Maybe there's a way to have my cake and eat it too! Can the SOL internal formatting processor be turned off at times? As blogged, I forgot that asterisk-text-asterisk would set the text as bold, and put a mathematical formula "50*50*3.14" in one of my stories. Naturally, that was posted as 50503.14 with the 3rd and 4th digits in bold. I fixed it by reposting with "50x50x3.14", but maybe simply turning formatting codes off would have been better.
-ZM
with turning off all formatting you would loose a lot more. I'm sure Lazeez has a fix for this. You could try the html code for an asterix: "& ast ;" (without the quotes and spaces) and see if that works.
You could try the html code for an asterix: "& ast ;" (without the quotes and spaces) and see if that works.
For some strange reason, I've always thought that Asterix was a Gaul who went around drinking potions and beating up Romans with his friend Obelix.
Perhaps you mean asterisk for the name of that character? Anyhow, I think "& times ;" without spaces and quotations is probably a better way to go for multiplication.
For some strange reason, I've always thought that Asterix was a Gaul who went around drinking potions and beating up Romans with his friend Obelix.
But he was a real star, that looks close enough to an asterisk ;)
I hit one of those 'gotchas' a while back and had to circumvent and resubmit. I'd like the option to turn off formatting too. It seems counter-intuitive to have to take evasive action when all you want is straight textual reproduction.
AJ
This happens so rarely that in 20 years of the system being what it is two or three people have ever bumped into this problem.
It's not exactly worth fixing.
By the way, only programmers know that the asterisk is a multiply sign. To everybody else, it's 'x'. So using x for multiplication in fiction is more logical.
So using x for multiplication in fiction is more logical.
Or, perhaps even the HTML entity & times ; (without the spaces).
By the way, only programmers know that the asterisk is a multiply sign. To everybody else, it's 'x'. So using x for multiplication in fiction is more logical.
I ran into this issue trying to use the correct title for M*A*S*H. I just left out the asterisks, but it bugged the heck out of me (though not enough to ask for a change to the formatting codes).
Since, among the formats, you support markdown, won't renaming the file to .md.txt allow to escape * with \ ?
Since, among the formats, you support markdown, won't renaming the file to .md.txt allow to escape * with ?
The script that handles the conversion of * and _ is the same script that does everything from clean up, conversion and format checking for errors.
It's run right before the formatting/uploading. So it would affect even markdown files.
I would need to add escaping support to my own formatting script for this to work.
I ran into this issue trying to use the correct title for M*A*S*H. I just left out the asterisks, but it bugged the heck out of me (though not enough to ask for a change to the formatting codes).
How about using one of the many Unicode stars instead? E.g. M∗A∗S∗H.
In Excel, if I type into a cell
=5*5
it shows up as 25 because the = tells Excel it's a formula.
But if I want to actually display =5*5 in the cell, I put a ' before the = as in:
'=5*5
Could something like that help? Or is it really not a problem worth spending time on?
Could something like that help? Or is it really not a problem worth spending time on?
I doubt it's worth the effort to adjust the code because not everyone would recognise the * as a multiplication sign due to the standard symbol used in writing for multiplication is x while the other is used in computer coding to differentiate it from the alphabetical character. Thus many readers won't see * as a multiplication sign.
Could something like that help?
There are standard for markdown, should Lazeez have time to loose, it would be best to stick to them.
It's standard in PhP
https://spec.commonmark.org/0.28/
http://php.net/manual/en/intro.cmark.php
There are also lots of alternative implementations like:
https://commonmark.thephpleague.com/configuration/
which has a fine grained features control support.
These day, most of the text I read and write is done in markdown.
but maybe simply turning formatting codes off would have been better
I added escaping specifically to the underscore and asterisk if ever they need to be ignored.
So now, in text if you use * or _ (backslash+asterisk) or (backslash+underscore) the result would be the removal of the backslash leaving the asterisk or underscore untouched.
So you would need to write the formula like so: 50*50*3.14
so: 50*50*3.14
more like so:
50\*50\*3.14
forum already escape the escape so your sample escape was nixed.
