Loomio
Sun 15 Oct 2017 7:11AM

Editing/responding to a thread

NP Netti Pearson Public Seen by 111

When I first started using Loomio I could type my responses with no problem, but now as I write I get to the bottom of the page and cannot see what it is I am writing: I can scroll to see it but as soon as I start to write it drops to the bottom of the screen. Very frustrating.
I also format some of my posts, using bullet points and paragraphs. This formatting is lost when I save it, though if I try to edit the formatted post is shown. Also very frustrating.

DR

david rayner Sun 15 Oct 2017 8:52AM

loomio posts dont respond to outside formatting....are you using the markup language in the 'formatting' section?

i too have noticed the drop to the bottom when typing but i could still see what i was typing...and it is not doing it now... :thinking:...

NP

Netti Pearson Sun 15 Oct 2017 9:04AM

It's certainly when I copy and paste formatted text from MS Word, yet it shows it to me as originally posted should I try to edit. When I type directly and try to add space lines between paragraphs and tab to indent I lose them once I post.
The drop to the bottom is a pain when using a keyboard, but impossible when using in tablet mode because the on-screen keyboard compounds the problem.

NP

Netti Pearson Sun 15 Oct 2017 9:05AM

I hit the return key in my last post before the sentence starting 'The drop...'. to start a new paragraph. As you can see, it has appended to the previous sentence instead.

CMI

i share the frustration of not being able to see what i'm typing once my post has got quite a few lines long - maybe it's more than 20, i'm just guessing. And ditto re: losing carriage returns to separate paragraphs. odd.

JK

James Kiesel Sun 15 Oct 2017 3:34PM

I'd highly recommend taking a look at https://www.loomio.org/markdown if you're interested in how we format posts. It's using a rendering engine called Markdown, which allows for some quite sophisticated formatting with very simple syntax. Unfortunately, as you describe, there are always a few quirks that folks run into, and we don't have control over how Markdown works.

One of these quirks is the line break thing that you describe; markdown requires two line breaks in order to begin a new paragraph, otherwise it assumes you're still writing in the same paragraph. There is a sneaky trick around this, if you enter the text <br/> (which is an html line break) at the end of a line, markdown will respect it. So,

Line one<br/>
Line two

Will render

Line one
Line two

I'd also recommend checking out the 'preview' feature by clicking the button just to the left of 'post', which will display your post exactly as it will appear after formatting has been applied.

NP

Netti Pearson Sun 15 Oct 2017 10:33PM

Thank you, James. Very helpful - I'll be able to format my posts now.

DN

David Newman Sun 15 Oct 2017 4:30PM

Never, never, never copy and paste from Microsoft Word. It generates all sorts of rubbish HTML. Use a plain text editor, even Notepad, not Word.

CMI

thanks @gdpelican , that's helpful. Now does anyone have a solution for the writing window disappearing off the bottom of the screen whenever one writes a lot? Or is it a ruse to get us to keep posts short? ;-)

JK

James Kiesel Sun 15 Oct 2017 8:04PM

I'm looking into this issue now. Would you be willing to give me some info about the device you're using to compose? (A screenshot would be very helpful as well) Obviously writing a lot on a smaller screen is always going to be a bit of a tough thing to deliver a great experience on, but maybe there's some improvements we can make to our existing forms to improve this a bit.

CMI

Hi there, I'm going to write really a lot, but probably with a load of carriage returns to really bulk out the length of

the post without necessarily having to

make up loads of waffly nonsense just to demonstrate the problem.

Of course, i could perhaps actually write something that's interesting, but that would probably distract from solving the issue at hand.

Well, I guess it would be useful to say that I'm using a laptop with quite a big screen, ok, here's the actual specs, and perhaps cutting and pasting will also replicate Netti's problem of the formatting:
Our ThinkPad T500 specifications: Screen: 15.4" 1680 x 1050 WSXGA+ LCD (Matte finish) Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 (2.80GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache) Memory: 2GB DDR3 RAM.22 Aug 2008
Well, Obviously more information than you need, but problematically, it hasn't had the effect i was hoping for, as the last line is now staying perfectly on the bottom of the screen, even when i do two carriage returns in a row.

Goodness, this is frustrating! I seem to be completely unable to replicate the problem. Did you already solve it?

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