For longer Posts, such as tutorials, I like to spend a lot of time editing the text before posting.
If I want to have a section heading like this
This is a section heading
I have to have this stuff in the text file
[color=green][b]This is a section heading[/b][/color]
which (as you can see) makes it very hard to review the text.
I have not been able to find an editor (or word processor) that can (ideally) provide a WYSIYG display of the text as it will appear when posted or (second best) provides a simple way to surround a selected block of text with the appropriate mark-up elements.
Maybe someone else has experience of a suitable editor for this. I am using Linux Mint.
I had thought that RichText might be a gateway to what I want but you should see the amount of junk that LibreOffice stores in an RTF file when it saves it.
I have found that I can create a macro in Geany that allows me to select some text and apply formatting before and after. That is certainly a step forward. But only a small step.
Maybe an answer is to write a Python program to convert the text that I am thinking of posting into HTML just so I can preview it. But that's not nearly as good as a WYSIWYG editor. And even that is not simple because HTML ignores multiple spaces and carriage-returns etc.
Thanks. That looks like it may be an idea. I had expected that Libre Office would produce a horrendously complex HTML file - but I must be thinking of something else - maybe converting from an ODT file to HTML
You can pasted formatted text into that. So, you can use your favorite text editor offline, pasted it into that, and it will spit out the appropriate bbcode.
I didn't google that because I didn't know it existed ! Many thanks
But it does seem to do what I want. The only reservation I have is that I don't like the idea of doing my editing on the web - in case my internet connection goes down - which it does from time to time,
...R
PS .. the sad truth is that it never occurred to me to Google "bbcode editor" even though that's what I want to do
I must have Googled everything else.
UPDATE - problem solved, thanks to the hint from @Qdeathstar
I downloaded the SCEditor with a view to making a small Python/Bottle web application and I spent an hour or more working on the Python code when I suddenly realized it is completely unnecessary.
The example.html file that comes with SCEditor does everything I need.
I can copy text containing BBcode tags from my Geany editor into the SCEditor window and edit it in glorious technicolor and, whenever I want to I can click the ViewSource icon and Ctrl-A Ctrl-C and paste the code back into Geany and save it.
If I had @Qdeathstar's brains I would not have wasted 7 or more hours.
UPDATE …
I got tired of copying text from Geany and pasting it in the editor (and vice-versa) so I have created a very crude web program using Python and Bottle that adds a SAVE button and an FILE SELECT and UPLOAD form.
As far as I can see it works.
I spent hours trying unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to get the server to know and retain the full path of the file being uploaded and I eventually resorted to using FileSaver.js which works as long as I have Firefox set to ask the location where a file is to be saved - which is not my usual setting.
I am attaching a ZIP file with the whole thing in case it is useful for someone else. The ZIP file include all the dependencies apart from the Python interpreter. I am using Python 2.7.
Have fun.
…R
EDIT to add …
After uploading the Python version I realized that the main reason I started with Python was my expectation that I would need it to save the edited text. But when I had to use FileSaver,js to do that the need for Python disappeared. The second ZIP file is a HTML and Javascript equivalent. Just click on the HTML file to make it work.
i even tried it on my own forum, and it worked great!