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In FB8, if I change the font, size, color, bold, underline, or italic, etc, settings, while typing, the changes do not take effect. That is:

  1. With no selection, change font.
  2. Type.

I expected the typing to follow the changed font (it does in Firefox), but I just get the default font at the default size.

If I highlight a block of text and change an attribute, the change shows up, and typing in the middle of the block will keep the proper attributes.

Further: why can't we just use markdown?

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2 Answers

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It sounds like that may be a bug with the underlying wiki editor we're using: CKEditor (see Jude's response).

As for why not markdown: We considered it...very carefully. So carefully that we actually started to head down that path when we started working on the new editor for FogBugz 8. The problem was that given the large number of existing customers we had (and their massive collection of wiki articles), we couldn't justify the loss in fidelity:

  • tables would break (or be stuck in raw HTML)
  • fonts and colors would be lost (or be left behind as gross <span> tags)
  • the Wiki Block framework would need to be completely rewritten (and also find a way to convert existing wiki blocks)
  • existing customers that didn't already know markdown would need to learn a new way of writing and editing their wiki articles
  • complications of trying to convert existing wiki articles into markdown:
    • We didn't feel like we could auto-convert our customers carefully crafted wiki articles into markdown and potentially lose a large portion of their formatting in the process. Do we allow both old-style WYSIWYG articles and markdown? Can you convert back and forth between the two?
  • etc, etc, etc.

If we were just adding a wiki to our product now, markdown would be a top contender, but given the large number of legacy customers and wikis we had, it just wasn't a suitable option for FogBugz 8.

Of course, that's not to say that it couldn't be added in the future. :)

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I don't see why you couldn't let us pick which format each page would be written in, either with CKEditor or Markdown, and not try to bridge the gap as you describe here. Other wiki products do that, or let the administrator pick a markup for the entire wiki. My boss would prefer the CKEditor interface, but I'd prefer a faster way to entire stuff than using my mouse. – Jim Zajkowski Sep 10 2010 at 3:12
We could in theory support both formats, and that remains a possibility for the future, but we had more than enough work for this release just supporting one format. – Ted♦ Sep 13 2010 at 19:58
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Update: Fixed!

The underlying bug is that WebKit won't permit styles to be added or removed from empty selections. This included both the the common styles (Bold, Italic, Underline, ...) and the more advanced styles like fonts and colors.

A workaround has been implemented as of FogBugz 8.0.26. Regrettably, the fix cannot be perfect until WebKit's bug is fixed. In the meantime, a solution for the vast majority of scenarios has been implemented by way of JavaScript sneakiness.

Applying and removing styles should now work as expected in WebKit-based browsers.

Hi Jim, thanks for the bug report!

It turns out that this is a bug in CKEditor, which is what our editor is built on top of. I've filed a case against their team and I'll be sure to patch the FogBugz wiki editor as soon as they put a fix together. Rumor has it that it's actually a webkit bug.

If it takes too long, we'll cook up something on our own.

As for Markdown, I think db's answer covered the topic well.

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