Nao

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #15, on May 22nd, 2013, 10:54 PM »
Quote from Arantor on May 22nd, 2013, 10:40 PM
Hmm, I don't know whether it would be quicker to just hide it in CSS or to strip it on view before parsing (thus saving some tags)
It all depends on whether disabling nested quotes is about saving bandwidth, saving database space, or saving scrolling time, or a combination of all three...

The main advantage of adding a 'view quote' link/button, is that you can possibly get rid of the option.
Quote
I also don't know how you'd do it in CSS if it's a user preference because that means it can't really be in the CSS file at all... unless we add a class at parse time to it (which is currently not supported and would make parsing undoubtedly slower)
Well, it's easy to find nested quotes at parse time, so..?

Arantor

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #16, on May 22nd, 2013, 11:09 PM »
It's not a bandwidth saving particularly. From a preference point of view it's about just only having as much content as you really need to be able to make your point. Bandwidth and DB space savings are a nice by-product if done at save time.

Nested quotes at parse time... yes and no. The current nesting hierarchy is maintained, so we know what tags we are inside and what is still open. However... that's not passed to the tag itself for the validate_func purpose. It is validated against disallow_children and disallow_parent to prevent a tag being inside something it shouldn't be, but that's all. The notion of passing the current parse tree into a tag to validate itself (e.g. allowing a tag to generate different markup if it is inside another) is a bit exotic and will definitely carry a performance penalty passing that in and out of the validate_funcs. Mind you, we could always retain it in a global variable and let a tag pull that in but I'd sort of rather not do that if I can help it.
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Nao

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #17, on May 23rd, 2013, 03:28 PM »
There is already a special codepath in parse_bbc (Subs-BBC::592) that goes through a quote's parent quotes, and alternates their styling.
Meaning, we can reuse this to additionally add a "show quote" class/behavior to the penultimate quote in the stack.
Alternatively, we can also get rid of that code block and instead use CSS to alternate style (I gave it a try, it's an additional 13 gzipped bytes compared to an .alternate > div styling solution, but obviously it also saves us a few HTML bytes, as well as processing time.)
Then we'll be back to square one when it comes to showing "show quote", but whatever... ;)

xrunner

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #18, on May 23rd, 2013, 07:18 PM »
The problem with the quote button is that it selects all of the text in the post (including other nested quotes), which is usually more than is needed. You must think about what you don't need.

Here's another idea - may or may not be easy to implement. What if, when you clicked "quote" for a reply, you got an intermediate window or forced step. Now, with this, you must select what you want for your response. By default nothing is selected - this forces you to select what you need. Sure, a person could simply select all of it anyway, but I think it gives people a chance to really think about what they are selecting and why. It could even have a message -

"Please select ONLY the minimum required for your response"

In other words the way it is now is an opt-out paradigm - you remove what you don't need (and lots of people don't opt-out of anything). It's too easy to click quote and start typing your respons

The new way would be opt-in paradigm - you select what you do need and only then can you add your response

Now that would be super-neat IMHO.

Arantor

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #19, on May 23rd, 2013, 08:00 PM »
If the strip-nested-quotes option is on, it should be stripped at quote time anyway.

Part of the problem is that while I can see where you're coming from, the average user is too lazy to do that.

godboko71

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #20, on May 23rd, 2013, 08:11 PM »
Quote from Arantor on May 23rd, 2013, 08:00 PM
Part of the problem is that while I can see where you're coming from, the average user is too lazy to do that.
Not only that but de-nesting is less readable to me because it loses its scope which nesting provides.

Now if I was replying separately to each post I would quote each post individually so it was readable and understandable. At times it would be nice if multi quote was easier.
Thank you,
Boko

xrunner

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Arantor

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #22, on May 23rd, 2013, 08:23 PM »
While I certainly won't knock anyone for having opinions that conflict, opinions that can be backed up with a justification/support argument are much more valuable. Knowing *why* someone holds the opinion they do can be important.

So, de-nesting does have less readability for some people, and the reason is some scope and context - which can be important in complex debates - can be lost.

For others, I can see there might be an argument that having the extra content does make it hard to focus on what's important and what points need to be refuted. But it seems to me that it swings both ways and is probably down to the user's preference.

So... with that in mind, if a user doesn't want nested quotes, they won't see nested quotes from others and if they quote a post, it should strip the nesting when the quote is generated.

Seems to me that it will solve both sets of concerns.

Regarding multi-quote, I agree that it might be useful to have so I might consider trying to get that working as a plugin.

Nao

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #23, on May 23rd, 2013, 08:42 PM »
Is it worth trying to implement a text mode quote system similar to text emails..?
Then we can easily manipulate multiple quote levels.

xrunner

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #24, on May 23rd, 2013, 08:45 PM »
Quote from Arantor on May 23rd, 2013, 08:23 PM
While I certainly won't knock anyone for having opinions that conflict, opinions that can be backed up with a justification/support argument are much more valuable. Knowing *why* someone holds the opinion they do can be important.
It's partly subjective sure, but I never liked the nesting of quotes. Why? Because people are talking in sequence on a forum. So a sequence is

Person A
Person B
Person A
Person C


and so on.

Nesting what was never nested to begin with doesn't make any sense to me - in other words quoting multiple members should never have been nested at all. Does the forum itself nest each post as they come into a thread? No. It's put in sequence. Then why change that for a quote? Why change the appearance? I don't understand what it adds. Where did that ever come from anyway (I'd like to know just for grins).

Why make it look like a ballooning-out sort of thing when that's not at all what it is. Like I said, it's a sequence structure - not a ballooning-out structure. The way it works now isn't indicative of what's going on (IMHO). And, as I said, before, the larger the nesting gets the harder it is to see who's name goes with what text - that's a fact of the nesting. If you don't nest the quotes to begin with (in a quote) you both represent the original way it appears in the forum, and you see very neatly who's name goes with each quote.

 :)

If you need any evidence of the mess it makes, go to this thread and scroll down - you don't have to read a single word, just look at the visuals of the nesting that people end up putting in the thread.

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,24943.58.html

It's a mess and few people read the mess, they just look at the outside membername to see who they are trying to respond to. I've dealt with this for years and it frustrates the hell out of me. >:(

But we're all here to give ideas and improvements. I realize we can't all be right. :)




Nao

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #25, on May 23rd, 2013, 10:29 PM »
Maybe we could offer the ability to strip quotes if they're more than 2 levels down, i.e. no more than a quote and a child quote are allowed... That way, we maintain context, and avoid pyramids entirely... Is that better, now..?

Anyway, what I offered still holds:
- adding a "show this quote" button for quotes below the first level,
- using e-mail-like quotes in the post area, so that you can easily delete the quotes, without having to look for quote tags, e.g.

> > Quote: Arantor
> > Nice...
>
> Quote: Nao
> Hello, world.

Easy to turn back into quote tags, and nearly as easy to build in the first place, as it only requires a technique similar to what I did with the Mentions popup positioning... (Which, ahem, is still buggy.. Not for the positioning, though...)

- or, simply, showing the automatic quote splitter's description in huuuuge red bold text :P
- or just enabling it by default, and bypassing by shift+enter. (Not hot about that one, personally... I'm still old school, and even though I got the idea for the quote splitter, and even implemented it, I don't use it much... At least, not as much as Pete seems to do... ;))

xrunner

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #26, on May 23rd, 2013, 11:21 PM »
Quote from Nao on May 23rd, 2013, 10:29 PM
Maybe we could offer the ability to strip quotes if they're more than 2 levels down, i.e. no more than a quote and a child quote are allowed... That way, we maintain context, and avoid pyramids entirely... Is that better, now..?
Sure. I'll take anything I can get. :)
Quote
Anyway, what I offered still holds:
- adding a "show this quote" button for quotes below the first level,
- using e-mail-like quotes in the post area, so that you can easily delete the quotes, without having to look for quote tags, e.g.

> > Quote: Arantor
> > Nice...
>
> Quote: Nao
> Hello, world.
See to me that's easier to read and it's sequential and clear. Easy to work with for newbies.

I know for a fact that new forum users (and some old ones that should know by now) don't seem to be able to figure out how to quote properly. I believe that is one reason they just click "quote" and proceed to add to whatever they get, because they don't have a clue how to break it up. I've even written tutorials on it. That's one more problem with nested quotes - it looks like a logic puzzle to a lot of people when viewed in the raw. Hell, I've even run across some that I wanted to break up that were confusing to work on, they had so much going on.


Arantor

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #27, on May 23rd, 2013, 11:25 PM »
Breaking a quote up... press quote, place cursor where you want to break the quote, press shift+Enter, it's just magic. ;)

xrunner

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Nao

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Re: Automagically De-Nesting Quotes
« Reply #29, on May 24th, 2013, 11:54 AM »
Holy cow... That's the automatic quote splitter I've been mentioning since the beginning.

It's also mentioned prominently in the post area.

What else should I do to get people interested in it, if even those who are looking for a quote helper haven't noticed it..?!
Have it enabled by default, and show a popup explaining what it did, and offering to disable it..?!?!

:-/