[Discussion]Subscript, superscript, and strikethrough

[RedImperator]

This came up a while back in the HoC, but it somehow never made it onto the Senate's radar, so I'm bringing it up now: A number of users have asked to have strikethrough implemented. Apparently, adding it to the board is dead simple. This page has the instructions. As you can see, it can be done without modding the software or monkeying with the code. I don't see any harm in having it, and I can actually see a few non-comedy applications (such as marking up a draft in Fanfics or the Writer's Guild).

Also, it is apparently just as easy to add superscript and subscript, both of which would be very helpful, in SLAM especially. All in all, implementing all three text options would be fast and easy, has broad popular support and many potentially useful applications, and has no drawbacks.

Your thoughts?

[Stark]

This has come up before, and there haven't been any objections; no clarification was provided with regard to who would have to implement it or even if Mike can be assed. I obviously support it, and hopefully it'll get somewhere this time. It's a shame it didn't come up around the php3 move when many other, similar changes were implemented.

[Coyote]

I like the ideas; consider this a "second" if needed.

[RedImperator]

This has come up before, and there haven't been any objections; no clarification was provided with regard to who would have to implement it or even if Mike can be assed. I obviously support it, and hopefully it'll get somewhere this time. It's a shame it didn't come up around the php3 move when many other, similar changes were implemented.

As I understand it, any admin could implement it. It doesn't have to be done at the server end.

[Kuja]

You actually beat me to it, Red. I was re-reading some of the old threads in the Senate and the House the other night after I was seeing that thing in people's sigs and I thought "wait, didn't we talk about that?"

So, I was turning it over in my head how to make a post to bring it back up and you went ahead and did it for me. Love you, you bastard.

But yes, joking aside, I would see this as a positive addition to the board and I'm all for it.

[Imperial Overlord]

I am in favor of it.

[Thanas]

Quick question - has anyone ever contacted an admin about this?

[RedImperator]

Quick question - has anyone ever contacted an admin about this?

I take it from the deafening silence nobody has.

[Thanas]

*Snicker* So instead of someone taking the easiest way out of this there has to be weeks and weeks of people waiting for the options to be implemented? Instead we have more discussion?

For the record, I am going to contact one admin right now so that this can be resolved.

[AdmiralKanos]

Hmmm, new codes, eh?

OK, let's check try this out.

---

I just drank around 355 cm3 of root beer, since plain H2O is too boring.

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Cool?

[Darth Wong]

Now if there were only a practical way to depict equations on a BBcode forum. Superscript and subscript help, but what's really needed is a way to show fractions. Mathematical symbols would be nice too, but the lack of fractions is what makes even a fairly simple equation look really confusing onscreen.

[Coyote]

You da man, DW! [/Bachmann]

[AdmiralKanos]

Hmmm, as long as we're talking about math, let's try this:

y=√x+3

[AdmiralKanos]

Damn, it only looks right on Firefox. I wonder if it's worth keeping.

[RedImperator]

*Snicker* So instead of someone taking the easiest way out of this there has to be weeks and weeks of people waiting for the options to be implemented? Instead we have more discussion?

That's how we roll.

[CmdrWilkens]

Damn, it only looks right on Firefox. I wonder if it's worth keeping.

I don't know how often we present square roots but its certainly neat enough I'd say go with it.

[Thanas]

I suspect the vast majority of users is using Firefox anyway.

[AdmiralKanos]

Just added the ability to input HTML special characters (the type that are coded in HTML with an ampersand and a semicolon (for example, &#deg; in HTML becomes °, ie- the degree symbol). They normally don't work in BBcode forums because the ampersand is automatically converted into the HTML entity &, which is why this BBcode is necessary in order to display them. For example:

÷ = divide
© = copy
µ = micro
· = middot
¶ = para
± = plusmn
€ = euro
£ = pound
® = reg
§ = sect
™ = trade
“ = ldquo
” = rdquo
← = larr
↑ = uarr
→ = rarr
↓ = darr
° = deg
² = sup2
³ = sup3
½ = frac12
¼ = frac14
¾ = frac34
Ø = Oslash
α = alpha
β = beta
Δ = Delta
ζ = zeta
θ = theta
π = pi
ρ = rho
Σ = Sigma
σ = sigma
Ω = Omega
ω = omega

It should also work for unicodes:
∞ = #8734
∫ = #8747
∴ = #8756
∼ = #8764
≅ = #8733
≠ = #8800
⨯ = #10799
⅓ = #8531
⅔ = #8532
⅕ = #8533
⅖ = #8534
⅗ = #8535
⅘ = #8536
⅙ = #8537
⅚ = #8538
⅛ = #8539
⅜ = #8540
⅝ = #8541
⅞ = #8542

So now, we can write E=½mv² and f(x)=∫(x² - cos(x)) dx without having to use superscripts and subscripts or copy and pasting symbols from a word processor and hoping they work on everyones' browsers. Of course, this doesn't work for more complicated situations, so you still need the superscripts and subscripts for that.

[Surlethe]

Oh, that's beautiful. I wonder if it would be easy to write a python module to render simple LaTeX into embedded images.

[phongn]

Oh, that's beautiful. I wonder if it would be easy to write a python module to render simple LaTeX into embedded images.

You rang?

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I find the use of embedded images to be a necessary but unfortunate kludge. I would vastly prefer a more elegant form of markup where the equation is actually coded as text instead of simply being turned into an image. Unfortunately, HTML is just horrendous at equations (ironic since it was originally invented by academic and scientific types rather than the mass-media types who now rely so heavily on it).

[phongn]

Personally, I find the use of embedded images to be a necessary but unfortunate kludge. I would vastly prefer a more elegant form of markup where the equation is actually coded as text instead of simply being turned into an image. Unfortunately, HTML is just horrendous at equations (ironic since it was originally invented by academic and scientific types rather than the mass-media types who now rely so heavily on it).

There is a markup called MathML but it isn't well-supported right now. However, W3C is working on using CSS to overcome the lack of native support and there are some early testbeds available.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yaaa, the thread has outgeeked the bots!!!

too much talk about actual coding, has caused the bots to loose interest in this thread.

[Kuroneko]

Suggestion: it would be slightly less troublesome if superscript bbcodes were simply sup ... /sup instead of super ... /super. For compatibility with prior posts, perhaps this can be an addition rather than a replacement of an existing code.

Test: Tαβ = (ρ+p/c²)uαuβ + pgαβ.

--- Addendum:

Actually, changing it wouldn't affect posts already made at all. Since the board software only parses for BBCode at the time of posting, not afterwards.

So changing superscript from to [sup] would not affect existing posts, only posts made or edited after the change was implemented.

I figured this out after strikethrough was implemented, posts that used the strikethrough tag before the change was rolled out were unchanged until the post was edited.

Huh. Does this mean that phpBB actually keeps two copies of each post--a pre-processed and post-processed one? I don't think it reverse-parses it when the post is about to be edited, because it seems to keep the difference between, say, and (which have the same effect on the text).