HTML emails are double-spaced

[AtariAge]

I've noticed that HTML notification emails being sent from my forum are double-spaced in terms of newlines.  Is there a way to fix this?  It makes the emails look a bit sloppy.  I have my Return Key Behavior set to "Go To Next Line", as my nearly 4.5 million posts converted from 3.4.8 looked just like these emails before changing that setting.  Looks like the email generator isn't honoring that setting.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 ..Al

 

[opentype]

Well, technically, the user added unnecessary empty lines. It would look perfectly fine if it he hadn’t done that. But it looks even bigger because of the CSS styling, which adds even more spacing to the paragraphs. You could change the CSS to reduce the space I guess. 

[AtariAge]

Well, to be fair, Invision changed the way this behaves in 4.x versus 3.x.  My forum is nearly 20 years old, and users are accustomed to that nature of spacing, versus the now default in Invision 4.x of paragraph spacing when you hit return.  Not only would users have to unlearn many years of how they've written posts, but I'd need to figure out some way to update all the existing posts in the forum so they didn't appear double-spaced (I did find efforts to do that with mixed success). 

As the forum offers the option of how to handle returns, it should be consistent with the emails that are sent out so the content on the forum and in the email matches.

 ..Al

[Bluto]

I will just talking about the same issue here:

For me this was happening in the warning / information box.

For some reason when I paste something, the editor puts <p></p> around every paragraph, sentence, or extra line which creates that extra space.  Look at the source code in the editor or a webpage source.  Talking about it in the thread above, I was thinking it was something in the New Topic Rules plugin.  I'm setup to paste in plain text, so I wasn't bring in any extra formatting.  All that I know is that I was having the same problem as you, WYSIWYG isn't really happening here because what is in the editor is not what appears on the webpage even when using the unaltered default IPS theme.

I just seems weird that the editor is throwing all those <p></p> in the pasted text.  I ended up going into source and removing all the <p></p>, then wrapping the whole thing in <p></p> and using my own styling <span> and <br>.  Ended up looking exactly like what I wanted.  I tried to remove all the <p></p>, but for some reason the editor requires <p></p> wrapper or it'll take the first "<" off the code and the outputted first line of text will be html code.

I don't believe this happens when I post a thread in the forum on the site.  I wonder if these special areas - email for you and warning box for me - is setup different than other areas.

[opentype]

8 minutes ago, Bluto said:

For some reason when I paste something, the editor puts <p></p> around every paragraph …

Well, yes. That’s what is supposed to happen. Literally! That’s what <p> means. A paragraph. 

[Bluto]

8 minutes ago, opentype said:

Well, yes. That’s what is supposed to happen. Literally! That’s what <p> means. A paragraph. 

I realize that.

But when those <p></p> go around a line, it creates more than just a line space.

<p>
	The standard Lorem Ipsum passage, used since the 1500s
</p>

<p>
	&nbsp;
</p>

<p>
	&quot;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.&quot;
</p>

<p>
	&nbsp;
</p>

<p>
	Section 1.10.32 of &quot;de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum&quot;, written by Cicero in 45 BC
</p>

<p>
	&quot;Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?&quot;
</p>

 

[Bluto]

I did a test with Lorem ipsum the first one is a forum thread.  The same source code on both.

Below is the Forum Thread.

 

Below is the warning box.

 

Maybe there is just some CSS that needs to be modified?

[Day_]

5 hours ago, AtariAge said:

Well, to be fair, Invision changed the way this behaves in 4.x versus 3.x.  My forum is nearly 20 years old, and users are accustomed to that nature of spacing, versus the now default in Invision 4.x of paragraph spacing when you hit return.  Not only would users have to unlearn many years of how they've written posts, but I'd need to figure out some way to update all the existing posts in the forum so they didn't appear double-spaced (I did find efforts to do that with mixed success). 

As the forum offers the option of how to handle returns, it should be consistent with the emails that are sent out so the content on the forum and in the email matches.

 ..Al

I think sometimes we (forum owners) don’t give members enough credit, we believe they won’t like change and unable to adapt, assume they wouldn’t prefer a different way of doing things, but how would they know if we never show them?

That belief makes us scared of upsetting and losing members, installing plugins and reverting changes.

My forum has only been online 10 years and I’ve seen huge amounts of change, can’t imagine what you’ve seen over 20 years.

I’ve taken my members on a journey from vBulletin 3.8 to Xenforo and then IPS, sure I’ve lost a few along the way, because of the changes or natural loss of interest I don’t know. But this spacing change they didn’t batter an eye lid and believe me, they are not the suck it up and keep quiet type if something isn’t right.

Waffling now, it’s just that I see it a lot, trying to recreate that 3.x experience, must be frustrating for the developers. In one breath clients calling for innovation, the next asking to go back to 3.x

I’m off to watch a VHS now on my black and white TV 😁

[AtariAge]

I'm not really afraid of change, and I do know people will adapt.  I started with UBB, then switched to phpBB, and finally settled on Invision about 15 years ago.  I have another where I'm also running Invision, but that site is relatively new and started with Invision 4.x.  Since that forum was started from scratch and didn't have legacy posts that wouldn't match the new "return starts a new paragraph" setting, I just used the default.  The huge amount of legacy posts I have on AtariAge is the main reason I went with the old behavior.  If Invision offered a way to convert these old posts so they would display properly with the new paragraph spacing when you hit return, I likely would have gone with it.

For me it's not really trying to go back to 3.x. I generally like the changes and improvements that have been made to 4.x.  Yeah, there are a few things I'm not fond of (the Messenger, for instance), but overall it's a nice upgrade from the 3.x series.  There are certainly a few missing features that I've added back to my forum, and having these does help make the transition easier for my user base. 

I would just like the emails sent out by the forum to match the content they are displaying as it's shown in the forum.  It should be a pretty simple thing to rectify. 

 ..Al

[opentype]

9 hours ago, Bluto said:

Below is the warning box.

It’s still working as intended. Again, the original text has empty lines, which it shouldn’t. Digital typesettings shouldn’t be done like writing with a typewriter. 

 

9 hours ago, Bluto said:

Maybe there is just some CSS that needs to be modified?

Yes, you can change the margin/padding settings for the <p>. 

[Matt]

Hi Al,

That looks like a bug. I'll take a look. 

Thanks.

[AtariAge]

Just now, Matt said:

Hi Al,

That looks like a bug. I'll take a look. 

Thanks.

Thanks, Matt!

[Matt]

Just now, AtariAge said:

Thanks, Matt!

It's interesting because a lot of people upgrade from 3.x to 4 a good few years ago, so it's like watching all those issues come up again. 😂

I'll take a look and if it's a bug, I'll get it fixed for 4.4.5.

[AtariAge]

2 minutes ago, Matt said:

It's interesting because a lot of people upgrade from 3.x to 4 a good few years ago, so it's like watching all those issues come up again. 😂

Hopefully I can get it all out of my system soon!!  🙂

[AtariAge]

On 7/4/2019 at 4:00 AM, Matt said:

I'll take a look and if it's a bug, I'll get it fixed for 4.4.5.

HI @Matt, did this fix make it into 4.4.5?  Just curious, as I have no reason to upgrade to 4.4.5 if not.

 ..Al

PS: Just joking

[AtariAge]

I just upgraded to 4.4.7 and this is still not fixed.  I've even carefully looked through the release notes (for 4.4.5, 4.4.6 and 4.4.7) to see if there's been a mention of this, but no.

My forum sends out thousands of emails per day.  It would really be nice to see this fixed, and I can't imagine it's very difficult to do.

Thank you,

 ..Al