Tinderbox Forum

Discourse formatting shortcuts

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#1

When composing a post in Discourse (the software this forum uses), we have access to several formatting commands in a toolbar. There are other formatting commands available. Notice that some commands use square brackets – Discourse honors many <HTML> tags and [BBcode square] tags when the HTML tag is not available.

[u]Underline[/u]
[s]Strikethrough[/s]
[u][s]Underline strikethrough[/s][/u]
This has <sup>superscript</sup>
This has <sub>subscript</sub>
These are <kbd>Keyboard</kbd> letters
Some more <kbd>⌥⌘C</kbd>
This is a [spoiler]spoiler[/spoiler] -- click the blur to see the spoiler text
[email]nowhere@example.com[/email]

Underline
Strikethrough
Underline strikethrough
This has superscript
This has subscript
These are Keyboard letters
Some more ⌥⌘C
This is a spoiler <-- click the blur
nowhere@example.com

If you want to use these frequently, then create some snippets with TextExpander, or Typinator, or KeyboardMaestro.

3 Likes
#2

Nice, @PaulWalters. Thank you!

#3

Adding this

<details>blah blah blah</details>

will yield

blah blah blah

And (thanks to @mwra) square brackets work and we can add a title:

[details="Click to expand"]
blah
blah
blah
[/details]
Click to expand

blah
blah
blah

or click the editing bar

Screenshot%20of%20Safari%20(5-28-19%2C%207-33-38%20AM) option

1 Like
#4

It is worth noting that the forums message editing box’s tools use some slightly different mark-up:

_italic_ -> itatic
**bolded** -> bolded

We could as easily use <i>italic</i> or [i]italic[/i] for italic, or<b>bolded</b> or [b]bolded[/b] for bolded.

The screen render is the same, just the mark-up looks a bit different. The options menu shown above is accessed by clicking the gearwheel icon in the input box toolbar:

Discourse%20formatting%20shortcuts%20-%20Meta%20-%20Tinderbox%20Forum%202019-05-28%2014-42-00

I don’t know why I’d not tried that before!

Edit - added a better screen grab than my first effort. By default the pop-up seems to open with the first item (‘Hide Details’) highlighted making it look like a caption (to close to pop-up). In fact, clicking the ‘Hide Details’ item inserts the hide/reveal code as discussed further above. In fact, the list’s labels aren’t that well chosen. It took a while to see that ‘Blur spoiler’ is actually a means to hide spoilers and not a spoiler for blurs.

1 Like
#5

Thanks to @ComplexPoint for what may be the first use in this forum of the Hide Details disclosure here, which led to shameless appropriation in a message upthread of this one. I looked it up with a search about Discourse and hand coded it before discovering it was already hidden in plain sight under the ‘gear’ icon. Very handy. Wonder about the practical use for "spoilers ," though.

1 Like
#6

I think that’s more for lifestyle fora - discussing favourite TV shows, computer games.