Is there a wiki-style "Playground" on this site?

[qubit1]

I’d really like a place where I could play around with formatting for this site, the way that many wikis have “Playgrounds” or playground-style pages.

This would make it easier for us to experiment with new types of links or formatting without spamming the front page with nonsense questions or bogus edits.

[qubit1]

testing fdo#1234 syntax

[cloph]

you just created one…

[qubit1]

Testing comment delay

[oweng]

In-line code: ~/.bashrc; Bug link: fdo#123456; Internet link: wikipedia; Italic text: italic; Bold text: bold.

[qubit1]

@manj_k – Re: comment syntax, I suggest that we enable the " Same editor as for questions and answers". Thoughts?

[manj_k]

@qubit1 , @oweng – The problem: Every new user can add a comment (no longer restricted with karma points ≥3). [1] – How to keep a check on spam? — [1] how do i create an assocition with windows 8 mail – AleBazz’s profile.

[qubit1]

@manj_k, @oweng – Yeah, potential for SPAM isn’t good. I wonder if there’s a way we could give simple comments to users w/karma < 3?

[oweng]

@qubit1, @manj_k, I admit that spam is a more difficult issue for an ask site. Over on the alternate forum, where I am an administrator all new and updated posts are clearly visible upon login. I am rather ruthless with spam, deleting all posts and the user account out of hand. Isn’t @qubit1’s idea of a two-tiered comment system (3 points for basic text, 30 points for insert clickable links + formatting) what we have now? Is it just the formatting aspect that is missing?

[qubit1]

@oweng, @manj_k – What do you think about enabling the editor for a while (a week or so) and seeing if SPAM picks up?

[oweng]

@qubit1, @manj_k, I am OK with this, but then again I am not an admin (which is fine) so will not see the behind the scenes data if there is any. I will keep an eye on SPAM. Being GMT+10 may mean I don’t see as much as others i.e., during peak periods.

[manj_k]

@qubit1, @oweng – I agree to enable “Editor for the comments: Same editor as for questions and answers” – see also Bug 67084.

[CyanCG]

It seems that most Markdown implementations allow the definition of reference-style links. Does this work here?

The LibreOffice suite is free software and is cross-platform.

Yes, it does work! The definition of the link is hidden as it should be. It goes like this:

[libo-on-wikipedia]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice "LibreOffice on Wikipedia"

[oweng]

Just to be clear for others, the link text anchor in the above is [LibreOffice][libo-on-wikipedia] which is then followed later by the link citation shown in the code example.

[qubit1]

Syntax test (fdo#1234) here (@qubit)

[qubit1]

Comment on an old answer

[qubit1]

new comment with fdo#1234 and blo#2345 in it.

[qubit1]

quoting styles

Blockquote

PRE/CODE here
foo@bar:~/$ for i in blah; do echo harumph; done

[qubit1]

Let’s play with code!

Here is some code within backticks(0).

Does this mark as code?
I = 5; Hope = 0; So = "period"

Yep, that works. Now for syntax highlighting?

a = 5
puts "Superdog " + 5
a.each{|beach, ball|
  some = stuff = here
  puts "is important"
}

Nope, doesn’t seem to have support for syntax highlighting like on GitHub

---

Note to self: Maybe just file request w/upstream now…

[qubit1]

Code commenting styles – what works, what doesn’t work, etc.

    /* Some C-style code */
    #include <stdio.h>
    
    int main(void) {
      printf("hello, world\n"); /* End of line comment */
    }

C works pretty well.

Java?

    // Some Java code
    class HelloLibO {
      public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!"); // End of line comment
      }
    }

Java looks pretty good!

How about Python?

    # A Hello-world function (with some extra stuff thrown in).
    def HelloWorld(s):
        print("Hello world")
        for foo in bar
          if passes(foo)
            print '%s' % foo
          else:
            print "Fails!"

Multi-line comments?

    """ Multi-line comment in Python
    probably isn't going to work right now
    """

No, not working too well.

LibreOffice Basic?

    ' This is a Hello World snippet.
    print "Hello, world!"

Hmm… the formatter hates the unclosed single-quote. Let’s try again using ‘REM’

    REM This is a Hello World snippet.
    print "Hello, world!"

A little better, but the comment is still being highlighted like code, not a comment. Let’s try again, using either a C+±style or Bash-style comment.

    REM // This is a Hello World function.
    REM # Hopefully these comments will render as expected!
    Sub Main
      print "Hello, world!" REM # End of line comment.
    End Sub

Here’s some more LO Basic as a formatting example (from this question):

    Sub Main
      Set thisBook = ThisComponent
      studentsSheet = thisBook.Sheets.getByName("Students")

      i = 0
      Do
        c = studentsSheet.getCellByPosition(0, i)

        REM // Stop creating sheets for students once we find a
        REM // row with no name.
        If c.Type = com.sun.star.table.CellContentType.EMPTY Then
          print "Exiting: Found row with no student name."
          Exit Do
        EndIf

        studentName = c.String
        sNew = thisBook.createInstance("com.sun.star.sheet.Spreadsheet")
        thisBook.Sheets.insertByName(studentName, sNew)
        i = i + 1

      REM // Sanity-check on looping forever. We don't expect 
      REM // to have over 1000 students.
      Loop Until i > 1000
    End Sub

Here’s an upstream post about the code behind the syntax highlighting: http://askbot.org/en/question/3026/syntax-highlighting/

Looks like it’s https://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/

Also see https://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README.html – looks like it might be possible to pass-along the language name and get a bit better highlighting. We might need to add a new language handler if LO Basic and Visual Basic use a different grammar.