topic Re: Formatting Forum posts in Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc

Formatting Forum posts

pvmb — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:33:56 GMT

Does anybody know - or know how to find out - what are the hiden markup codes that the Forum Lithium (Spit!) system uses to markup posts entered via the forum Reply editor?

What I have in mind is, I want to do ALL post editing off line in MS Notepad before simply dumping my posts in the Lithium Reply box. It would help if I could pre-format the Notepad texts for, at the very least, Bold, Italic and Underline, if I knew what the text coding was for these.

TIA.

<b>Does this work?</b> [b]Does this work?[/b]

NO!

Re: Formatting Forum posts

PhilipHeyes — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:52:47 GMT

What I can see is if I do basic formatting in MS Word I can copy / paste that in as a reply

E.g

Plain

Bold

Italic

Re: Formatting Forum posts

Mav — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:53:17 GMT

@pvmb

You have the bssic idea but once you've formatted your text in, say, Notepad you need to click on the three dots at the top next to Macros (once in Desktop mode) then click on HTML then past your text including code. You only get a line or two to see but once that is closed you can click on preview. Editing in the HTML is a pain especially on a mobile device. I have never found a definitive list of commands but give me a few hours and I will try and give a list of the most frequently used ones here.

Re: Formatting Forum posts

RobPN — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:00:33 GMT

@pvmb

If you click the 'Expand toolbar' (three dots) button at the top of the reply pane you will see 'HTML' as a further option.

You could compose a test post normally then select 'HTML' and examine the structure of your test reply.

Edit; @Mav typed faster than me about the HTML option.

Expanding on what @Mav said about only seeing a couple of lines of HTML code, whilst that is true, you can scroll which is a pain as there is no way to display more than 2 lines, however, you can right-click, Select all, then Copy/Paste the contents to a text editor for a better view.

Re: Formatting Forum posts

ExForce9 — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:10:25 GMT

@pvmb wrote:

Does anybody know - or know how to find out - what are the hiden markup codes that the Forum Lithium (Spit!) system uses to markup posts entered via the forum Reply editor?

@pvmb

This might help - How to Use BBCode: A Complete Guide

Re: Formatting Forum posts

pvmb — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:11:33 GMT

@Mav

"You have the bssic idea but once you've formatted your text in, say, Notepad you need to click on the three dots at the top next to Macros (once in Desktop mode) then click on HTML then past your text including code. You only get a line or two to see but once that is closed you can click on preview. Editing in the HTML is a pain especially on a mobile device. I have never found a definitive list of commands but give me a few hours and I will try and give a list of the most frequently used ones here."

Thanks Mav, that works!

Interestingly, <b>Bold</b> gets auto-translated to < strong > Bold < /strong> in HTML entry.

Re: Formatting Forum posts

pvmb — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:18:05 GMT

@PhilipHeyes

"What I can see is if I do basic formatting in MS Word I can copy / paste that in as a reply"

Um... I don't think I'm going to boot up a heavy duty word processor, just to pop in a post! Sound almost as much trouble as using Lithium - well, almost. But when I tried it with Wordpad it didn't work.

Re: Formatting Forum posts

pvmb — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:16:29 GMT

@ExForce9

"This might help - How to Use BBCode: A Complete Guide"

It might... Except, knowing some of those myself, they didn't seem to work when directly entered in the text.

Re: Formatting Forum posts

Mav — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:17:14 GMT

@pvmb

Sometimes more than one way to swing a cat😉

At @ExForce9 Except it isn't BBCode as instructions there are encased in '[ ]' whereas in Khorus they use '< >'.

I suppose not too difficult to change but not sure all instructions are the same?

Re: Formatting Forum posts

Townman — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:32:06 GMT

@Mav & @pvmb

If you want to do everything in full HTML then most of the formatting tags are supported. Whatever you do use is passed through a HTML cleanser which rips out some useful mark up and changes other practices, such as that already mentioned for bold / strong.

Some HTML tag attributes are supported, whilst others are stripped: style= is supported, though there are inconsistencies across the tags. <script> is also doable but the event hooks to invoke them have all been stripped out in the most recent releases of the platform. Such is why the email server test diagnostics no longer work. <select onchange="..."> has been disabled.

Whilst much is doable, personally I would not bother. If one wants to compose off-line, then do it in word and paste into the message area ... and some dint of magic does it for you!

Re: Formatting Forum posts

RobPN — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:08:58 GMT

I think the only times I ever use the HTML option are;

1. To place quotes from multiple posts/users in the same reply,

and

2. To sometimes place image links to already approved images in my or other users forum galleries to save waiting for the censor.