input formats

In Drupal, an Input Format is a chain of Input Filters.

The term Input Filter is quite accurate when it is describing Filters for security. It is rather important to filter out dangerous HTML code, such as XSS scripts, masquerading, overwhelming CSS, etc.. to protect a site from malicious content.

There are also other types of Input Filters, but these are not really filters at all, but rather, Converters or Renderers.

Through building and maintaining the Better Formats module I have gained insight in many different ways that I and others would like Drupal's input format system to work. There are 2 key points that make the current system in need of help.

1. Every site has different needs and use cases.
2. Current format system is not extensible.

There are 3 categories of features that site admins need to be able to control.

1. Allowed formats
2. Default formats
3. Display options

Greetings everyone! I'm throwing in my hat for participation in the WYSIWYG discussion.

As we've noted in previous discussions, we currently have a serious problem with WYSIWYG editors not being Input Format aware. In D7 we'll get a nice luxury of #input_format (sounds awesome Gabór!), and we'll easily be able to combine the two into a single, well themed element. I've rigged up a temporary solution for D6 that I've posted to the the WYSIWYG project issue queue (patch forthcoming).

Here's a graffle of how I imagine the Input Format system working with the WYSIWYG framework.

Note: this is totally a mockup it is not a new WYSIWYG editor of any sort.

Edit: There is now an offical project page on d.o. The module is nearly ready for a beta release, so the more people that test it, the better.

I have created a filter module for 6.x that in it's current state will allow posts containing:

[item]1234[/item]

-or-

[item]Earthwarden[/item] (for example)

to be converted to WoW DB links. The javascript for mouseover popups is embedded, and results are cached for performance.

.

.

As some of you know, I've recently taken over maintenance of Inline and Image Assist, and initiated the Wysiwyg project. That was not only caused by personal interest, but also to take the necessary steps to realize the long awaited Inline API. You might ask yourself, what those three modules have in common or to do with each other at all: They deal with user input, allow to embed complex contents into a content, and provide an interactive GUI for that. If you already had the chance to work with them, you already know that there is a rather hidden, non-obvious hard-dependency between them.

Although I'd really like to discuss both topics (Inline and Wysiwyg support) separately, the gained experience on these topics enforces us to discuss them concurrently. The following mockup hopefully explains why: (see attachment to view in full size)

Drupal is formatting the user input by applying a set of customized filters before the content is send to visitor’s browser. In other words the user input is stored untouched in the database (except the SQL injection filtering) and then the filter module is performing code cleanup and formatting at the HTML output. In fact the input formats are... output formats :)

Hi,

I am interested about your favorite way to post your forum topics/comments.

I'll classify it into 3 categories:
1. The way it done in Drupal/IPB, simple text area maybe with BB Code/Html
2. The way it done in vBulletin. Cool plain text editor, with user friendly BB Code/Smileys buttons and wysiwyg option.
3. Using advanced wysiwyg editors like TinyMCE or FCKEditor

Link to fckeditor demo:
http://www.fckeditor.net/demo/

Link to TinyMCE demo:
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/example_full.php?example=true

Which of the wysiwyg editors you like more? TinyMCE or FckEditor?

I think my favorite way is like it done in vBulletin, but what's your favorite option? What will fit best the DruBB project?

I've finally spent a little time with input formats. I really want to offer a text => markup syntax since I find those the most comfortable way to write. So I settled on Markdown, which borrows heavily from email conventions. If you write in email style your post will come out as you wish.

The following filters are running on this site

• markdown. also see markdown extra syntax. provided by marksmarty.module
• codefilter
• urlfilter

FYI, here is the above list in markdown syntax:

I have the following running on this site
* [markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax). also see [markdown extra syntax](http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/). provided by [marksmarty.module](http://drupal.org/node/9838)
* codefilter](http://drupal.org/project/codefilter)
* [urlfilter](http://drupal.org/project/urlfilter)

I looked around and some posts do look a bit different from before the filter. In most cases, you just have to get rid of hacks you used because I didn't have these filters! please report any problems or suggestions.