Site Update » New BBCode Tags · 11:37pm Jun 8th, 2017
Hey guys,
One of the features in this new update was reader-side paragraph formatting. This helps improve consistency for readers across the site, especially for those of us who can’t stand reading indented text on a computer screen.
However, one thing that wasn’t accounted for was the legitimate need for specific indenting of passages and for certain blocks of text to have no paragraph formatting. Some examples would be lyrics and poetry.
Taking this into account, we have come up with a couple of new tags that remedy this situation which are documented below (copied directly from the bbcode guide)
[indent] Indent
The indent tag can be used to, unsurprisingly, indent portions of your text.
[indent]The indent tag can be used to, unsurprisingly, indent portions of your text.[/indent]It also support levels of indenting
Up to 4 levels deep
[indent=2]It also support levels of indenting[/indent]
[indent=4]Up to 4 levels deep[/indent][pre-line] Pre-line
Preformatted lines keep line breaks as you enter them.
This is useful for things like lyrics or poetry where you don't want indented paragraphs.
This text here would be indented if the reader has indented on,
but because we're in pre-line it remains unindented.
[pre-line]Preformatted lines keep line breaks as you enter them.
This is useful for things like lyrics or poetry where you don't want indented paragraphs.
This text here would be indented if the reader has indented on,
but because we're in pre-line it remains unindented.[/pre-line]These two tags can be happily mixed
which is useful for embedded lyrics
or things like letters.
[indent=2][pre-line]
These two tags can be happily mixed
which is useful for embedded lyrics
or things like letters.[/pre-line][/indent]These tags are for formatting specific passages of text. Not entire stories! The only exception to this is for poetry which may be wrapped entirely in a pre-line tag.
Notes
You should keep in mind that the transition from bbcode to final result is not guaranteed to be stable. We may make changes to how the system works in order to facilitate new functionality or fix problems. When in doubt, it's best to try and keep formatting as simple as possible to minimise the chance of breakage later.
Try to use the tags provided for formatting rather than trying to be clever. Remember, people are viewing your work on all kinds of devices, and that means quirky formatting can lead to a poor experience when viewed on a device you didn't author it on!
If you have any comments or suggestions on this functionality, please let us know below!
This is obviously the appropriate place for this.
Happy birthday! :V
...again.
bagels
are
the
best!
also happy birthday yeah
Happy birthday Knighty!
And thanks for this gift of new functionality, though I feel like you have this birthday gift thing a little backwards.
Ummm, why not just let us use the tab key for indents?
🎂
It’s a birthday.
4564924
This doesn’t work for passages you want indented because when the line wraps, it’d go back to the start of the line again.
Okay... that is all and good, but the quote box is now useless if you use it in any way in your story.
Might have been done to make things look better... bu it was poorly executed, and that is something that looked better beforehand. (looked a LOT better}
Happy B-day!
butts
4564924
Because they want readers to control the indents, and any weird spacing gets wiped out by the site. Tabs get wiped out with it, so you need to use indents instead.
Boop
4564931
The only thing changed about the quote box in stories to my knowledge is the background was removed. Is there something else that’s affecting your usage of it?
Happy birthday!!! Thank you soooooooooooo much for the indent option!!!
4564924
You still can. These indents affect the paragraph of text, not just the first line of a new paragraph. Instead of indenting the first line, it's indenting the whole thing.
that is, if I'm not mistaken
Good to hear. Thank you for bringing back at least a couple of options for author-side formatting. Much appreciated, dude. Though, I kinda wish I could just make my work look however I wanted, like before...
Okay, I need explanation. Previous versions of this site permitted indenting utilizing the TAB key (AKA the sole purpose of said key on the keyboard). Thus I must ask what you will view as a stupid question.
I can understand that this version of FIM FICTION seems to work better on mobile, but it would seem more rational to have a mobile version and a Desktop version separate, much like how both Deviantart and YouTube do.
If you would like even I can get a few Brony coder friends who are in CYBERSECURITY for the USAF to help you as they do this kind of stuff just to pass their time. (Maybe help you, that is up to them)
4564943
Seconding this. Please, knighty?
4564943
4564950
You two are both talking about paragraph formatting. This is passage formatting. Gonna use some lorem ipsum to demonstrate.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis hendrerit dictum urna. Aliquam commodo lorem in tempor fermentum. Praesent auctor eget risus pellentesque lobortis. Etiam congue viverra ipsum tristique posuere. Curabitur id vehicula augue, non semper metus. Nullam nibh risus, molestie ut enim vitae, elementum lacinia neque. Sed eget nibh sed arcu dignissim dictum semper venenatis tortor. Donec enim tellus, vehicula sit amet dictum quis, faucibus non lacus. Nam non vestibulum erat. Nunc eget tellus urna. Fusce at lorem at odio lacinia aliquet quis et lectus. Nullam eu pulvinar augue. Sed sollicitudin sem est, in posuere dui sodales non. In vel venenatis justo, vel porttitor urna. Maecenas elementum ligula est, dapibus commodo dui venenatis vitae. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Curabitur pulvinar sed ipsum vitae pulvinar. Duis eu sem at erat aliquet fringilla a dictum tellus. Donec blandit, magna a hendrerit dictum, magna turpis venenatis risus, quis ornare sem velit placerat magna. Donec elementum metus sed nunc cursus mattis. Donec vel facilisis turpis. Suspendisse nec dapibus diam. Suspendisse condimentum ac turpis a commodo.
4564952
And yet I checked my fictions and my formatting has literally been obliterated, not a single indent when I know I had them (Original documents were stored elsewhere.)
Please explain, technical terms are acceptable.
Let’s test it.
Yep, looks good.
4564958
That’s because paragraphs are formatted according to how the reader desires them from the formatting menu. This post is about tags that let you format specific passages with indents and performatted lines
4564931
The quote box still looks fine enough to me.
4564965
Note, the first line of the paragraph should be indented. Not ever single line, that in and of itself is agrammatical error and creates a wall of text. If you have a book near you look at it’s formatting and get back to me.
I am finished with this.
Knighty, as much as I love this site, and will most likely remain here to read the stories I have come to enjoy. I will probably no longer write here any longer. Still I thank you for the website, I do love it, I just wish you hadn’t messed with the basic functions just to please those using a phone... it just seems illogical to me.
My offer about the coder still stands, he specializes in security work, so I don’t know if he is any good at formatting, but hey, at least it is something.
Neat.
4564996
Please refer to my post here: 4564952
FINALLY A DARK MODE FOR STORIES!!! I’ve been using the Stylish extension to cover that. Any way to add an official site-wide Dark Mode? I doubt I’m alone in wanting one.
Um i was wondering why was the similar stories to the 1 i am reading removed?
4565014
I am also inferring that the paragraph formatting is non functional. it move the text in the edit mode, but when you click on save and then exit out of edit mode there is no change. I even attempted to refresh the page and go into with an entirely new click with a different window. It did not work.
4564996
Indenting the first line of paragraphs is a formatting setting that can be enabled in the formatting menu, alongside various other reading settings.
This was changed to a reading setting as it’s largely a personal preference issue. Indent+single line is one style, double space with no indent is another, valid style. The single line style is more common in printed books, but double spaced paragraphs is also found in printed books. (and is more common online)
Making this a user setting allows users to read in their preferred format on every story, instead of them being stuck with the choice the author made. This is particularly helpful for people who have difficulties distinguishing paragraphs that aren’t double spaced.
4565035
That’s because paragraph formatting is dictated by the reader now. When you’re viewing a chapter, click the format button at the top right and you can choose between double space and indented.
i.imgur.com/yjkBj4Y.png
4565033
It was a semi unintentional removal, but they’re coming back soon on mobile. Apologies for their absence.
4565040
Thank you... I feel stupid now... and perhaps a tad sleep deprived.
But that still leaves my question then, is the formatting option during editing just for the author, cause I noticed the tab still works while writing it down in the story block?
4565014
Forgive me Primarch, I was confused... or to coin a word, confuzzled.
4565051
Those options are for reading. What you choose in there affects nobody else.
4565053
And thus I have my answer. Sorry for disturbing you Primarch.
4565051
We allow newline + tab when writing stories to make it easier for authors who prefer to write in that style, as well as to support older stories that were written in that style.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halle-lu-jah!!!!
Wait! Stop the bus so I can’t indent the first line of my paragraph only?
Thank you so much for making such great updates to the site and handling all these issues in a sane and orderly manner. Fimfiction has always been my favorite website, even though I’m not a brony anymore, because you put so much care into it. It really shows!
derpicdn.net/img/2013/3/1/258887/full.jpg
I still disagree with giving format control to readers over authors…especially if readers are not allowed to pick “as author wrote it” as an option.
The removal of tab/newline by parser and requiring new tags to do it, more importantly, will leave broken all prior instances on the site of variant whitespace formatting-for-effect (or for poetry, lyrics et alia), including large blank spaces for enforcing a pause, analogous to the beat panel in comic strips, the fermata in music (as mentioned by someone in the main update thread, sorry, I forgot your name).
With a third of a million stories (and which aren’t even going to all be uniform per-chapter or anything) even manual validation seems like a too-onerous task, and I’m sure no heuristic would catch all and only what was intended to be simple paragraph prose.
…
The more I think about it, the more being able to select “as author input” as a formatting option as a reader seems like the best solution that doesn’t contravene the spirit of giving the reader paragraph-break control.
(p.s. why is the whitespace-throttling applied to comments?)
Many happy returns and thank you a thousand times over for putting the usernames next to the blog titles again.
As a reader, my preferred mode for viewing is “As the Author Intended”, when will we be getting that as an option, as you seem to desire the reader to decide, that’s what this reader decides.
4565127
I know. Can’t we have both? The way the author wants it to be read (no matter how weird) and a formatted/“fixed’ up version should the reader choose that?
printf(”Hello World!”); printf(”Time to test your site. Permission to try XSS?”);Sweet! Thank you for all your hard work on these changes!
I think this may have mucked up the “[Code ]” tags: all leading white space is stripped and lines are now wrapped.
e.g.:
>>\. /_ )`. / _)`^)`. _.---. _ (_,' \ `^-)"" `.\ | | \ \ / | / \ /.___.'\ (\ (_ < ,"|| \ |`. \`-' \\ () )| )/ |_>|> /_] // /_] /_]4565158
The multiline code tag is
[codeblock], per the documentation. It’s not intended for ASCII art either, use[pre]for that sort of thing.4565103
Agreed; that was one of the few changes I really hated. Good to know that it was only temporary (probably a bug).
derpicdn.net/img/2013/9/21/432101/large.jpg
I would like to report a bug. Maybe.No bug, just a misunderstanding of mine on how these new tags work with one another.
Thanks, Knighty and Xaquseg!
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/39306/1/the-conquering-of-love/chapter-0---the-dawn-of-nightmares
I have indented the first little bit with the song lyrics.
If you tell client-side formatting to do “indent” or “both” it indents the first line of it, and then double-indents the next lines all the way until the
[/indent]tag.4565186
You need to use
[pre-line]there too otherwise it’ll just get marked up like normal paragraphs (so in this case it’s 4 indented paragraphs where the first isn’t because it’s the first in a block).Awesome! There were a few blocks of text that were ruined by the update that I can fix now. Huzzahs!
4565186
You need
[pre-line]inside your[indent]as well.