragraphs!

<br> is for the most part a relic of the past and should be avoided.

Now, the default styling for paragraphs is to have some margin between each of them, but if you don't like that, you can easily adjust that your preferences, which makes them behave just like your old <br> linebreaks.

[Hexsplosions]

Seriously, it is the new standard. You need to accept it or hack your own setup. Don't ask IPS to compromise others for you.

 

[gbstn10]

Every other text box that I use on the internet works the same.

Gmail, Google Docs, reddit, Disqus, ...

Are you seriously suggesting my chat forum should suddenly start behaving differently, and against the wishes of pretty much ALL the users? It's bananas.

​If it is a problem for you, you can do one of two things;

1. Adjust the margin to 0.
2. Use shift+enter when you want to go to a new line.

I made a lot of changes to the typography via the css files, and in the end, I've reverted just about everything I edited because it's an easy to use system already (once you get used to the shift+enter line-break technique).

Give it some time, I think you'll get used to it. I really didn't like it, but once I learned about the shift+enter command, it became a lot more natural to use.

[genrobgen]

What are you doing about mobile?

Main reason I upgraded to IPS 4 is that nearly 50% and rising of our users are on mobile.

I still maintain that the behaviour is completely at odds to every other textbox in the known Universe: Gmail, Google Docs, Word, Notepad, WhatsApp, Facebook, Disqus, ...

[GrooveOnBeat]

Standards too can have it wrong.  In designing I remember the long and drawn out debates over whether Tables can be used for layouts, the standards back then were too restrictive.  Then standards started to shift.  By simply adding the div tag Table properties, Tables are no longer just seen for tabular or listings, but now perfectly fine for layouts.  The purists can continue to debate a non-issue.

I don't consider forum editors the same as other text editors such as MS Word.  People have different posting styles and most of the times don't conform to writing standards.  A large body of people post like they do in chats or text.  They're not writing essays or articles.  I've been around forums/communities long enough to know the general expectations and double spacing by pressing enter is not it.  It's still single space.  Standards are nice to have but people will do what they continue to do.  Times do change and I expect to come across this debate again years from now.

 

 

[Lindy]

I still maintain that the behaviour is completely at odds to every other textbox in the known Universe: Gmail, Google Docs, Word, Notepad, WhatsApp, Facebook, Disqus, ...

​and I'd maintain you're comparing apples to oranges. You're largely citing e-mail and and word processing... Facebook doesn't even have an "editor" as such. If you look at virtually anything else with user-driven public content, such as Wordpress, you'll find one of the "industry standard" editors -- CKEditor, TinyMCE, or Redactor. All of these follow the standard -- paragraph instead of linebreak. Your grievance may be with W3C for the HTML5 spec which states line breaks should not be used to create paragraphs and only for such things that actually require a newline, i.e.: an address. As most who use <enter> are ultimately intending to create a new paragraph, that has been the adopted standard behavior for our industry. 

As for mobile - I don't have an answer for you, unfortunately. Soft linebreaks are not widely supported on mobile... perhaps it's because most don't do heavy document processing from their mobile devices and in terms of HTML, paragraphs are "proper" vs newlines. 

Again, I understand the concern -- I wasn't pleased with the change either initially, but after adapting, I actually find it more logical. Ultimately, this is the new standard irrespective of irrelevant of private document/content oriented services such as gmail, docs, etc. that don't need to adhere to standards -- we're not paving the way to something revolutionary here.  I think most will adapt and if you run a community in which your users just can't adapt, the CSS suggestion is very viable and in fact, we are discussing making this a theme setting. 

As I get older, I like change less and less but you can either adapt or get left behind. 

[gbstn10]

What are you doing about mobile?

Main reason I upgraded to IPS 4 is that nearly 50% and rising of our users are on mobile.

I still maintain that the behaviour is completely at odds to every other textbox in the known Universe: Gmail, Google Docs, Word, Notepad, WhatsApp, Facebook, Disqus, ...

There isn't a lot that can be done, really. If you mess around with things too much you risk having problems across varying screen resolutions.

[gbstn10]

What are you doing about mobile?

Main reason I upgraded to IPS 4 is that nearly 50% and rising of our users are on mobile.

I still maintain that the behaviour is completely at odds to every other textbox in the known Universe: Gmail, Google Docs, Word, Notepad, WhatsApp, Facebook, Disqus, ...

​I replied, but to give you actual advice…

You can set the paragraph margin to 0 in custom.css, then adjust the text editor's .css to mirror the change. That won't remove the paragraphs, but they'll look like line-breaks instead. That's the best way to do it on mobile.

Make sure you adjust the line-height in both .css files to create decent spacing between the sentences.