Forum (Rev #3)

Introduction

If you want to kick around ideas with other people, the Forum is the place to go. Here you can start and join in with conversations on various topics.

Nomenclature

“Forums”

Broad categories for discussion are broken down into individual “forums”. If you want to start a new discussion, try to choose one which roughly matches the topic you have in mind, but don’t worry too much about it. If all else fails, pick the General forum.

“Topics”

Within each discussion group, people start new topics. These represent a ‘thread’ of conversation. If you’re logged into Hub, you will see a “New topic” link towards the top left of the page.

Click on a topic title to start reading the thread. You can add a new message to the end of the thread using the reply box at the bottom of each page of messages.

Composing replies

Using Textile markup in the forum requires paragraphs to have blank lines between them in order to render properly.

Quoting

If replying to something somebody said earlier, quoting is a good way to keep your comments in context.

To quote somebody, use copy and paste if your operating system and web browser support it. Copy the minimum amount of relevant text from the message to which you are replying and paste it into your reply, putting bq. (note the full stop and space after “bq”) before the quoted text. This is Textile markup for ‘block quote’.

For example:

bq. This is some block quoted text.

The above will render your reply in a manner similar to the following:

This is some block quoted text.

To quote multiple levels, you need to use nested <blockquote> tags instead of bq.

For example:

<blockquote><blockquote>This is some earlier block quoted text.</blockquote>

This is some block quoted text.</blockquote>

The above will render your reply in a manner similar to the following:

This is some earlier block quoted text.

This is some block quoted text.

If you can’t use copy and paste for some reason, you’ll have to type quoted text in by hand. It’s usually better just to refer to the poster by name instead, rather than risk mis-quoting them!

Code

Pre-formatted code can be included in a number of ways. Short pieces can be included in line by enclosing them with either @ or <code> tags. They both have the same effect, but the former is shorter to type when it isn’t ambiguous (using <code> would be necessary if you wished to write about BASIC’s @%, for example)!

For example:

The inverse of @SIN(RAD(90))@ is <code>DEG(ASN(1))</code>

would render your text similar to the following:

The inverse of SIN(RAD(90)) is DEG(ASN(1))

A single line of pre-formatted code can be included by putting bc. (note the full stop and space after “bc”) before it.

For example:

bc. PRINT "Hello World!"

would render the line similar to:

PRINT "Hello World!"

Multiple lines of pre-formatted code can be included by putting bc.. (note the two full stops and single space after “bc”) before it, and p. (note the single full stop and space after “p”) before the first line of ‘normal’ text following the block. If your block is the last line of your post, there’s no need for the p. to return to ‘normal’ text.

For example:

bc.. FOR I = 1 TO 10
  PRINT "Hello World!"
NEXT I

p. The code above is an example.

would render the block similar to:

FOR I = 1 TO 10
  PRINT "Hello World!"
NEXT I

The code above is an example.

Finally, the <pre> tag can be used to completely enclose a block of code. Remember the blank lines outside the tags if you want a reasonably formatted code block!

search_nest_level *nf = context->nested_filenames;
int p = 0;

/*
   Compensate for rounding errors by adding the 'spare' progress
   Isn't totally accurate if copying, as the actual progress values
   used will have been halved.
*/
p = nf->total_progress - (nf->total_entries * nf->progress_per_object);
if (p > 0) *progress += (uint32_t)p;

Editing

You can edit your messages in case you make mistakes. The Textile preview tool can help with that, but sometimes edits are still necessary.

Try to avoid editing your post if it’s been on the forum for more than few minutes, as other people may already be reading and replying to it. Subsequent edits can cause confusion.