Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,353 answers , 22,786 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  Should we have a manual "preview post" button?

+ 4 like - 0 dislike
2218 views

While the auto-preview function in SE is annoying when I try to write a very long answer/question, no preview at all isn't convenient either. In fact I would say "no preview" creats a technical barrier to especially new users, for new users(talking from my own experience) would like to test by trial and error and learn how to compose a nice-looking post. For example I was just trying to figure out if double dollars $$ would create a centered math formula, but it seemed to be impossible without actually posting a question.

Could we have a manual "preview post" button? I remember www.physicsforums.com has this function, which helps a lot.

Aside: By the way let me just test double dollar here, and edit away if necessary,

$$E=mc^2$$

asked Mar 21, 2014 in Feature Request by Jia Yiyang (2,640 points) [ revision history ]
edited Mar 25, 2014 by Jia Yiyang
Most voted comments show all comments

This has been brought up before multiple times, but we already have it. For LaTeX input, you can use double-dollar/single-dollar signs, but you can get a proper WYSIWYG sort of LaTeX through the \(\Sigma\) button in the top row of the editor.  

Ok, thanks, understood and settled. But even just for plain text, it is would be nice to preview it in a larger display space when it gets too long.

@jia there's a maximise icon for the editor, what you type is exactly what you get, and the latex editor is great in that it updates just the equation, rather than the whole post. The fact that it hasn't a preview may seem confusing at first, but makes sense when you see how it functions.

@physicsnewbie Yes, thanks for reminding us about that. Maybe the icon of the expander could be changed to "Preview". 

@physicsnewbie Right, thanks for pointing this out!

Most recent comments show all comments

@JiaYiyang I don't think that is worth the time that Polarkernel will have to spend to implement this. It is WYSIWYG, and the space can be expanded. 

Maybe a full preview can be developped later, during or after the public beta. I admit that such a preview always helps me to debug my posts too, but I think the most important thing is the LaTex preview which we already have.

1 Answer

+ 2 like - 0 dislike

Preview is provided as an editor plugin in the directory qa-plugin/wysiwyg-editor/plugins, all you need to do is install it into the editor. It doesn't require coding on polarkernel's part. I think it should be turned on.

answered Mar 25, 2014 by Ron Maimon (7,730 points) [ no revision ]

I don't understand the need for a preview on a WYSIWYG editor. 

@dimension10, one small use can be e.g. preivew it when my text contains double-dollar-centered equations, I haven't figured out how to preview it in the present settings. I would love to have it, though not at the expense of too much technical trouble.

Ok, I realise that  centred equations are not done by the sigma button. So +1.   

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
$\varnothing\hbar$ysicsOverflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...