newlines in linux

[EdH]

My machine is Fedora with Firefox, so mine has nothing to do with MS. I did try an Ubuntu machine, also with Firefox, and the same behavior was observed. I don't mind the extra lines as much as I mind the "junk" in the code blocks. But, in either case, I've been living with it (and bring it up occasionally) for quite some time. I believe LaurV addressed this a while back, as well.

[Xyzzy]

If anyone can figure out a fix we will gladly implement it.

[LaurV]

This is a very old problem (at least 5 years, you can see many of my posts edited with the reason "spacing", it refers exactly to this issue, and it can be tracked when it appeared, because I was quite prompt to rant about it - it was after some upgrade of the forum software). Mike said repeatedly that he doesn't have a solution, and we can help if we know how. We don't know either, but we can put our minds together and maybe solve it. It bothers me as much as it bothers you, multiplied by M51.

From experience: it is not related to browser/OS, but related to CR/LF line termination. If our OS/browser uses 0x0D+0x0A termination (windoze style), we always** have additional new lines, like each termination character is treated individually. We "work around" by copy/paste a LF termination instead of pressing enter (you go to the end of a paragraph that terminates "properly" and press "shift plus right arrow" once to mark the LF (you won't see any effect on screen) then you have a "proper termination" in clipboard, which you can paste every time instead of pressing enter

Also, if you use any "clever" text editor, like notepad++, or pn2, etc., where you can specify what kind of terminator you need for the text lines, and you type your reply there (which is faster anyhow ) and you copy/paste it to the forum, the "*nix" variants never have issues. Using "preview post" before posting, always help too, not only with the spacing, but also will refrain you from posting in a moment of anger, reviewing the post will calm you and help refining the ideas.

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** the "always" have exceptions, which makes the issue even strange: for example, the additional line is omitted when the paragraph ends with a monkey (smiley, tongue, whatever) or (interesting!) when the new paragraph/sentence starts with a space or a dash. The space is purged out when the post is sent, and there is no additional line added, so everything look normal. In the past we assumes is related to some special formatting the forum software does, which must be disabled. In this particular post I used firefox, windows 10, and no trick (i.e. I pressed enter after each paragraph, but all end with monkeys or the next starts with a dash) and no external editor. There is no edit needed after posting (like I did in the past, for "spacing" reasons). I deliberately won't insert the attached picture in text.

[LaurV]

Sorry for replying to myself, I wanted to keep the former post unedited, as I claimed it appears right, without edit.
Here is the "special format" reference I was talking about, related to spaces at the end of the line, etc, but the link given in that post is dead, as duolingo had some facelifts meantime, and the forum is obsolete, but there is still a wiki on fandom which keep (most of) the talks. I assume we have a similar problem, some markup language that expands the characters at the beginning/end of paragraphs into formatting commands, buried somewhere in the forum settings, and that has to be disabled.

[S485122]

I never have the problem whatever the OS or Browser. But I use the simple editor to write my posts. Of course I have to insert tags myself when I need them. Except the [url] tag, the one I use most is [noparse], for instance to explain tags or to preserve smileys from being degraded to emoticons.
If you look at "User CP" / "Settings & Options" / "Edit Options" / "Miscellaneous Options", there are three options for the editor : basic, enhanced and WYSIWYG. I suppose it is only the last one that gives the problem.

[LaurV]

Space at the end of the line, followed by a single enter

Enter alone, without a space at the end of this line
Enter after a space at the end, but the next paragraph starts with a space too

this line starts with a space and it has just an enter at the end
this line has a space at the end, before the enter

Now, that's interesting... Mike? Did you change something?

the former line has space + enter at the end, this line has 2 enters, no space


preview was used before posting, no edit after preview; before clicking preview there were no empty lines in the text above, as one single enter was used for every line, and there was a single empty line before this paragraph; after clicking preview, the text is as you see it, in both the preview and the edit boxes

[LaurV]

So, it seems that currently, the CR/LF is expanded only if it comes after a blank character (either space, another CR, another LF, another CR/LF, etc). When alone, it stays.

[LaurV]

after s48's post
test
test2

test3
ha! (this paragraph is edited after clicking preview) - it seems to works as expected. Thanks S48. We will miss the wysiwyg feature for a while, I mean to see bolds like bolds, etc, and not like typing TeX

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by xilman

All versions of Firefux that I have used over the years, including this one, have had no such problem.

Perhaps Firefux works better under Linux?

I assume the typo above was not deliberate.

I use Firefox very sparingly on my Ubuntu box. It seems a bit awkward for some reason.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by storm5510

I assume the typo above was not deliberate.

I use Firefox very sparingly on my Ubuntu box. It seems a bit awkward for some reason.

I'm sorry..

I suffer from Irritable Vowel Syndrome.

[bbb120]

Originally Posted by SethTro

I don't know if this affects others


Everytime I add a newline on this forum it gets expanded to two newlines


I assume this is to do with "\n" vs "\n\r".



My "fix" is to preview the post, remove the extra newlines and then submit the post and god help me if I make an edits when previewing the post.

use vim, set ff=unix and return
then copy and paste