Implement "Quote" button

It may be easiest to work this into nodecomment.module as an option.

One thing Quote doesn't currently handle is multi quoting where you can click the button on several posts and have them all individually quoted in the same reply.

Michelle

One annoyance is that both bbcode.module and quote.module provide a quote filter. quote.module's is a bit nicer iirc but then you get into ordering issues with filters since bbcode's is lumped in with everything else.

Upping status.

If BBCode gets dropped, then quote should work fine. I use it with filtered html and bueditor and no issues.

Michelle

A lot of people are familiar with BBCode from years of forum-hopping, but barely know what a corner-bracket is, let alone HTML.

Grayside: Do you think it would matter if they had their familiar toolbar to press B and Link? We've been wavering back and forth on this for the past few days.

The current module leaves your content in a bit of a state because it can accept *either* BBCode *or* HTML, by design. It has to do this, because you might be installing the module on an existing site where BBCode is not installed. And core doesn't allow for per-content type input formats, so we can't make it a forum-only thing either. And even if we could, how fricking confusing would that be as a user to have to use [b] in one part of the site and <strong> in another?

I can't speak for all users but the ones on my forum are mostly non technical and they haven't been confused by the HTML. If I was asking them to write it from scratch, they would be but, then, they probably couldn't write bbcode from scratch, either. That's why they have buttons to push. :)

Michelle

A lot of users on my site have been using bbcode for years, and at least some type it rather than using the toolbar.

There's also the [quote=catch][/quote] thing which quote module does - not sure how you'd re-implement that in HTML without it looking really complex (or at least bbcode and quote modules both generate some pretty ugly quote HTML).

I have that from the quote module as well. It's a seperate filter and doesn't require you to have bbcode installed. Personally, I'd rather have the quote module generate a blockquote with a strong around the name but it was never important enough to me to hack the module.

Michelle

Basic users push the buttons. (And I imagine get confused by the List button, I've never seen a good implementation.) When they need to go back and make changes, their confusion with the syntax introduces errors.

More advanced users, especially the long-winded ones that produce the most content, compose their text in-line, and will learn BBCode, HTML, Markdown, or whatever you put in front of them to ease their composition. Of the dozen or so people I've ever asked, HTML was considered one of the most frustrating formats.

The current status quo is for forums to use BBCode, and the rest of a site not to use it. That goes back to the problem druBB is trying to solve, but it's actually an added-value feature to unify markup. My own expectation of a forum is to see BBCode- when I know a post is going to be placed into a forum, I usually reach for that syntax.

I think it's important that if BBCode is not bundled with druBB, the steps to make it available should be clearly outlined. And the easier the better. Something along the lines of a Feature perhaps. Many forum administrators are not the best software administrators, and I can easily imagine an uphill battle to get BBCode discouraging them quickly.

And as long as I'm rambling, SMF is another good forum system along the same lines as phpBB.

OK, this has been added. I didn't worry about trying to quote multiple items, that seems out of scope for getting the basic functionality working. As the the issue about conflicts between quote and bbcode, I fixed that by making sure quote is ordered ahead of bbcode so quote's handling takes precedence. I added a bunch of code to the Drubb install to set up the filters and order them, and to make sure we allow blockquote, div, and img tags. And I did a theme override because the quote module stupidly uses div instead of blockquote, so you lose the benefit of any quote mark gifs that the theme might provide.

I tested the current state of the Drubb install by trying a fresh install on an empty database to make sure all the right things were set up and configured and I'm pretty sure they are.

You enabled img? You're going to bring the wrath of the security team down on your head. ;)

Out of scope, but a possible long term goal would be to have a user setting where they could choose HTML/BBCode (provided the site allows both) and use an editor to match. You can have both BBCode and HTML filters at the same time so the site wouldn't care. It would just be a matter of what editor to show the user. Could even throw a WYSIWYG in there as an option once the switching infrastructure was in place. I'm not offering to code it so the idea may die right here. If anyone thinks it has merit, I can always file a new issue for it since it's way OOS.

Michelle

We are already allowing adding an image in BUEditor, and we're allowing file uploads, so I think we need to allow img.

The current code provides two BUEditors, one for HTML and one for BBCode, you just have to choose which to use for which roles. And BUEditor has a preview (yeah that is not quite wysiwyg, but close).

So *most* of what you want is here now.

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.