67 thoughts on “um….”

  2. There is an excellent instant-response-to-typing preview pane on a site called … ummm … Uncommon Descent. That’s the only place I’ve seen it, but it’s my favourite. It might even be possible to use as a formatter then clip the HTML to post here, if you’re responding to a UD post anyway and site admin won’t let you actually … y’know … respond!

  4. Keith says:

    I’m not aware of any downside to enabling XML-RPC. Comments, anyone?

    Let’s live dangerously! I’ve ticked the box. Can always un-tick again.

     

  5. Good.  Let’s see if the LaTeX math formulas work:

    \int_0^\infty e^{-\alpha x};dx = \frac{1}{\alpha}

    Did that work? 

    (By gum, it did!)

    I typed too soon. The “edit comment’ box neatly strips off all the backslashes that you need to issue LaTeX commands, so you can enter LaTeX but you can’t edit the comment after posting it, and still have the LaTeX be sensible.

    (Note: I tried to fix, using super admin editing powers. I hope I got that right. Neil Rickert)

  7. Sure want to give me a summary or point to the thread that gives a description of the glitch? I can probably reproducerror rand fix the error on my own server 

  8. I think the problem is with the TinyMCE plugin that promises much in the comment box but just does not deliver!

    Example:

    I’ll bold and italicise by highlighting and clicking the buttons along the top. What about blockquoting
     

    Now I edit to note that blockquote button affects the complete comment, not just the highlighted text!

  10. Personally, I would hesitate before playing with the plugins.  I think that is better left to Elizabeth.

    For one thing, she probably has ways of accessing the site when the WP software has crashed.

  11. Now I edit to note that blockquote button affects the complete comment, not just the highlighted text!

    I’m not quite sure what screen you are looking at. If it is what I think, then blockquote affects the paragraph. The usual way is to start a paragraph, hit blockquote. Then start a new paragraph and hit blockquote again to end the first block quote.

  12. The “edit comment’ box neatly strips off all the backslashes that you need to issue LaTeX commands, so you can enter LaTeX but you can’t edit the comment after posting it, and still have the LaTeX be sensible.

    If you go to the comments page (click on the balloon on the top status bar), there might be a row of options along the bottom of the message as seen on the comments page. It includes “unapprove”, “reply” and “edit”. If you can see that line, then the edit there preserves the latex structure. You probably have to be the author of the thread, in order to see that line (or an administrator can also see it).

    I have not tried email, but I am guessing that if you use the email at TSZ and send to me, then it probably goes to my regular mailbox as well as here. I’ll try to fix latex posts on request or if I see the problem myself.

  14. Starbuck, that would be fantastic.  I am really struggling with the back end.

    I’ll email you.

  15. Here’s another approach to entering your own HTML without getting it crapped up by the comment box editor. 

    Type stuff into the comment box but leave out most of the HTML tags.

    Post the comment once most of the words are there. (This is scary because people will start seeing this transitional form).

    Now click on the edit option at the bottom of your comment. The editor that comes up seems to take most HTML that you might enter. Type in the desired stuff.

    The result is the HTML you want, without all the extra formatting such as SPAN tags that the comment box editor makes.  Let’s see:

    Can I make a simple table with a border?

    No, it stripped off the TABLE, TR. and TD tags. So there are limits to what you can do that way, contrary to what I just said.

  16. I posted a table just moments before the site broke and forced Elizabeth to show herself.

    Coincidence?

  17. I think the site broke because of something at the webhost end.  It happened again a few days ago, and this time I couldn’t fix it by creating a new db, and they said they’d had a problem that they fixed.

    And actually, it wasn’t the reason I showed myself – Alan Fox and Mark Frank had winkled me out, and I was about to post when the site went down!  Horrors!  Took me a while to figure out how to rescue the db.

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