The new "markdown" formatting in forms editor

[Eric Stephan]

Exciting that you Dimagi folks have implemented the new Markdown formatting in the forms editor.

I am curious, I am in the middle of one operation that that the markdown feature actually makes less convenient.   Is there a way to disable it globally?  (I see I can turn it off for just that one question.) 

Thanks!

Eric

[Amelia Sagoff]

Hi Eric,

Sorry to hear that - would you mind telling us a bit more about the operation you're doing? Maybe we can brainstorm some workarounds.

Thanks,

Amelia

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[Eric Stephan]

Hello all -- I've been so busy, I sure took my time to reply to this thread about the implementation of "markdown" in the forms editor.

Here is the situation in which this feature winds up actually hindering me.

I have several long forms where I use question numbering in each question's text. So before the text of each question, there is text like 1., 2., 3., 25., etc.

The moment that markdown was introduced, whenever I go to edit one of those questions, it automatically switches to markdown formatting because it sees the numbering in the text.

But that is unhelpful for me, because some of my numbering is actually 5b., 5c., etc., which does not get included in markdown.

And the markdown numbering, once it actually appears in the app, changes its behavior to use automatic dynamic numbering, so it handles the numbering itself, starting with 1 for the first item, rather than observing the number that I had entered.    But note that my own question numbering has to remain aligned with the numbering used in other related forms, so in many cases I force mine to be non sequential... after 7 might come 10, because I want #10 on form 1 to be the same as #10 on forms 2 through 4, etc.

So as it stands, each time I edit the text of a question, it immediately turns on markdown and I have to manually turn it off each time. And those times that I fail to turn it off, when the app is published and appears on the smartphone, that question will be numbered 1., even if it appears in the middle of my form after 37, and in the question text in the form editor it was entered as 38.

So, for me, it would be ideal if there was a way to either (1) tell the app configuration or the form editor to please turn off the markdown functionality overall for this one app or form,  or (2) to simply disable the numbering feature of markdown, since that's the only thing that causes a problem for me. 

Thanks!

Eric

[William Pride]

Eric,

Could you report a bug about markdown automatically turning on? As far as I know that should not be happening.

Also, just for the group record this numbering behavior is actually spec compliant - you can read some discussion about this here.

Best,

Will

[Eric Stephan]

Hi there -- I just submitted an "issue" for now, thanks. If it would not spring automatically into formatting mode, but instead required a person to click the link in order to to turn on formatting, that would fix my problem I think!

Also -- yep, I didn't think that the "numbering starting at 1" was a bug, I knew it was the intended behavior for markdown. I was just describing one additional aspect of the problem for me. 

Eric

[Eric Stephan]

sorry, here is the bug page for the issue I created: http://manage.dimagi.com/default.asp?179722_d6ut350j58gdqshh