Dear God, PLEASE quit "correcting" what we type

Bl3u·9/25/2013, 1:46:07 AM·4 votes·1,093 views

When you want to create a newline you shouldn't have to hit enter twice
Auto indenting numbered and bulleted lists is kind of wonky (would rather be able to indent on my own accord)
Filtering multiple space characters as a single space prevents ASCII art :(
Filtering multiple underscore characters as a single underscore does the same as #3

There are, i'm sure, many other auto-parse rules that you guys set up. It would be nice if these could be removed/toggled off. They prevent you from being able to define exactly how you want your post to look. It is aggravating when you are trying to type up a long post and what you type gets changed because of some crappy parsing rules. Sometimes you need to make diagrams with ASCII art, or you want to flavor your post with an explicit format. This is much harder with these parsing rules (especially if you don't know exactly how they work)

18 Comments

Pryotra9/25/2013, 2:09:16 AM3 votes

A new line can be acheived through 2 spaces, then 1 enter.
Like so

This is 2 enters, so you can see the difference. Maybe have a lines worth of space to me.

Also, the * character starts bulleted lists.

so why does this dash do so as well?

this one used a star, there shouldn't be 2 ways to do the same thing

Multiple ______ ______ ______ ______ shouldn't be condensed, but at the same time, _ why does an underscore wrap around a sentence do this?_ and a double underscore wrap do this? a star wrap did this, while a double star wrap did this

Honestly, I think the problem is too many rules doing the same thing. Perhaps they should cut down on double uses

I don't really like mark down either, but once you learn it it is actually a bit more fluid to type and fromat. That said, they should have a toolbar to reduce the burden of knowledge that it requires. I believe their next fix will address this.

Zielmann9/25/2013, 1:59:56 AM1 votes

It's a little different, but you get used to it. Plus, there's a preview that shows up live as you type so you can make sure you got it right.

I think once you learn it and get to where you don't have to think twice, it'll be fairly easy to format things exactly how you want them. I'm used to the bbcode typically used on forums. I'm used to typing [i][/i]. But the single and double asterisk notation is noticeably faster/easier to use.

I'm also already used to double-tapping enter for new lines thanks to all the emails I write for work.

StarMoose9/25/2013, 6:00:00 AM1 votes

I hate when god corrects what I type too, but you shouldn't need to send him a letter about it...