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I've been suffering from this one too so I'll share the most annoying part for me. I frequently have reasons to type out glob patterns generally in backticks. T

I've been suffering from this one too so I'll share the most annoying part for me. I frequently have reasons to type out glob patterns generally in backticks. The interface for this is completely broken in the new WYSIWYG editor. Here's what happens when I try to type: `/<asterisk>/<asterisk>`, things work normally up until the second "<asterisk>" at which point the "/" between them becomes gets bolded, which makes no sense, because you can't bold text inside of backticks. Then when I input the second "`" it becomes a monospace block containing `//` and the "<asterisk>"s have completely ceased to exist. They also somehow broke the tab key for tabbing through users when you're trying to @ someone, after the first tab it just starts refocusing your input boxes rather than selecting different users. Edit: Ironically, HN's built in markdown seems to understand asterisks, but not backticks, which leads to behavior similar to Slack's that I'm ranting about, I've replaced them with <asterisk> to make it clear.

somebodythere 7y ago
There's some delicious irony in those slashes getting swallowed by HN's markdown parser.
- LilBytes 7y ago
  I spent far too long looking at that and thinking why is the first or second slash drunk.
- jdoliner 7y ago
  Oh god I didn't even realize, one second I'll try to edit this.
- mdaniel 7y ago
  HN does not use markdown, otherwise a lot more formatting would work; it's four leading spaces to code block something, and asterisks for italics, and that's it AFAIK
timcederman 7y ago
If you hit ctrl/cmd-z after it automatically changes something you can keep going like you used to. e.g. try typing `foo`, and then hit ctrl-z, it'll revert it to plain text. I've found that useful for getting around the autoformatting.
- igetspam 7y ago
  That's ridiculous, right?. Cmd/Ctrl-z has a defined function. Slack is hijacking that because they've decided that decades of established patterns are wrong and creating another one-off for their very specific use case is the right thing to do. The hubris...
  - Doxin 7y ago
    It's not really that radical of a thing to do though. Word has the same sort of behaviour except utilising backspace. If you type " - " in word it creates a bulleted list, hit backspace once and you get the literal text you entered. I'm not entirely sure which is the less-worse option here but at least it's not a wildly new concept, just a different button.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    There are other products out there that put automatic changes on the undo stack. I regularly encounter this behaviour in Visual Studio: pasting code in the editor is decomposed into pasting text and reformatting it. So the first Ctrl-Z reverts the code to the exact text you copied. The second Ctrl-Z will remove it.
- ikornaselur 7y ago
  Interestingly, if I do that, it will then send it unformatted. I want to format in the actual chat, just not in my input.
pbreit 7y ago
Your asterisk example works OK for me. As does the blog writer's "when you do `foo()` it foos the bar".
- narrowtux 7y ago
  Yeah, seems this was fixed pretty quickly by not parsing the ` immediately but only after you've entered the closing `
- rerx 7y ago
  I could not reproduce the example issues from the blog post, but the dual asterices inside the back ticks still fail for me. The upside is that it's now possible to have bold passages in monospaced text. I missed that before.
  - indosauros 7y ago
    Here's a gif of the second issue from the blog post, just reproduced on my client https://i.imgur.com/X8FZJhi.gif https://i.imgur.com/X8FZJhi.gif
    - rerx 7y ago
      Ah, earlier today the Slack app on my Mac had not updated yet -- there I experience the same issue. The web client on Firefox works better, though: https://imgur.com/a/X53iIlm https://imgur.com/a/X53iIlm Edit: On Chrome it's broken for me too....
      - pbreit 7y ago
        Well, that just looks like a bug then. I think the concern is mostly about what Slack was actually trying to achieve.
mijoharas 7y ago
Interestingly, I suffered from the exact same asterisk problem last week, but it's now been fixed on my slack! Good to see that they are shipping improvements to it now.

somebodythere 7y ago

There's some delicious irony in those slashes getting swallowed by HN's markdown parser.

LilBytes 7y ago
I spent far too long looking at that and thinking why is the first or second slash drunk.
jdoliner 7y ago
Oh god I didn't even realize, one second I'll try to edit this.
mdaniel 7y ago
HN does not use markdown, otherwise a lot more formatting would work; it's four leading spaces to code block something, and asterisks for italics, and that's it AFAIK

timcederman 7y ago

If you hit ctrl/cmd-z after it automatically changes something you can keep going like you used to. e.g. try typing `foo`, and then hit ctrl-z, it'll revert it to plain text. I've found that useful for getting around the autoformatting.

igetspam 7y ago
That's ridiculous, right?. Cmd/Ctrl-z has a defined function. Slack is hijacking that because they've decided that decades of established patterns are wrong and creating another one-off for their very specific use case is the right thing to do. The hubris...
- Doxin 7y ago
  It's not really that radical of a thing to do though. Word has the same sort of behaviour except utilising backspace. If you type " - " in word it creates a bulleted list, hit backspace once and you get the literal text you entered. I'm not entirely sure which is the less-worse option here but at least it's not a wildly new concept, just a different button.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  There are other products out there that put automatic changes on the undo stack. I regularly encounter this behaviour in Visual Studio: pasting code in the editor is decomposed into pasting text and reformatting it. So the first Ctrl-Z reverts the code to the exact text you copied. The second Ctrl-Z will remove it.
ikornaselur 7y ago
Interestingly, if I do that, it will then send it unformatted. I want to format in the actual chat, just not in my input.

pbreit 7y ago

Your asterisk example works OK for me. As does the blog writer's "when you do `foo()` it foos the bar".

narrowtux 7y ago
Yeah, seems this was fixed pretty quickly by not parsing the ` immediately but only after you've entered the closing `
rerx 7y ago
I could not reproduce the example issues from the blog post, but the dual asterices inside the back ticks still fail for me. The upside is that it's now possible to have bold passages in monospaced text. I missed that before.
- indosauros 7y ago
  Here's a gif of the second issue from the blog post, just reproduced on my client https://i.imgur.com/X8FZJhi.gif https://i.imgur.com/X8FZJhi.gif
  - rerx 7y ago
    Ah, earlier today the Slack app on my Mac had not updated yet -- there I experience the same issue. The web client on Firefox works better, though: https://imgur.com/a/X53iIlm https://imgur.com/a/X53iIlm Edit: On Chrome it's broken for me too....
    - pbreit 7y ago
      Well, that just looks like a bug then. I think the concern is mostly about what Slack was actually trying to achieve.

mijoharas 7y ago

Interestingly, I suffered from the exact same asterisk problem last week, but it's now been fixed on my slack! Good to see that they are shipping improvements to it now.