HTML in posts?

[mdevour]

I'm curious... In phpBB, is it possible to enable HTML in messages on a per user basis, if not globally?

The reason I'm asking is it would allow us to make posts with internal navigation, such as a Table of Contents at the beginning. This might lessen the need for a wiki.

Mike D.

[penpen]

I don't know if this is possible, but if you got creative with your threadmaking, you could achieve something similar using only the features already available in the forum. For example,

Create a thread
Reply to the thread five times
Edit the first post so that it contains the TOC, linking to the posts below it
Edit the remaining five posts as necessary with the content in each part listed in the TOC

It'd probably be a little harder to work with than straight HTML, and definitely some prior planning, but it's doable.

[Mez]

It probably is possible, though unlikely to be allowed.

[mdevour]

It probably is possible, though unlikely to be allowed.

I don't think "allowed" would be an issue; it needn't be global... I'm thinking more of a feature that could be requested by those who have a purpose for it, such as an effort I'm helping/dabbling with to do some user guide/how-to type of things that would be improved by some simple internal navigation within a post. It could be a privilege of a usergroup that the admins could assign people to, possibly restricted to certain subforums (e.g., how-to).

Mike D.

[Telemachus]

It probably is possible, though unlikely to be allowed.

I don't think "allowed" would be an issue; it needn't be global...

I think that Mez was answering your request by saying, "It's possible, but we're not likely to do it." So, yeah, I think that "allowed" is an issue. (Note: I'm just guessing, but that's what Mez's answer suggests to me. I could be wrong...)

[refracta]

...if a post is large enough to need navigation then I would think splitting it into multiple posts would be a feasible solution and then you can simply provide navigation links to the appropriate post/section, no html needed...

[jheaton5]

What tags are needed that are not provided in bbcode?

[mdevour]

What tags are needed that are not provided in bbcode?

Anchors, so you could post a link to a location within the post? That's mostly what I was thinking of. Just navigation at a lower level than posts, threads, sub-forums.

Anyway, with respect to my answer to Mez, I want to be sure he and any of the other admins considering my suggestion understand what I'm thinking of.

As Telemachus notes, the job can be done, in a fashion, by making multiple posts, but to keep something like that uncluttered and orderly, you'd still have to sticky and lock the thread(s) and give permissions to its maintainers, i.e., you're still creating a special user group and permissions and assigning people to it. I'm thinking enabling HTML for a specific user group within a specific sub-forum might provide another tool for the building of FAQ or '<whatever> guide' type of things.

Peace,

Mike D.

[mdevour]

I've been doing some digging tonight, and I found exactly what it is I'm looking for. We don't need to enable HTML after all.

It turns out it is possible to do internal navigation and Table of Contents structures within posts using [anchor] and [goto] BBCode tags. An excellent example is the following post at the phpBB support forum:

Custom BBCodes

The setup and method is explained in this thread:

BBCode Anchor

So, depending on how it's configured, we should be able to create an anchor with...

Code: Select all

[anchor="myanchorname"]Visible heading text[/anchor]

...and something like this should produce a visible link to it:

Code: Select all

[goto="myanchorname"]Visible link to my anchor[/goto]

If this can be added to the board configuration and enabled either by user group or forum or both, it would let us build some really nice user guides.

I hope that's feasible.

Mike D.

[oswaldkelso]

It would be very handy to have the suggested BBCode tags for the beginners guide It's growing and looks likely to continue to do so, for a while yet. To be able to offer clear a TOC, with separation of sections, appropriate to groups would be very handy. GNU/Linux newbies need different information to the "Refugees" from other distros. To be able to offer a quick way in to the correct section would be a real bonus.

I'd thought about linking to separate posts, but as different topics may grow depending on what people may submit. Editing these to be in keeping with the overall data would become increasingly difficult. At present any major update have been offered to the forum for review before being updated. This would be nigh impossible for edits on 20 separate posts.

Also the as data changes with Debian updates, many separate posts could become dated. The idea is to keep data relevant to stable. Reduce duplication were possible, and keep it in one manageable place.

[jheaton5]

Have you thought about putting it all in a wiki and providing one link on the board to the wiki?

[oswaldkelso]

Have you thought about putting it all in a wiki and providing one link on the board to the wiki?

No not really. It was intentionally created for this forum. It could be done but not by me I'm not really wiki person and the very simple system that's in place seems to be working well. It's just, as the blank topic sections in the additional information gets filled up, or new ones submitted I can see it getting a rather long scroll.

[Rolling Stone]

What tags are needed that are not provided in bbcode?

Anchors.

This thread continues here BBCode Anchor and Goto tags....