Simplifying the editor

Question

In Ron Maimon's answer (linked below), he says that we should remove the "gadgets" at the top of the editor. I disagree that we should remove all the buttons, since this is a WYSIWYG editor, however, indeed some of them can go.   

So I have set this thread up to discuss exactly which buttons we don't need,  etc.    

Also, I have noticed that it is difficult to understand all the buttons at first glance. I think some of the icons should be changed or replaced with text. 

So, basically, use this thread to suggest changes to the editor. 

Comments

@Siva I remember that PolarKernel told us that when one writes the double-slashes in the arrays \\, one of the slashes is swallowed up by the editor because it interferes with the internal code for the editor or something like that, so one would need to write \\\ instead of \\. This will be confusing for new users, and it will be a huge task to fix all the old imported questions.  

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How does the importing system currently work? Does it import HTML text that is already formatted?

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@Siva It was my first idea to use this markdown editor with LaTeX. The issue of this editor is that Markdown is applied to the page first. For example the underscore is used to indicate italics, and this usage will conflict with MathJax’s use of the underscore to indicate a subscript. Before the MathJax renders the page, the editor will convert the subscripts markers into italics (inserting <i> tags into your mathematics, which will cause MathJax to ignore the math). Another example are escape sequences, as know from the programming language C or C++. For instance \n is an end-of-line or \t is a tab, but \\ is a backslash. During the transform of an edited text into a html-coded text, the Markdown Editor “eats” one of these backslashes. Therefore, a \\\ was required to make the \\ survive in MathJax arrays. During the first developments I found a way of preprocessing the edited text by replacing Latex sequences by tags and inserting these blocks at the end by a postprocessing. This worked fine for the live preview, but by unknown reasons not for the real posting. After some days of frustration and anger, I gave up and developed the actual editor plugin based on CKEditor with a MathJax plugin.

The importing system uses the already formatted html code, as provided by the API.

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I'm so used to md+mathjax  ( I use stackedit.io ) and I like to write first in another editor and finally paste the contents to the answer window.  It is more confortable without clicking in the icons.

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@HelderVelez You're right, however, the markdown editor is unfortunately incompatible with PhysicsOverflow. The best you can do is use the HTML editor (using the Source button).

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More than anything else, I would like to be able to write using markdown. It is slowly but almost surely becoming an internet-wide standard. Fwiw, I think the Phy.SE editor is quite excellent.

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@Siva While I do agree, it is unfortunately not possible to implement. There is a markdown editor plugin, but unfortunately LaTeX does not work with it, specifically LaTeX arrays : (    

Answer 1

[DONE]  

To be honest, I don't think we even need SpecStyle at all, actually.

• "Marker" doesn't work, it is easy to make it work, but there is no need. The style is an unprofessional one.  
• "Computer Code" can be done from the "Level" menu ("Formatted").  
• "Big" and "Small" should be merged into "Level". 

I see the purpose of "Big" and "Small" since we need "Small" in the attributions.   

So I propose we remove SpecStyle and "Big" and "Small" be merged into "Level".  

Comments

@dimension10 Done

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@polarkernel Thank you!  

Answer 2

[DONE]  

Under "Levels", could Address be removed? It is visually indistinguishable from any italicised font.    

Comments

@dimension10 Done

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@polarkernel Thanks.     

Answer 3

In order to get all the buttons one one bar (having most of them on a single row, but the "Levels" on another row all to itself looks a bit strange), can we make the following changes?  

• [WITHDRAWN] Change "Paragraph" to "Para"
• [WITHDRAWN] Change "Heading n" to "Headn", e.g. "Heading 1" to "Head1" 
• Change "Preformatted Text" to "Code" 
• Change "Source" to "HTML" 

This will get everything to fit nicely on one line.