New web newsreader - requesting participation

[Adam Ruppe]

foobar wrote:
> 1. common human markup such as: _foo_ (underline), *foo* (bold) etc,

Yeah, that's a pretty good idea. I agree with the others that it
should keep the text symbols (especially since I've seen these
algorithms wrongly flag things *a lot*) but a basic implementation
is ok.

> 2. parse BBCode.

This probably isn't a good idea... unless it is a web input only
filter.

So posts pulled off the news server are treated as plain text - no
BBCode parsing is attempted. But posts made through the website
may be parsed, and converted to plain text before being forwarded
to the news server. (Note that I use my beloved mutt mail client
for reading the newsgroups myself, so anything that would break
plain text email browsing is a no.)

I already have pretty decent bbcode -> html and html -> text
functions in my bag of toys, so regular participants never need
to know what kind of input was used.

It would let web users feel more at home without impacting
everyone else.


The only downside I see is if people think bbcode is accepted,
someone might write it in their newsreader or email client, where
it won't be parsed. I don't want the groups to get filled up
with bizarre markup everywhere, but, the kind of users who use
email clients and newsreaders probably won't make that mistake
anyway.


So yeah, let's give it a try for web posting and see if it works out.