Fancy Schmancy Formatting Thread

[Gary Lewis]

I've been learning new and whizbang ways to format posts, and while I've created a page that will help someone that wants to try it, which is Bullnose Forum/Forum FAQ's, you cannot tell much from that page about how it'll look in a post. So, I'm gonna use some of the tricks here to see how they look.

First, an "ordered list":

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item

Next, an "unordered list":

• First item
• Second item
• Third item

What if we wanted some words to be green and others to be red and still others to be blue?

Perhaps we want to show text that has been deleted? Or text that should be underlined? Maybe text that has been inserted into a block of text? (Looks just like underlined.) Highlighted text? Text that is no longer correct? Small text? Strong text? 2²=4 _Subscripted text?

I'll try some more later, but that's all for now.

[Steve83]

Two things:

1.  Formatting is fun, and can help convey the emotion that's missing in most text discussions.  I'd describe the list forms as "numbered" vs. "bullet(ed)" lists, so it's more-obvious what they are, to someone who hasn't read this thread.  And for someone who hasn't gone to that FAQ recently , some access to those formats from the standard reply page (maybe a popup like the Embed & More buttons, or maybe add them to the More; but I'd like to see them work like bold & italic, if that's not much work for you).  The deleted text looks a lot like the no longer correct text; and strong looks like bold.

2. I was about to start a new thread about some formatting (nice segue, huh?) I just learned today that's nearly USELESS in the context of bullnoses, but I found it extremely interesting...



In 1990, Ford truck VC labels gained a barcode in the simple Code 39 format (which is so easy it can be installed as a font, but only supports numerals, capital letters, space, and 7 punctuation marks).  Code 39 always begins & ends with the asterisk (which also defines the direction to read); and like most automakers, Ford adds an "I" before the 17 VIN characters (which most scanners recognize as VIN coding, and they drop the I).

What prompted me to dig into this was cutting up the '96 Carcass body tub today to pile on my scrap trailer, and its VC label was already coming off, so I peeled it to save.



Then I realized it's almost the same size as some self-adhesive thermal printer tape I have, which means I can print something that looks very much like a VC label.  Not that I'd ever try to pass one off as real, or that there's any reason to try (my '83 has had no VC label since I replaced its body tub the first time, about 20 years ago, and it hasn't been a problem in 3 or 4 states so far); but I might print one that would look real to someone NOT paying attention, and would at least present the truck's registered VIN to someone who DOES need to know (like a cop or inspection station attendant) but would be obviously NOT original to any professional.

Since bullnoses never had barcodes, it might be useful to add one if you have to go through inspection with a daily driver NOT registered as an antique, just to speed up the process if your station uses barcode scanners.

[Gary Lewis]

Steve - The FAQ’s page is an ever-evolving one as I add info there as I come across it. For instance, I recently updated the how-to on adding pictures. And the new info about embedding videos, files, etc was added.

Basically it is my notebook on how to do things, and can hopefully help the other users as well. And while I don’t expect anyone to use all of the functionality described therein, at least I can refer people there when they have questions.

As for what to call things, I used the standard HTML nomenclature of “ordered” and “unordered” lists to be consistent with what you will find in the link provided on the FAQ page, or basically any other HTML documentation. And, that’s somewhat important as the codes to use start with <ol> and <ul>, so it is much easier to remember what to type if you remember the names of them. However, I didn’t know for sure what they would do until I tried them as those terms aren’t intuitively obvious to the casual observer. 😳

And I wish I could change the buttons and what they do on the reply page. I had to get someone else to give me some code to change what H6 does, and it now gives a bulleted list. (Yes, “unordered”, but since it doesn’t directly generate HTML then we can call it what we want.)

Perhaps I could figure out how to turn H1 - 4 into useful things?  (H5 gives an indebted paragraph.)

On the font and labels, go ahead and create a thread. Might generate some interesting discussion.