Feature Proposal: Add a little UI to make it easier to escape TML

Motivation

I find that I frequently write Foswiki Markup in a text editor, and then mechanically replace % with $percnt, " with \", etc if I need to put the markup inside and %IF macro, for example. This feature proposal is to add a little UI to the 'Edit wiki text' editor, to make it easier to do this transformations.

Description and Documentation

This could be implemented using a %TWISTY to keep the UI clean. It could even go under the existing "Edit help" twisty. Possible UI:

TML:

Examples

Impact

Implementation

TML: $ & < > % , " Escape Un Escape

-- Contributors: KipLubliner - 20 Feb 2012

Discussion

Great idea. I've often wanted something similar. We should look into doing a http://codemirror.net/ editor

-- PaulHarvey - 23 Oct 2011

you know, this should be a pretty easy thing to add to the ComponentEditContrib? TinyMCE? plugin demo i made - it would be pretty cool..

-- SvenDowideit - 24 Oct 2011

I think this would be a great thing to do for 1.2..... all we need is a committed developer.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 17 Feb 2012

Sven - this is the only page that shows up if I google for ComponentEditContrib. Is that TinyMCE? plugin accessible anywhere?

-- MichaelTempest - 18 Feb 2012

Well I do have commit access now, so I could commit to working on this. But I'm not sure about what is the best way to do so. If someone posts an implementation plan, I will set my name.

-- KipLubliner - 19 Feb 2012

I would personally do it entirely in Javascript.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 20 Feb 2012

As it turned out, I need this right now ... so I whipped it up (see Implementation section)

-- KipLubliner - 20 Feb 2012

Nice one! Though I suggest you move the functions into the foswiki namespace and give them more intention-revealing names (escape and unescape are rather general) e.g. foswiki.escapeTML and foswiki.unescapeTML. I can see them being useful in other places.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 21 Feb 2012

Very nice ... but I think there is a bug. I think backslashes also need to be (un)escaped.

-- MichaelTempest - 21 Feb 2012

Michael, I implemented unescape(\") → " What additional transformations should be included?

-- KipLubliner - 22 Feb 2012

Based on the list of format $tokens in FormattedSearch, I think you have all that is needed. Nice

-- MichaelTempest - 22 Feb 2012