source formatting (line breaks) in TinyMCE-generated HTML

By xjm on 25 Aug 2006 at 14:30 UTC

I'm testing TinyMCE as an option for those of my users who are intimidated by HTML. So far it's working well, except for one thing: the HTML generated by TinyMCE is all on one line. Now, this has no effect on what the site looks like, but it does have an effect on the site admin (me) who might want to edit the HTML after the user has submitted it. E.g., TinyMCE makes this:

<h3>My favorite foods</h3><ul><li>tomatoes</li><li>chocolate</li><li>strawberries</li></ul>

I want it to make this:

<h3>My favorite foods</h3>
<ul>
<li>tomatoes</li>
<li>chocolate</li>
<li>strawberries</li>
</ul>

I tried the HTML Tidy module; however this doesn't quite do what I'm looking for--while it provides a *filter* that is applied when the node content is served, it doesn't actually do anything to the user's original input. What I'm looking for is something I can use to automatically make the source of the node legible for advanced users.

(Note: this is not a Filtered HTML issue as I've seen in many other posts. I don't want or care about <p> tags being inserted, I just want the \n character added in the appropriate places to the actual submission. HTML Tidy does this when the node is accessed (along with indentation), but does not do anything for the actual source I'm editing).

Anyone have any suggestions as to how I could accomplish this? Short of writing my own parser to stick in those line breaks.

Comments

or configure TinyMCE?

xjm

she/her

English

commented 25 August 2006 at 18:23

Digging through the TinyMCE docs, I found the remove_linebreaks config option:
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/tinymce/docs/option_remove_linebreaks.html

Anyone have any ideas as to how I might go about getting Drupal to set this config option for TinyMCE? I have no idea whether it will do the trick, but it seems worth a shot.

remove_linebreaks is not a complete solution

xjm

she/her

English

commented 26 August 2006 at 17:40

Well, adding remove_linebreaks as a configuration option in tinymce.module helps halfway, in that it does not eat the linebreaks from existing HTML documents. However, new nodes created with TinyMCE still do not have any line breaks in the source (nor does content added to existing nodes).

Back to the drawing board. Any suggestions as to how I can control line breaks in the TinyMCE output? Ideally, a line break would be added to the TinyMCE-generated HTML each time the user presses enter in the TinyMCE editor box. A less perfect option that would still get the job done would be some sort of formatting cleanup utility (non-filter) that would automatically add linebreaks in good places (like HTML Tidy does), at least after the closing tags of block elements and so forth.

Solution

xjm

she/her

English

commented 26 August 2006 at 18:53

I found the solution on the TinyMCE forums:
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=2878

To implement these settings, I added the following two snippets to tinymce.module

In tinymce_config() which begins on line 480:

  $init['remove_linebreaks'] = $settings['remove_linebreaks'] ? $settings['remove_linebreaks'] : 'true';
  $init['apply_source_formatting'] = $settings['apply_source_formatting'] ? $settings['apply_source_formatting'] : 'true';

In tinymce_profile_form() (around line 625):

  $form['output']['remove_linebreaks'] = array(
    '#type' => 'select',
    '#title' => t('Remove Linebreaks'),
    '#default_value' => $edit->settings['remove_linebreaks'],
    '#options' => array('true' => 'true', 'false' => 'false'),
    '#description' => t('Set this option to false to prevent TinyMCE from removing linebreaks from existing nodes.  True avoids conflicts with some filters.')
  );

  $form['output']['apply_source_formatting'] = array(
    '#type' => 'select',
    '#title' => t('Apply Source Formatting'),
    '#default_value' => $edit->settings['apply_source_formatting'],
    '#options' => array('true' => 'true', 'false' => 'false'),
    '#description' => t('This option makes TinyMCE apply source formatting.  Set this to true for a cleaner HTML source.  Choose false to avoid conflicts with some filters.')
  );

My feature request:
http://drupal.org/node/80851