Quick quotes for replies

[sooskriszta]

Most forum software have the facility to clip quotes from previous post with the click of a button. Would be nice to have this in bbPress.

[johnjamesjacoby]

Agree. Moving to future release.

[netweb]

There is a plugin ​http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-quotes/ though I think this has been abandoned and also doesn't work with 2.1

[johnjamesjacoby]

Moving to 2.4. Could also be part of #2036 for 2.3.

[Sadr]

Hey, we've been sitting on this one for a little while now, finally got around to submitting it:
​http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-direct-quotes/

Links to quoted author with a @mention, wraps content in <blockquotes> and removes nested quotes.

[alex-ye]

I think we shouldn't add the "Quote Button" in the bbPress core since we will have the "Hierarchical Replies" most forums software have the quote button because they don't have the "Hierarchical Replies" feature like phpBB3 ..etc

Adding the tow features to the core "Hierarchical Replies" and "Quote Button" will make the users confusing about what they should do to reply on reply :D

In also the "Quote Button" functionality have a lot of bugs and not easy to be a core feature from my experiment on testing all bbPress quote plugins I end-up with developing my own plugin which works better than the others but I still believe that it's not good, Personally I will disable the "Quote Button" on my site when the "Hierarchical Replies" published.

[Sadr]

I see the two as very different features.

You use hierarchical replies when you have a reply pertaining to one post in particular, and not so much the topic at large.

You use quotes when you want to reply to one or more specific paragraphs, posted by one or multiple different authors.

Put in other terms:

• Hierarchical replies are for sideline commentary.
• Quotations are for topical content highlighting.

You will always make the choice of hierarchy first. Are you replying to the topic at large (normal reply) or this specific post (inline reply)? Quotes will work the same either way.

[alex-ye]

Good points @Sadr but is there a really need to add a "quote" button?! everyone can use the "blockquote" button in the editor !

and more than that maybe form your plugin experience, a lot of bugs can be on the road and if we will make this as a core feature we should make a lot of discussion about how it will work !

for examples:
1- Should we use a shortcode or just HTML ?
2- When you want to quote all the reply text, how you will get the reply content using the javascript, did you will use AJAX or you will warp the reply content with a div to easy extract ?!
3- How can you be sure that the "quoted text" is a really part of the reply content?
4- How can you control the nested quotes count ?!

...etc

[Sadr]

By all means, let's discuss it! Good points so far.

1. Definitely just HTML (blockquotes) - More advanced stuff could be added in the form of shortcodes through plugins.
2. I'll leave that one to the developers.
3. By not including nested quotes.
4. You always remove the 1st level of nesting, which will usually be the only one. This is how the plugin linked above works.

[alex-ye]

Replying to Sadr:

1. Definitely just HTML (blockquotes) - More advanced stuff could be added in the form of shortcodes through plugins.

what about the original reply author name ?!, This should be a dynamic.

3. By not including nested quotes.

I can't understand this, can you explain it more?

4. You always remove the 1st level of nesting, which will usually be the only one. This is how the plugin linked above works.

Well, this is the difference between a normal plugin and a feature in a wide-used project you will find a lot of ideas about how they want it to work.

Another question, When you send the content to the editor, how you will be sure about the text-area id/name ?

[alex-ye]

In also what about the users that they disabled the javascript ? Should we use a logic like this trac software work (an example) ?

See when we dig in it more, it looks like "Hierarchical Replies" and have a lot of hassle :)

[jaredatch]

I think there is room for both as its personal personal preference.

For example, being a kid of the vB 2.x era, I would prefer to have quick quotes enabled but keep hierarchical replies disabled.

Also, I don't think relying on JS is an issue since this is an enhancement. If I'm not mistaken some of the other features in core also rely on JS to work, so this wouldn't be the first.

I don't really know how complex this needs to be. Is there any reason why we can't just use JS to take the post author/content from said reply and then insert it into TinyMCE as:

<blockquote class="quick-quote">
<cite><a href="[reply link]">[Author] said:</a></cite>
[content]
</blockquote>

[alex-ye]

Replying to jaredatch:

For example, being a kid of the vB 2.x era, I would prefer to have quick quotes enabled but keep hierarchical replies disabled.

Why ?!, The bbPress hierarchical replies is a really smart feature and it express the WordPress way... We don't have to copying our ideas form other software, if the "quote button" is there in other software this is doesn't mean that we should do too..

Some forums software doesn't have the hierarchical replies feature, @Sadr limit the use of "quote button" to "highlighting" which it's a easy thing to do with the editor.

Also, I don't think relying on JS is an issue since this is an enhancement. If I'm not mistaken some of the other features in core also rely on JS to work, so this wouldn't be the first.

Yes, and we should do a compact mode for those core-features in the future, anyway this not the main topic to discuss... I am still not sure why we will add the "quote button" feature since we have the hierarchical replies !

I don't really know how complex this needs to be. Is there any reason why we can't just use JS to take the post author/content from said reply and then insert it into TinyMCE as:

There are a lot of reasons:
1- You can't make sure about the reply content ID attribute.
2- Some content will be added by the actions/filters ... and the "quote button" should only get the real content.
3- Some content is rendered by other JavaScript plugins like, SyntaxHighlighter.
4- We must use the shortcodes for some things like reply-link, autohr-name, translations, and because that we should let the users and visitors to use some cretin shortcodes.
...etc

There are a lot of complex and preferences which will be different form site to sire, I am still with the idea to keep it as a plugin.

[jaredatch]

We'll have to agree to disagree. While I think hierarchal replies will be a very welcomed feature to bbPress, I think there will always be a large set of users who prefer their forums to be flat.

For the quick replies it will have to rely on JS and probably ajax (like the plugin mentioned below).

Content rendered by syntax highlighters is outside our control so we can't worry about that. I don't think we should use shortcodes it all, it defeats the purpose of quoted replies which is they can be edited in line.

[alex-ye]

Replying to jaredatch:

We'll have to agree to disagree. While I think hierarchal replies will be a very welcomed feature to bbPress, I think there will always be a large set of users who prefer their forums to be flat.

Sure thing, The quotes plugins are still exists , and the core shouldn't handle everything :) , after all I express my opinion maybe many disagree with me :D

Content rendered by syntax highlighters is outside our control so we can't worry about that.

I disagree with you, we should study all possiblites and produce something that we know it will most work !, another thing here not all HTML elements can be a child for the blockquote, so let's be careful on that.

I don't think we should use shortcodes it all, it defeats the purpose of quoted replies which is they can be edited in line.

Again I disagree with you, the bbPress replies permlinks can be changed, also the author name... we should make it fixable

[alex-ye]

Replying to jaredatch:

I think there will always be a large set of users who prefer their forums to be flat.

If it's a design issue, We can make the hierarchical replies in flat-mode by some changes to templates and styles, Right?! I still think that the "hierarchical replies" is more elegant and easy to follow, but for those rarely cases can we make a mode like bbp_show_topic_lead ?!

[johnjamesjacoby]

Hierarchical replies will address part of this, but I think the quote/snippet functionality is currently best left in a plugin for now.

What I'd like to avoid is having quotes and hierarchical replies collide, where every post quotes the post it's in reply to; that's super annoying in my opinion.

Long term, I'd love to see a fully featured quoting plugin that allows for taking snippets and connecting them together with post-meta, so that hierarchical or not, the anticipated content appears where and when it's intended to.

All of that said, nothing is more flexible than blockquoting the part you're replying to, and leaving it at that. There's something to be said for trusting your users to include the content they meant to include, and not complicating the UI by restricting it's functionality down to our idea of what quotes should be and work like.

Great discussion here though everyone; some cool ideas being tossed around.

Arguably, this is why Markdown is awesome. A quote becomes a > instead of actual markup.

[alex-ye]

Totally agreed with you @johnjamesjacoby , So keep this for 2.4 or Future or wontfix ?!

[jaredatch]

For the time being we're punting this to Future Release.

There is a lot of good points and ideas here for anyone who wants to take a stab at a first pass via a plugin.

[alex-ye]

Oops. Above patches are for another ticket. Ignore them.

edit by: JJJ

[sooskriszta]

2.6?