[pre] or [code] text, or the similar?

[rknop]

Many messageboards have a "pre" or "code" tag that allows the stuff in between to be formatted in a monospace font, with spacing intact. (I.e., spaces at the beginning of the line stay, spaces between words are not contracted down to one.)

Is there anything like that here? The "How to format your text" Show button at the bottom when composing doesn't include anything like that.

If there isn't something like that... how hard would it be to add it? I've got tools that print out nicely ASCII-formatted stat blocks and such, but they end up looking like a mess when posted to message board threads.

[Thornborn]

rknop wrote:

Many messageboards have a "pre" or "code" tag that allows the stuff in between to be formatted in a monospace font, with spacing intact. (I.e., spaces at the beginning of the line stay, spaces between words are not contracted down to one.)

Is there anything like that here? The "How to format your text" Show button at the bottom when composing doesn't include anything like that.

If there isn't something like that... how hard would it be to add it? I've got tools that print out nicely ASCII-formatted stat blocks and such, but they end up looking like a mess when posted to message board threads.

The editor uses a monospace font. If you click 'reply' to a message, you can see it in monospace....

iiiii iiiii
MMMMM MMMMM

There's some text to try with. Not the solution you asked for, I know. But a glimpse of nirvana.

[Oladon]

Hi rknop, Oladon here. I'm the developer of the Paizo Forum Tools browser extension.

The extension adds a [code] tag to the forums, but without the pre-formatted whitespace style. It would be very trivial to add, and I've received a few "promises" to submit PRs for it, but so far none have materialized, and I've personally been extremely busy with other things and haven't had the time to add it.

With that said, if someone wants to submit a (tested) PR to add that style to [code] blocks, please do! Otherwise, this message can just serve to let you know that it's on my roadmap for the extension once I've got some time to work on it.

[rknop]

I haven't heard of this before, but -- based on the name, I'm guessing it's something that must be installed in the browser before you will see the extended formats. Which means that nobody else will see the extended formats if they don't have the browser extension installed.

This sounds like a workaround given a bad situation... but just that, a workaround.

Is there a way in the forums so that it will work for anybody who happens to read the text? Is there any hope that we could get that put into the core forums?

[Oladon]

Yes, as a browser extension it's something you have to install to use.

Here's one proposed work-around that will work for most people without a browser extension.

As far as getting this functionality into the forums themselves, it's unlikely. Paizo is (understandably) not very focused on forum improvements like that right now.

[Euan]

Oladon, I wish that were not the case. I disagree that Paizo should be so unfocused on forum development.

I've been gaming since the early seventies, and now all my gaming is done on the forums. I already use other tools to make that gaming work (for maps, files, even rules) and pay for the benefits.

I love Paizo, and buy every PDF for the sources I use. But their forum support is poor, and they have made it clear it is not a priority for them by their actions.

I think that's short-sighted, and it will cost them customers as we find more ways to spend our limited budgets elsewhere.

I would gladly pay for a place to play. I did when I played PFS - I plaid $5 a week to game, plus the cost of my books, etc. I would pay for a digital space as well. I know this stuff costs money to build and maintain.

We live in a digital age, and Paizo is losing ground with each passing year of few or no updates to their antiquated gaming forum. I know they're working 'behind the scenes' and I've been told 'it is a priority', but when you look at what's been actually accomplished, it's pretty lean.

[Painlord]

It would be nice to get new tools or any upgrade to Online Campaigns would be keen. I believe the format has grown in popularity (but have no data to believe that) and think it would grow more with a bit of love.

[rknop]

As a note -- we have a PFS forum at Myth-Weavers, which does have much better forum support for this kind of thing than the Paizo forums do. There aren't as many players there as there are here, of course. However, not only do you have the "code" tag, you can do inline images, you can color your text, you can format your statblocks. And, there's a character sheet there that's fairly nice, and that can automatically stick statblocks into your posts.

(One thing that's missing is that we don't make new forum aliases for every character.)

I do play in some campaigns here, though, and it'd be awfully nice just to have that one change, the ability to post formatted ascii....