Proposal: Disable the [font] tag

[WanderingKnight]

I'd love to catapult the person that created such a script out of this planet.

[escimo]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

I'd love to catapult the person that created such a script out of this planet.

Amen to that, my eyes hurt somewhat seriously...

[Daniel E.]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

I can't even believe they even took the time to actually do that (one letter at a time, too!).

Lol, I knew somebody was gonna bring that up here.

First time I see someone posting like this, btw.

[TheFluff]

it is indeed a pox upon society

[relentlessflame]

Welcome to two months ago, I know, but speaking strictly as a fellow forum participant, if this were put to a vote, I would definitely support the banning of font changes in posts. My reasons are, of course, completely selfish: 1) I personally think it looks ugly and tacky, and 2) it makes me think the writer is just trying to draw attention to themselves, which always rubs me in the wrong way. (Note: I'm not saying that is the case, I'm saying it makes me think that's the case.) And as others have said, I struggle to think of a good, useful reason to change fonts in a post. What's the point? If it weren't there, would anyone actually be asking for it? It seems like a sort of "me too" feature -- like "well, we can do it, and somebody might think it's cool, so why not?"

(Actually, the only time I could see a font change being useful would be to switch to a fixed-width font for code, but we already have a code tag!)

But then again, I suppose you should consider that I'm the sort of person who doesn't want to get an avatar or a signature out of fear of being recognized for something other than the words I write, and for the longest while didn't write notes in anything other than Notepad (because formatting is annoying and gets in the way of thinking!). So maybe I'm a bit of an extreme case...

[NoSanninWa]

Agreed. I'm fond of my signature and avatars and the fact that they make me recognizable and I still agree.

I have one other problem with the font tag. They make it harder to quote someone's post since you'll often only want to quote the beginning or end and then you'll miss one of the tags and the whole thing ends up looking ugly... It's just a pain.

However there is a legacy issue to consider. What happens when we disable the font tag on posts that have already been made? I hope that NightWish or someone can elucidate upon our options. If we were simply to disable the tag we'd have all these ugly tag markers suddenly appear in the middle of people's posts. Perhaps we can have the font tag be accepted, but do nothing so that the tag won't appear, but the font will remain standard. Would it be possible to leave older posts as they are, but for the forum software to reject any new posts that attempt to use a font tag?

[felix]

Refer to: http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=72998

The code can be integrated directly into the forum as a non-destructive solution.

But to answer your question I believe the font tag is purged upon viewing, I will go check...

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

However there is a legacy issue to consider. What happens when we disable the font tag on posts that have already been made? I hope that NightWish or someone can elucidate upon our options. If we were simply to disable the tag we'd have all these ugly tag markers suddenly appear in the middle of people's posts. Perhaps we can have the font tag be accepted, but do nothing so that the tag won't appear, but the font will remain standard. Would it be possible to leave older posts as they are, but for the forum software to reject any new posts that attempt to use a font tag?

That's a good question. There is a vBulletin Option called "Allow Font BB Code", which would seem to have the desired effect, but we'd have to test it out to see what the impact would be on legacy code. If it's well-programmed, I would expect the impact should be that all existing uses of the font tag would simply be ignored. Because tokens are processed when rendered by vBulletin (in other words, they're stored in the database in tag format), I guess the way to do the "legacy support" option would be to strip out the font tags on their way into the database (so that no new posts could use the font tag), but that seems slightly annoying....

But yeah, maybe NightWish will have some good suggestions!

Cats, the CSS method is okay, but I think a server-side solution would be even more elegant.

[felix]

Ok found it. It is a global switch maning nobody will use the disabled tags anymore. Old posts that are tagged and such will stay as they are but take care...

• if you edit a old post when you save it again the code will no longer be parsed. I suspect vbulletin actually just uses bbcode as a means of safe formatting injection; with the database version of your posts actually being html to save on processing time.
  
  
• in new posts you will not be able to use the tags anymore.

[NoSanninWa]

Wonderful! That would be ideal if we decide to disable the font tag.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Cats

I suspect vbulletin actually just uses bbcode as a means of safe formatting injection; with the database version of your posts actually being html to save on processing time..

Actually, I checked on this specifically, and it seems that it does in fact keep them as BB Code tags in the database, although it does assign each tag pair a unique number (probably to speed up the regex processing? Not sure...) So if it does in fact behave in the way you describe, I assume that means that it simply disallows the font tag on database entry (so that no future posts will include that tag). That implementation also makes sense (although what would you do if you wanted to clean up old uses of the font tag, then?).

Anyway, that's only what a brief look at the code/db revealed. Testing and further investigation will surely reveal more.

[felix]

Yea I checked it as well, I was wondering about the process of editing posts. I was thinking they might have used a simple mark on the html code and then converted back to bbcode, but I guess the just keeping bbcode in the database and converting every time from bbcode was seen (likely tested) as the more efficient solution.

I should have known it would be like this since if you insert a custom bbcode that does not exist but it gets added later it will be processed for your old post predating the code as well.

Sorry my mistake, although I was going to come here and take it back anyway, since I have not yet accounted for caching, in other words I'm not sure if the results I've seen are not just because the old settings version is still in cache. This will require more extensive testing...

[NightWish]

I can tell you that what Cats says will remain true for a sub-set of the recent posts* for an as yet indeterminate period of time.

The posts are stored in BB Code. When you view them in a given style, they are semi-compiled as HTML for that style and cached against a post/style index. The semi-compiled version does not include in-line images. This semi-compiled version has all the images replaced with either A or IMG tags, depending on viewing user settings, and is then used to build the page. The cache does not hold all of the posts all of the time, they expire (though I am not sure of the caching logic, so I don't know if it is just time or use or something else). The cache is flushed for a given post when it is edited.

So, what Cats says will be true for cached posts. Non-cached posts will be compiled and cached on first viewing, this will pick up the change in FONT settings and result in ugly tags in-line.

I believe a clean disabling the font tag would require one of the following:

• Bulk migration of old posts
• User interface restriction and a custom filter to enforce on posted/edited content (extending the BB Code restrictions)
• Hi-jack the font tag's meaning (Thanks NoSanninWa )
• Client side CSS patch (as Cats describes, but possibly per-user driven at a template level)

Ordered by decreasing complexity, time, and server load.

---

* If you want to know exactly how many, the cache table's cardinality is currently around 600,000

[NoSanninWa]

In other words, that plan is absolutely useless since it will soon turn to dust and ugly meaningless font tags. Entropy is such an ugly master.

So, how about changing the font tag to mean no formatting change? That should simply strip the font formatting from old posts while still leaving the tags invisible. That can be done, right?

[felix]

The font tags are integrated into the system, it will imply damage as would editing the quote tags. A extention/plugin may be imposible to create.

But there is still the css solution if you really need to...

Ahh yes I forgot you do have control over which fonts and the maximum font size which a user can select, but then what would a invalid value do? old posts using the larger font then allowed will be downgraded to the maximum allowed. Font will revert to normal as well.

[NightWish]

It is also possible to restrict the available/accepted font options. I don't yet know (and don't have time to find out right now) if this is a user interface only setting or if it actually stops you using fonts that are not listed.

[Kakashi]

Is it possible to limit font size as well? I don't see the point in anything above 3 or 4. Anything larger is usually used to patronize people.

[SeedFreedom]

Personally, i don't use Font tags, and i do agree that sometimes they can be very annoying, but do we really need to go and ban all font tags? If something about the way a person post annoys you, just add them to your ignore list, no harm no foul. I still see multiple reasons for colors and size modifiers besides simple annoyance though. Such as important notices at the beginning of a thread.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by SeedFreedom

Personally, i don't use Font tags, and i do agree that sometimes they can be very annoying, but do we really need to go and ban all font tags? If something about the way a person post annoys you, just add them to your ignore list, no harm no foul. I still see multiple reasons for colors and size modifiers besides simple annoyance though. Such as important notices at the beginning of a thread.

Don't bother. I spent two pages in this thread arguing about the exact same thing. I even created an example of how you don't need special fonts or colors to be completely annoying, but it didn't matter.

People aren't going to rest until every feature on this board is either removable or turned into some type of bannable offense. People could be diplomatic and work with the people they find issue with, but they'd rather rail against the people for their practices and go over their heads by trying to change it from the top.

[SeedFreedom]

Originally Posted by Solace

Don't bother. I spent two pages in this thread arguing about the exact same thing. I even created an example of how you don't need special fonts or colors to be completely annoying, but it didn't matter.

People aren't going to rest until every feature on this board is either removable or turned into some type of bannable offense. People could be diplomatic and work with the people they find issue with, but they'd rather rail against the people for their practices and go over their heads by trying to change it from the top.

And that is really really depressing. I REALLY hope the mods do reconsider before deciding to ban a feature because of a few people who are too lazy to just click "add to ignore list" and ruin it for everyone else.

All well, cant blame a guy for tying, and trying and trying.

Edit: ya, i posted this around 10 mins ago, and the more i think about it the more upset i get.