I've been trying to write the bisgtro-HD manual in very simple html with very limited markup, using a bunch of <pre> to avoid line breaks everywhere and theoretically obsolete tags like <u> and <b>. The idea is to have it look nice in a text editor and hopefully display well if I copy and paste it into posts here too.
But I hit a couple of problems. I can insert html in plain text or simple text view and it basically works, but it seems to convert minus signs into some kind of dash charecters that run together continuously somehow even defeating monospace fonts in a pre environment. This messes up ascii art.
I can switch back to the advanced editor before posting, and this gets resolved, but the advanced editor seems to remove line feeds in my pre blocks if I have nested pre blocks (used to change text wrapping attribute in some sections). So then I get formatted text that runs together into a single paragraph.
Any ideas? Also is there any way to include <style> block css in a post, or only inline?
Try putting the -(minus) sign between the _span_ markups and then check whether it is acting same like it was previously. I had some similar problem when i was making my website but now it's resolved. I didn't quite understand clearly the second part of your question.
Thanks, I'll try it. As for the style thing, that probably means you don't have an answer, which is fine.
<style> in the header lets' you modify things like <p> and <pre> and even create different classes or ids of each with different properties, like a pre block that still does text wrapping but respects white space. You can do all that in the individual tags, but it's less convenient. I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff really though, but as far as I've been able to manage, heads are discarded here, which makes sense probably, a post isn't a page I guess.
I have no idea why. Span by itself shouldn't really do anything should it? So I just put span around everything within the pre block. It didn't break the pre-ness but did fix the minuses.
So the whole solution is:
a) write text in simple html just for internal arefs and some bold italic, underlining centering, whatever. <b></b> etc.
b) Leave out <br> tags to make it more text-editor friendly. Do include asci line breaks between paragraphs.
c) But otherwise only include line breaks where you really want them to show. Generally use autowrap in your text editor and don't break lines just for text wrapping.
d) use "white-space:pre-wrap" attribute in a global pre block or make a <div> to act like a pre (also possible) point being to preserve white space but still autowrap to fit the browser.
e) For real monospace pre formatted code or asci art stuff, use standard pre tags with a nested span inside them to fix the minus sign issue.
f) use the simple editor and cut and paste it all there.
You get text that is easy to read in a text editor, easy to mark up. Can make internal links, and displays well in the posts.
I still don't know how to add css to the top of a post.
ok, now I'm confused. The spans actually show literally in the pre block. So are they even doing anything? Is this an issue of one parser seeing them and one interpreter not? It's weird. Or maybe something caused the fix, but it's working other than the span tags showing.