Desperate: Images and formatting in the forum

Dear readers, dear TMW,

• It has been discussed repeatedly how newcomers could be encouraged to apply a proper code formatting. But the About MATLAB Answers manual still does not contain explanations about formatting.
• One of the killer features of this forum is the ability to show pictures, but the users are forced to host them on foreign servers. Unfortunately the readers have to bear the commercials of these hosters, must reduce their security by enabling JavaScript to see the images, and last but not least the limited life-time of the pictures on these servers let become more and more old thread meaningless.

Several other important points can be found in the wish list, which is growing for years. The high quality of the suggestions and the engaged contributions of the users are not accompanied by a careful consideration by the TMW team. Many suggestions, which could be accomplished in less than an hour, are still waiting for -- what?

We know, that a conservative strategy is valuable in the development of Matlab. But the inert maintenance of the forum is counter productive. It feels like TMW does not care, while the forum's interface does not approach an adult status with an appropriate level of usability, see e.g. the keyboard latency problem.

This is not a question. All I've said has been discussed exhaustively before already. But perhaps TMW forgot that we are still waiting.

[Matt J]

Looks like they heard you! I assume you got the announcement that was just mailed out that image/file attachment capability is being rolled out today.

[Image Analyst]

I didn't get any email, and the capability is not in here yet as far as I can tell. How does one upload/attach an image?

[Matt J]

Should be rolled out later today. Here is the email that I received,

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Kelly <John.*****@mathworks.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 1:55 PM
Subject: MATLAB Answers Temporary Down Time
To: 

Hello All,

MATLAB Answers may be down temporarily beginning in approximately 4-5 hours to roll out new features including the ability to attach files and images to Questions.

We apologize for the temporary inconvenience as we roll out new features.

Best,

John Kelly
Community Administrator
eProduct Marketing

Answer 1

[Randy Souza]

Your wish is our (eventual) command! You can now attach images and files by using these new and revamped editor toolbar buttons:

I put a few more details into a blog post.

We've also made some tweaks to the markup editor that should reduce the amount of broken formatting--the editor now does a better job of detecting when extra newlines should be inserted.

[Jan]

Randy, I'm speechless. Did you wait for my lamenting, or do I have the magic power to see some hours into the future?

Thanks. I'm looking forward to use the new features.

[Randy Souza]

I think you can see the future! Any thoughts on the Massachusetts lottery?

[Jan]

Yes.

I have two prophesies, select the one you like more:

[Jan]

Of course this answer is more than worth to be accepted. Thanks, Randy and your team!

[Image Analyst]

Any chance the file attachment can be modified to allow multiple files to be attached in one step rather than two of more steps? For example, someone might like to attach the .m file and the .fig file, and a data file.

[Image Analyst]

File attachment is not fully functioning as expected. See http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/87767#answer_97344 Basically when I went to attach a file it showed up while creating initial message but after saving it didn't show up. I re-edited it, attached it again, and again it didn't show up. I re-edited, added notice about not being able to add file, and saved and it still wasn't there. I clicked F5 in Firefox to refresh the display, and then they (both instances of the same file) finally showed up as being attached. Can you reproduce this behavior?

[Image Analyst]

Hurray! You've gotten rid of the requirement for there to be a blank line before the highlighted selected that you want to make code! It got smart and seems to figure out what to do by itself. This will help a lot of people!

[Randy Souza]

@Image Analyst: We are aware of the attached-files-not-immediately-showing-up bug, and are working on a fix. Thanks for reporting it!

[Image Analyst]

It doesn't seem to be on the initial attach (at least anymore) but I always observe it missing if I do this:

1. Create a comment and attach a file.
2. Realize mistake in attached file so detach file by clicking on - circle.
3. Make change in file (by editing it) I had attached and save it to disk
4. Edit comment
5. Add file back again (paper clip, Choose file, attach file, save)
6. Back on main screen, attached file is not there.
7. Click F5 to reload page and file magically appears.

[Image Analyst]

Randy, they no longer seem to be hosted on Mathworks servers. For example, look at this answer of mine. The image is still on snag.gy and when you click on the image it brings you to the snag.gy web site. Did you change something? I thought that you used to haul over a copy and store it on your server. Now we still run the risk of it being deleted on the host server. Was it some kind of copyright issue where you decided you couldn't make a copy on your Mathworks server?

[Walter Roberson]

Did you use markup to insert the URL, or did you use the image attach feature of the editor ?

[Image Analyst]

I put < < and then pasted in the URL, and then typed > >. Doesn't that do the same thing as when you use the chain link icon? It looks the same in the edit box.

[Walter Roberson]

The chain-link has never copied the image to Mathworks. The image icon to the right of it asks you to upload an image and the uploaded image is stored on the Mathworks server.

[Image Analyst]

Yeah, that's what I meant (the image icon not the link). OK, the HTML code looks the same. However I guess is you use the image icon it does a download of the image and storing it on the Mathworks server, because if I do it my self with angle brackets it links to the external server but if I use the image icon it doesn't. Not sure why there is a difference and why they both look the same in HTML but I guess I'd better switch to using the image icon. It seems to take me longer so that's why I've been using the angle brackets.

[Walter Roberson]

When you use the image icon it uploads the image and generates the URL to the place it stored the image. The other construct continues to be available for linking to random places.

[Randy Souza]

Walter is correct; we only store the image if you upload it directly through the markup editor (the image icon). The markup for inserting an image is the same (<<image-url>>) either way, we just insert the URL for you if you upload the file directly.

[Image Analyst]

Got it. Thanks for the clarification.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

With so MANY other web sites hosting pictures, it makes me wonder how hard can it be? Actually mathworks.com already hosts lots of pictures, like the ones we upload to the File Exchange, so I'm wondering why there is a multi-year delay in something that should be relatively straightforward, that is, hosting images for the Answers forum.

The formatting issue is also a pain. Why can't it be just as easy as it is in a word processor such as Microsoft Word? There are weird quirks like having to have a blank line before code or bulleted lists - why??? That trips up a lot of people. Or needing to have a space or blank line before the < in a link - again, why? And why are there no options for font, font size, or font color? Can't they just buy some kind of full featured word processor to plug in that does everything Word can do? Well maybe not everything but at least the basics like formatting text? Or are we somehow stuck with some kind of free, built-in java piece of junk that is basically crippled?

Why can't it be wysiwyg like other word processors have been for years or decades? Why do we have to have a preview window at all? It shouldn't even be necessary.

[Sean de Wolski]

The Answers syntax is the same as that for MATLAB publishing where in the MATLAB Editor there is not your standard word processing features:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2013b/matlab/matlab_prog/marking-up-matlab-comments-for-publishing.html

Personally, I really like this feature! Knowing the syntax for Answers, where I learned it, I can write comments in MATLAB files that publish as I want.

[Jan]

@Sean: I'm puzzled by the effect of empty lines, which reduce the indentation level. While this is consistent with publishing, it is still not the expected behavior and let posted code look less nice.

[Sean de Wolski]

Hi Jan, I agree this can be confusing. I would guess the reason the empty lines are required is because we encourage comment wrapping which could put a <*# at the wrong place.

Certainly this is worthy of an enhancement request though.

[Jan]

Ah, now I got it. See this example:

if a == b
  Command1

    Command2
  end

In the original text, the two lines inside the code have the same indentation level:

 if a == b
   Command1

   Command2
 end

But when interpreted by the parser in the forum, the blank line starts a new block and there are not 2 spaces in front of "Command2", therefore it is treated as pre-formatted text.

What is <*# ??