Should Forums Expand BB Code to Include HTML for Enhanced Text Editing?

[junglebeast]

Please add a BB code for

.  This would also indirectly add support for other missing BB codes like strike through text, which could at least be done via html support.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Allowing HTML can enable users to compromise PF's security.

 

[CRGreathouse]

What HTML features do you want? Unrestricted HTML would bring down the site as soon as someone does one of thousands of obvious hacks, but if all you want is (say) abbr title="blah" then perhaps something could be done.

 

[Four]

It would be cool to have javascript support; that way I can make posts be interactive. Or perhaps small javascript programs that take input and do math.

But that will lead to cookie theft. But if you can have something like that it would be so cool

 

[CRGreathouse]

I don't think there's any controlled way to allow javascript. It allows much more potential damage than (otherwise) unrestricted HTML.

 

[nvn]

Where is a Help link to list or explain what BB tags or character entities we can hard-code ourselves (in Basic Editor) on PF when writing reply posts (using characters that are storable and portable across platforms in only a bare-bones, plain text editor)? If this link doesn't exist yet, could you please add a Help link to list the possible tags on PF? Thanks.

EDIT: OK, I finally found it. I lucked into finding the PF https://www.physicsforums.com/misc.php?do=bbcode" help page, using google, but could not find an easy way to access it from PF. Can you add the above link to the Basic Editor page for posting replies?

I also lucked into finding you can enter certain, much-needed html, such as &# 8804; (without the space); but strangely, & le; currently fails. Why? It seems PF should accept the corresponding named character entities. Could you list the allowed tags on the above BB code page? And could you please make the named character entity tags (and & nbsp;) allowable, also? (They could easily be translated by your editor.)

 

[robphy]

Sorry to hijack this thread...
but here are some ideas for mathematical-graphic features

• SVG support
  - simple example: http://www.december.com/html/demo/hellosvg.html
  - more complex example (generated by http://www.inkscape.org/" )
• LiveGraphics3D support
  look at the html-source of the various example pages:
  http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~kraus/LiveGraphics3D/examples.html
  Essentially, one can be allowed to insert PARAM tags between applet tags
  

  <APPLET ARCHIVE="live.jar" CODEBASE=".." CODE="Live.class" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=300 ALIGN=LEFT HSPACE=10>
  <PARAM NAME=INPUT VALUE="
  Graphics3D[{{PointSize[0.0381], RGBColor[0.4392, 0.502, 0.5647], 
        Point[{2.239, -2.685, 1.669}], PointSize[0.0381], ...
  ...
  </APPLET>

  The code is based on Mathematica... but it looks easy enough to compose some simple code by hand... without having access to Mathematica. It seems that one can just use a PF-local copy live.jar. (Details on usage restrictions: http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~kraus/LiveGraphics3D/download.html )

 

[junglebeast]

What HTML features do you want? Unrestricted HTML would bring down the site as soon as someone does one of thousands of obvious hacks, but if all you want is (say) abbr title="blah" then perhaps something could be done.

Well as I mentioned in the original post, PF has a very limited subset of BB commands..one of the ones that's missing is strikethrough text, which is useful when you want to show how you're editing someone else's post.

Another example is that uisng HTML code you can link to an image while automatically resizing it, so that it isn't gigantic