Posted by webchick on May 25, 2009 at 11:21pm
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| Project: | DruBB |
| Component: | Code |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | critical |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | closed (fixed) |
| Issue tags: | DruBB topic/reply post form |
Issue Summary
Need to research and configure a module to add the BBCode formatting bar at the top, as seen in #472590: Meta-issue: Make posting form more like phpBB's.
Comments
#1
http://drupal.org/project/quicktags is a module I used for D5 back before I fell in love with BUEditor. I don't know how hard it would be to update to D6, but might be a good starting point.
Michelle
#2
http://drupal.org/project/bbcode for the actual bbcode parsing. Also, just said on IRC that making a bbcode set of buttons for bueditor is probably easier than porting quicktags.
Michelle
#3
See also this issue: #163034: BBCode in BUEditor (Yes, I realize you have seen the issue, but that was last year ;) )
Michelle
#4
Yeah, last time I did this I actually ended up using http://drupal.org/project/markitup which is a pretty slick little editor. I would ultimately like to use http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg, but last I checked it doesn't work with Markitup's ability to switch on different input formats. I'll have to look into it again.
#5
I've had several issues with bueditor although it looked like the best / only D6 option at the time, haven't tried markitup but it seems like the way forward for this.
#6
Did some investigation into these. markitup hasn't been touched in months, has no official release, and huge swaths of code are just commented out. I also had trouble with a narrow theme because there seems to be no way to keep the textarea from expanding outside the available space. BUEditor seems to be much more up to date and has had recent commits and an official real release.
If there's a reason to prefer MarkItUp, it will need some patches and some love.
#7
Ah. Wasn't talking about the module, really, was more talking about the editor. It's pretty awesome.
I'm also going to bump this to critical, as I'm guessing with 99.999% certainty that this is a release blocker.
#8
BUEditor is a simple helper that doesn't get in your way. I have non technical users on my site and they've managed to figure it out. It can always be switched out later, too, since the markup processing isn't part of the "editor" itself.
Michelle
#9
The main advantage of markitup is it's jQuery, bueditor is just straight javascript afaik.
#10
But markitUp is still not what we want.
#11
bueditor also has support for smileys via a button + popup, IME it was a bit of a pain to set up, but it worked (and nicer than the out of the box fieldset which smileys gives you).
#12
We've got the smileys fixed already, a few css tweaks to make them look better.
Is there anything wrong with using bueditor as a starting point? It works well out of the box with a simple set of buttons. Tweaking the buttons would take some more work.
Or are we proposing creating a custom module for this, and if so, what should it have?
#13
Nah, let's stick with BUEditor, since that seems to be the consensus.
#14
I'm also using BUeditor at several sites at the moment. It is simple and flexible to use for several input formats.
But BUeditor doesn't have a (client side) preview for markups such as bbcode or textile. And you are not able to edit in WYSIWYG. I am not a WYSIWYG fan in general, but most users are used to edit their forum posts in a simple WYSIWYG way. Have a look at VBulletin or Gmail editor for example. They are really limited to a few markups but working in a WYSIWYG mode if you want.
So a client side preview of bbcode would be nice. Editing bbcode in a simple WYSIWYG way would be very nice too. Markitup is able to preview BBcode. When you consider using markitup you may want to check out WYSIWYG API which integrates markitup as an editor.
Until we find a better (perfect) match for this issue i think it is reasonable to stick with BUeditor.
cheers, Ronald
#15
Actually BUEditor *does* have a preview (there's an icon that looks like an eye that does the preview). I've gotten this all working now and will be posting a patch. In IRC we also had a discussion about whether to use BB Code or HTML and I found you can configure two different editors, one for each, then choose between them for the one you want to use on your site. You can choose by role, so one role could use BB Code and another HTML.
I've got this all set up now and have the two editors configured. I'm still working out the best way to put this into the Drubb install profile to set it up automatically.
#16
One other idea for preview is the Live module. You can see it in action on groups.drupal.org. I have it on my site and actually had users complain when I accidentally broke it, so I know it gets used by more than me. :)
Michelle
#17
Does BUeditor preview work with anything else than HTML? IMHO it doesn't use Drupals input filters for rendering but just html.
Ronald
#18
Yes it will handle BBCode if you have the BBCode filter.
I think I figured out a way to get this to configure automatically. I have created two BUEditors, one for HTML and one for BBCode and I'm setting it up to default to the BBCode one for Drubb, but admins can set it to the HTML editor if they prefer.
I will be posting some screenshots and a pre-configured distribution next week that has everything all set up with all the things we've added to Drubb so far, along with a bunch of dummy data. I'm heading out of town for a couple days now, so I won't get it done until I get back.
#19
A couple screenshots with all the tweaking so far to make the smileys fit better, adding BUEditor, hiding the teaser splitter and body label, etc:
Using the 960 Robots theme (which needs a tweak to keep the icon images from getting too big:)
http://skitch.com/karenstevenson/b18yq/a-test-topic-drubb-demo
Using the Garland theme:
http://skitch.com/karenstevenson/b18yw/a-test-topic-drubb-demo
#20
Since smiley module offers a popup for smileys it would be great to see this appearing when clicking a BUeditor button instead of displaying all smileys by default, IMHO. ;-)
Ronald
#21
@rkr: I disagree. phpBB users are used to being able to click directly on the smiley they want without going through an extra step.
But of course if you want to make that tweak on your own copy of DruBB, feel free!
#22
-1 from me for the popup as well. In the 5.x version of smilies, the fieldset is collapsed and that extra click aggravates me every time. One of the things I'm looking forward to in D6. :)
Michelle
#23
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.