Automatically disable auto-formatting in certain HTML tags

[rho]

Title:
Automatically disable auto-formatting in certain HTML tags

Area:
entries, markup, html cleaner

Summary:
If an entry or comment contains tags such as <ul>, <ol>, <dl>, <table>, or <pre> any text within those tags should automatically have auto-formatting turned off, as if the tag was surrounded by <raw-code>.

Description:
Auto-formatting is massively useful most of the time, since it lets people write in paragraphs without having to worry about adding in HTML line breaks.

Often, though, if people are putting lists or tables into their entry -- either coded manually or copied from elsewhere -- they won't disable auto-formatting either because they forget or because they don't know how. This often results in extra line breaks where they aren't wanted, resulting in ugly and ungainly entries or comments.

It would be nice if auto-formatting could automatically be turned off in tags such as <ul>, <ol>, <dl>, <table>, and <pre> to stop this from happening.

The disadvantage to this is that if people are writing lists/tables and actually want additional linebreaks, they'll have to insert them manually. I think this is much rarer than people not wanting the linebreaks there, though, and also think that it's a problem that's more likely to be encountered by people who are more familiar with HTML in the first place.

Poll #1145 Automatically disable auto-formatting in certain HTML tags

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
13 (31.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.4%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
21 (50.0%)

(I have no opinion)
5 (11.9%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (4.8%)

Comments

[zvi]

I would add blockquote to this list.

[owl]

Agree.

[ratcreature]

I have used blockquote to quote others, and I usually still want the autoformat for the paragraphs. I think this "raw-code" tag the suggestion mentions should be made more public and that would be enough. I didn't know that I could turn off autoformatting for just part of my post, only that I could turn it on or off. To surround extra html code like tables or lists with an extra lj tag manually is not that much more effort, compared to making the autoformat intransparent so that you don't know what will be formatted automatically and what will be exempt.

[erinptah]

I think this "raw-code" tag the suggestion mentions should be made more public and that would be enough.

Agreed. I would much rather be able to control autoformatting manually than have to guess, remember, or look up which tags have it disabled. In addition, I type a lot of lists manually, and don't want to have to worry about adding in [br]'s.

[triadruid]

Moi aussi.

[ldybastet]

This, yes.

[kyrielle]

+1.

[janinedog]

+1

Plus, AFAIK there's no way to reverse it...so if you actually want auto-formatting on within a tag, you'd be out of luck.

[lassarina]

I like this as a suggestion, yes. I've been a pretty active LJ user for 8 years and I never knew such a thing existed.

[syderia]

This.

[ninetydegrees]

I want the line-breaks.

[turlough]

I voted for No Opinion because I can see equal advantages and disadvantages with this suggestion.

[kyrielle]

No, please no! I do lists and put paragraphs inside list elements at times; this would force me to add <br> tags all over the place to get back to that and I'd have to remember to do it. I'd find that annoying.

If it has to be done, for the love of little apples, give me an option I can turn off. Permanently. It's easy not to hit enter if I don't want a line break, in my experience.

[slybrarian]

I can't agree. I'd rather manually control that sort of thing, for some of the reasons listed above regarding breaks and so forth.

[msilverstar]

Some HTML error-checking might be helpful, maybe a note that there are several instances of two or more blank lines and would the user like them collapsed into one?