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This is the climax of what sox has been cooking his way toward, release by release, over the last few months.

What was once the preview tab on posts and comments is now also a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor. Before, to add links, headings, quotes, and styling, you had to be a markdown wizard. Now, you can use a toolbar and click buttons like most editors you're familiar with.

The important part of this, and where sox put a ton of energy, is that the markdown editing experience is preserved. When editing a post or comment, you can switch between markdown and wysiwyg modes and see the changes you make in one reflected in the other. The wysiwyg, what we're calling compose for lack of a better name, is an editable preview of the markdown, and write is a editable representation of the markdown "source code" for the work you do in compose.

In many ways this is the beginning of our plans for the editor experience. It's the main way everyone makes SN what they want it to be and we want to maximize that. Before too long we'll add image resizing and, yes, a table editor, but we plan to go much further.

Sox is standing by for any bugs you find or suggestions you might have. Oh, and any complements of course.

Also, big shout to @optimism who has been helping us put the engineering back in software engineering.

Thanks @sox

Any update on the android keyboard bug 🐛

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22 sats \ 7 replies \ @sox fwd 10h

I'm investigating this now, can I ask you which keyboard are you using?

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101 sats \ 6 replies \ @Taj 10h

Samsung default.

(Used foss heliboard and works fine)

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22 sats \ 5 replies \ @sox fwd 10h

I see, I don't have a Samsung device right now but I'll find a way to get that keyboard and find a fix.

The problem (or the advantage, perspectives) on Android is that every keyboard can have their own IME[1] implementation, leading to bugs almost always unique to each keyboard. We're doing great efforts in trying to squash them all because we care and we're not easily comfortable in asking people to "just use another keyboard".

  1. IME is what controls autocorrect and characters that need to be composed like Japanese ones

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This looks like the cursor blinking. I'm on the Brave browser on PC.

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33 sats \ 1 reply \ @sox fwd 9h

Welcome to virtual cursors! Browsers can't normally land a cursor in "non-editable" elements, but everything in compose mode is editable ... so we fake a cursor!

It can be pretty janky and to make it less janky we implemented a way to insert a paragraph if you click at the top or bottom side of an element. Let us know if you encounter any issues or odd behavior!

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Oh! cool

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104 sats \ 1 reply \ @Taj 10h

I see 👀

I guess i could go back to a keyboard from zapstore

But i find them over customizable and I end up over complicating and cluttering the keys 🔑 😒

When I'm constructing a post, I write it out in standard notes app and paste it in

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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox fwd 9h

The most compatible keyboard so far is Google Keyboard (Gboard), you can try that, if you'd like, while we prepare a fix for your Samsung Keyboard.

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Oh I wasn't aware of that, or maybe I... forgot, sorry.
I'll investigate asap, thank you ^^

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> Also, big shout to @optimism who has been helping us put the engineering back in software engineering.

In what sense?

Also, good job!

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Generally, he's been pushing for more rigor in dev processes and alerting us to how accessible rigor is now.

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Haha, maybe I should ask him a crash course on this too. We lack a lot of rigor in academic coding...

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I've kind of gone the other way. I used to spend a lot more time making my research code elegant, extensible, and modular.

But I realized that I rarely benefitted from it, since the requirements of different projects are often so different.

So I'm much more comfortable slapping together code that just gets the job done now. For my research work, at least.

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249 sats \ 7 replies \ @optimism 13h

I think that it only makes sense in production code. I basically have 4 levels of rigidity:

  1. poc - just yolo it
  2. private tooling - never goes out of alpha stage. I do review and test it, but I'm wary of spending too much time on it.
  3. FOSS software of minor consequence. Full blown vibe design-code-review on this. A gazillion rounds of hybrid AI+meat review. Still faster (2x or so) and much higher precision (10x or so)
  4. FOSS software of importance. I only use AI in the review portion of this, or suggest a code solution (but it'll never get merged) for codebases I do not fully own (for example, I needed to patch a pinned OpenSSL dependency on an important library, and the bot found me a narrower patch than just porting over the upstream commit verbatim, which I then verified and executed manually.)
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I guess I rarely venture outside of 1 and 2 with my codes. I do have a FOSS code that I maintain and build on regularly, and collaborators are free to use it, with the huge caveat that I am not responsible for any errors in the code. They are also free to modify it, but they rarely do, as most are allergic to Fortran. And it's very much spaghetti code that I've only recently started to refactor using Cursor.

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Yes. So don't waste too much time. For your refactoring, especially in fortran, I'd go the way of 3, simply because you don't want to introduce sloppy architecture.

I posted a bit about this process yesterday, in #1452429.

If your software were something like openssl or the linux kernel or in general something considered best in class and has gotten a couple 100k installs, you want to be extremely careful. This is what 4 is for.

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1 sat \ 4 replies \ @adlai 9h
Yes. So don't waste too much time. For your refactoring, especially in fortran, I'd go the way of 3, simply because you don't want to introduce sloppy architecture.

@south_korea_ln how's the weather, in any other language?

If you detail your frustrations or questions in a post, you might be so lucky.

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101 sats \ 5 replies \ @adlai 14h

please forgive my usual obnoxious change of topic:

is the site's API documented anywhere, in dead documents, infinitely friendlier than "use cursor bro"?

No personal offense intended to you, nor to any of the good folks listed by git shortlog, but I'm terribly sick of relearning websites at the speed of the vibe.

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45 sats \ 4 replies \ @sox fwd 14h

We're behind in documentation, also because we're trying to ship at the speed of light.

For example, the editor has a somewhat extensive documentation focused on its inner workings and how to build for it (also really great for use cursor bro), but it's not updated and some things have changed.
I'm personally glad that compose mode is not collapsing in on itself like a dying star, so now I can prioritize stuff like documentation.

tl;dr I agree that documentation is a serious matter, especially now that the codebase is bigger than ever. I'll make an official issue on github.

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70 sats \ 3 replies \ @adlai 10h
We're behind in documentation, also because we're trying to ship at the speed of light.

"shipping" culture is worse than ebola


official issue on github

:+1:

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27 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox fwd 9h
official issue on github

TIL we have one already: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues/1089

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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @sox fwd 10h

I actually agree, it is worse than ebola. We have a lot to do though.

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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @adlai 9h

"cathedral" spires rise higher than "bazaar" tents not because people consider clowns and the circus a joke...

gaudi survives longer than tupac.

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101 sats \ 0 replies \ @nkmg1c 22h
Ahoy hoy

Test test Good stuff guys

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Vs. This

And the other thing I.vibed

I'd say it's perfect! Nice work!!

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Yooo

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224 sats \ 1 reply \ @plebpoet 20h

been working so well for me - yay @sox way to go

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Thank you!! I think you'll love what's coming next.

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i wrote this comment in the wysiwyg.

i think it is pretty cool.

well done, @soxwell done, @sox

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double click

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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @adlai 14h
double click

https://m.stacker.news/134028

could you please describe how the "caption" is relevant? [yes, I realize you didn't deliberately make it so the words "double click" are caption, or alt text; however the quote above is how your comment looks when disabling automedia]

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Now you’ve got a good challenge here!

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Probably very naive question...

This seems like it has been quite the work and endeavour. Yet, I'm surprised that's the case. Isn't an editor like the most common thing in online platforms? Aren't there out of the box solutions that achieve what you want, with extreme levels of customisation?

Or are those mostly crappy and not to SN standards?

Genuinely asking, I'm sure there is a reason @sox put so much time and love in this.

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We are using what most people would consider an out of the box solution - and some people ship to customers as-is.[1]

The problem with most editors is that they tend to do one thing (markdown) or the other (wysiwyg) to an okay degree, but none of them do markdown and wysiwyg compatibility to this degree. (Try using any other website's hybrid editor, doing some ambitious styling and switch back and forth between modes.)

In the hopes of protocoling SN someday, we want to keep markdown as the base encoding of content here. Yet, in the interest of helping folks from any walk of life participate on SN, we want to make adding nice content to SN easy.

Isn't an editor like the most common thing in online platforms?

Yes. Do you have one you love the most and wish it were everywhere?

Aren't there out of the box solutions that achieve what you want, with extreme levels of customisation?

All of this work is the extreme customization part of an out of the box solution. Our customization needs just go beyond add new styling options.

  1. We have bugs fixed in our editor that even Facebook hasn't fixed in their products yet, and they are the ones working on the underlying library.

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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @adlai 14h

do you realize that "office" has been keeping microsoft afloat, while games and cloud services are a rounding error?

market capture of windows users is not because of paint and pinball.

changing the toolkit for bringing the UX mockups to life does not make the problem any easier, and honestly, HTML5 is no lighter a nightmare than the previous prototypes.

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Whoa cool.

What would you say are your biggest roadmap priorities now?

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For the editor or generally?

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Generally.

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252 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 11 Mar

User facing:

  1. onboarding, which is mostly making the wallets not suck
    • marketing (this has been blocked by wallets/onboarding for years at this point)
    • getting custom domains for territories launched (with private beta partner at first)
  2. design refresh/UX enhance affording for lots of personalization of territories and profile pages
  3. E2EE (DMs/full territories/etc)
  4. things territory founders want (their own saloon, rewards pools, etc)
  5. mobile apps (if we can do so without needing dedicated engineers for each device type)
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @adlai 9h

zapping takes too much time, relative to the baseline of "would I complain if the polite european tourist stopped rounding tips"


edited to comp the editors; added $$meaningfully$$ [an extra format "inline mathematics", hiding behind the ellipsis]

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Ngl SN increased my markdown skills haha

But this tool bar will be very welcomed

Awww shewt I got underline now!! Formatt junkies unite!

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sox cooked

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  • Love it so much
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Amazing work @sox!

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# congrats ~lol nice job

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