Typophile

Typophile feature requests

Nick Sherman

Having recently donated $100 to Typophile, I felt I could propose the following feature requests for Typophile without coming across as overly entitled…

Sorted in descending order of desire:

  1. Personalized RSS feed to follow multiple threads
    I've noticed some people adding a solitary period as a comment on interesting threads, presumably so that they will see related updates on their user "Track" page. This seems an indication to me of a desire for some better way to follow threads without commenting on them. The most simple way of doing this would probably be to have "Follow this" links, which would add threads to a user-customized listing / RSS stream. Even if individual RSS feeds existed for every thread, a single "Threads I'm Following" feed that was managed on the site would keep my RSS subscription list more manageable.
  2. Proper HTML blockquotes
    Other than the obvious benefit of having appropriate semantic formatting, having blockquotes in the allowed HTML tags might also introduce some consistency in how users respond to each other's remarks; currently, some people will quote using emphasis tags, others will start each line with angle brackets, etc.
  3. Permalinks for specific comments
    I realize that if I really want to, I can view a thread's source code and get anchor names for each comment and link accordingly, but it's tedious. I'm not alone in the desire to have the functionality more accessible, and it doesn't need to be much more complicated than linking each comment's timestamp.

If any of these features exist and I'm just not seeing them, please feel free to correct me.

Stephen Coles

I think these may be my top 3 too!

4. Display "attached" images in RSS feeds.

joeclark

(a) Even Coles has his own “feature requests,” and (b) this is supposed to go in Joe’s Corner. It’s curious that our ostensibly omnipresent “moderators” haven’t moved it there yet.

Two of your three requests I made months ago. So don’t hold your breath. And your $100 was, it would seem, wasted.

pers0n

Just curious why this forums uses custom code? I know they want to have it integrated with he rest of the site, but if they used a free message board like SMF or something they wouldnt have to deal with most of these issues. Their might be newer ones or some spam issues, but even those can be dealt with easier.

Nick Sherman

From what I understand, it's built on a highly customized install of Drupal, which apparently makes it hard to edit.

With such a momentous development as web fonts just coming over the horizon, Typophile is becoming a forum for more and more conversations that are literally changing the future of the type industry. With that in mind, some of these requested features – as rinky-dink as they may seem – are perhaps more valuable now than ever.

Zara Evens

Perhaps my comments don't really mean anything to most people, but personally, I feel your pain - in all these areas and more. As a matter of fact, I have a very long running list of my own complaints for the site.

I'm not here to make excuses, though I have a pocketful of them, I just want to say we are listening and I am going to do my best to try to make something happen to address many of the bugs and needed features for the site.

Thanks all for your patience.

Sye Robertson

Any updates?

Jared Benson

1. I've been trying to make this happen, but am running into some technical issues beyond my pay grade. So stay tuned.

2. Blockquote: Tag has been added. (enjoy) - Current style is an indent + italic. Let me know if there's another style you prefer - but I'm not a fan of nesting rectangles within rectangles as I've seen on other sites.

This is an example of what the blockquote tag looks like when text is rendered within it.

3. Working on it.

Stephen Coles

2. Blockquote: Tag has been added.

Hurrah! Simple text formatting has never made me so happy.

Jared Benson

#3 Update: The timestamp at the left of each comment is now directly linkable. Copy and paste the link anywhere you'd like.

My PHP skills just went up 2 points for a sum total of 2.

Nick Sherman
  1. Blockquote: Tag has been added.

Great to hear! This blockquote style seems as good as anything. Though … it is a bit awkward to have the indentation at the beginning of a comment. The only other thing I might try would be the indent but with a subtle vertical rule to the left (?) Maybe it'd be overkill. I trust your judgement.

Also: per-comment permalinks are great!

brianskywalker

Great! This will makes things a lot easier. You might also want to put in a line like:

blockquote em { font-style: regular; }

so that emphasis will still be emphasis. :)

A <pre> would also be very useful!

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