Thanks for taking the time to post a new comment or a reply to one! First scan these quick notes, if you please:
General
* Currently, previewing a post is optional; you're welcome to preview or post immediately.
* You should see plain text input by default; click "enable rich text" for fancy formatting tools. (Some people love that and some don't. Be aware that formatting tool performance may vary by browser.)
* With apologies to all, I have to use a simple "captcha" question for unregistered posters. Otherwise, the spam flow will dwarf the Nile.
Registration and login
* Registration is available! Sign up here. Chief benefits at present include the ability to edit your own comments and manage subscriptions (newsletter, threads, etc.).
* If you'd prefer to post as an unregistered visitor, that's welcome too. Just leave "Your name" as the default "Esteemed Visitor", or type in some other name. (But if you happen to type in a name used by a registered user – say, "tbone" – you'll get an error telling you so when you hit "post comment". And while your post text should still be there, waiting for a revised user name, there's a chance it could disappear.)
* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in and want to post a quick comment as Esteemed Visitor, that's fine; see above.
* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in, and enter your user name under "Your name" when posting, you'll get an error saying that's the name of a registered user. That's a good thing; it means strangers can't make posts under your user name! But as above, there's a chance of losing your post text. It's best to log in first here, and then start your posting.
Final
All the above is standard stuff for community web sites, but reminders are good; I hate post-related glitches, and hate to see people run into them on this site. On this or any site, it's a good practice to do a quick "Select All" and "Copy" on your post text before hitting "Preview comment" or "Post comment" – just in case.
For more on the whole topic of interaction with the site, please see User Interaction (opens in new window).
mangling input for plain text
Thu, 2006-10-19 11:11 — bignose (not verified)The trouble I had was that the "preview" showed me a comment post that looked as expected; then the actual posted comment looked different, all mooshed into a single paragraph. I immediately disable the gawky "word-processor style" input. I just type in my comment as plain text, like an email message, with blank lines separating paragraphs. If I can't continue to do that and have the comment unmangled, I'll probably stop posting comments. Let's see what happens to this one.
For some reason the text that appears quoted has been HTML-entity mangled; even for regular ASCII characters like ['] and ["] that should just appear as is because they're supported in every character set. Makes it very awkward to read. The preview shows up correctly; then, the form for posting the comment has reverted to wacko-fancy input. It should be remembering the fact that I've chosen plain-text input.