Klunky Quoting

[Andrew Neil]

First, it is nice that the forum does now have some quoting ability at all; that's an improvement - thanks!

But it is rather klunky:

1. It only ever quotes an entire post in full - this is usually not helpful/useful.

A decent quoting feature would allow a part of a post to be selected and quoted.

2. Once you're inside the quote block, it seems impossible to get out of it. 
The 'Clear formatting' button doesn't work.

[Peter BENSCH]

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@Andrew Neil wrote:

First, it is [...] improvement - thanks!

(This is manually inserted within the quote)

1. It only ever quotes an entire post in full - this[...]

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Somehow I don't understand your problem: I can insert quotes, which initially always takes the whole post. Then I can select any part of the quote block with the mouse and delete it with one keystroke, or insert my own text (e.g. here [...]). I can access the edit mode outside the quote block by clicking outside or moving using cursor keys and writing - just as I am doing now.

Can you please explain it a bit more?

Regards
/Peter

[Andrew Neil]

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@Peter BENSCH wrote:

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I can insert quotes, which initially always takes the whole post. Then I can select any part of the quote block Can you please explain it a bit more?

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That's the first problem: you can only insert the entire post - it should be possible to select the part of the previous post that you want to cite, and have only that part inserted as a quote in the reply.

As it stands, editing-out the excess is not so simple when the quote is long and/or contains code blocks and/or contains pictures - the selection is apt to go haywire.

Indeed, the "getting stuck in the quote block" is hard to explain. Try this:

1. Hit 'Reply'
2. Hit the 'Quote' button
3. Now you realise you want to add a comment before the quote 
4. you can't - it's impossible to get your cursor to move before the quote block.

Also this:

1. Hit 'Reply'
2. Hit the 'Quote' button
3. Put your cursor somewhere within the quote
4. Hit Ctrl+Shift+End to select all of the rest of the quote
5. Delete the selected text
6. You are now stuck in the quote block - you can't move the cursor beyond it, and hitting Return will just extend the quote.

[Peter BENSCH]

Ah, interesting... I can confirm it, but I hadn't tried it yet.

@Laurids_PETERSEN @Lina DABASINSKAITE 

[Andrew Neil]

There's another annoying limitation:

You can only quote from the one post you're replying to - you can't bring in quotes from other posts.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Well it's about two decades of expectation for forums that you can simply highlight in the source post and press a button.

Here it's easier just to cut-n-paste than use a tool button, so that'll be the path of least resistance for me.

Still waiting of the @user to function helpfully, still only listing 5 users, no scroll, and now 71K+ users. Continues to scale poorly...

[Andrew Neil]

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@Tesla DeLorean wrote:

two decades of expectation for forums

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Was thinking about this earlier: I've been using forums like this for well over 20 years, we still lack basic functionality/usability like this.

🙄

[waclawek.jan]

This is Khoros, a customer experience engagement platform (mixing/matching some of the buzzwords from their web, I'm really not interested in how exactly they call it). NOT a forum software, so don't expect rudimentary forum features crystalized throughout the three or four decades of technical fora. It's an ajaxoid primarily aimed at a simplistic one or two exchange of a sales person with a customer, designed to "impress", not to be usable. With emphasis on such important features as emoticons.

In HTML view, you can use the "blockquote" tag, if you want, and it surprisingly does what you expect; but I mostly just go for a simple manually inserted ">" (hardly something which would go well with "engagement"). Yeah, can't insert sane manual line break so only one ">" at the beginning of the quote.

JW

[Laurids_PETERSEN]

Hi @Andrew Neil

Thanks for providing this thorough explanation.

As also mentioned in this thread by @waclawek.jan, it is possible to write text above the <blockquote> line in the HTML editor after inserting your quote. Any given text should do, and you can then edit as usual afterwards.

That being said, I have reached out to our support and requested a change in the default quote "behavior." This means that you will have the ability to add text prior to a quote by default.

Once this change is implemented, I will let you know via this thread.

Being able to import quotes from several different posts is a more extensive customization, however it is noted for future rich text editor customizations. 

Best regards,
Laurids

[Andrew Neil]

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@Laurids_PETERSEN wrote:

Hi @Andrew Neil

it is possible to write text above the <blockquote> line in the HTML editor after inserting your quote. 

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This seems to be a great way to get the "Invalid HTML was detected in the post" messages:

https://community.st.com/t5/feedback-forum/what-invalid-html/m-p/639096/highlight/true#M1023

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