An EXTREMELY strong complaint.

[Krevmh]

When typing the story into a text document and copy-pasting, the formatting absolutely breaks and requires heavy editing. Big mistake, waste of time. So I decided I would type directly into the console. Bigger mistake.

I have now lost two chapters totaling around 2,000 words because every time you hit backspace in the console, it's effectively a gamble whether you erase your past character or pageback and delete all of your progress.

The site very seriously needs some autosave or form memory. That or better formatting on imported text, between the two that hassle is relatively minor but is still a serious annoyance.

 

[Gambio]

oh yeah, experienced the same thing as well, formatting thankfully isn't an issue for me, but when i need to edit stuff directly on the site, it's an uh adventure

I once wrote a chapter that made heavy use of striked out text, that was a nightmare

 

[Krevmh]

An example of my formatting issue, I did not add the junk text to the end of these paragraphs. When I look up the junk text it seems like it's an error when people are storing raw text as html? Not my wheelhouse so no idea.

 

[gene.sis]

The site very seriously needs some autosave or form memory.

There are already some suggestions in the Suggestion subforum that might be implemented in the next version.
(You can vote for suggestions by liking the inital post.)

every time you hit backspace in the console, it's effectively a gamble whether you erase your past character or pageback and delete all of your progress.

You could use a browser plugin as described in this post to avoid that behavior.

An example of my formatting issue, I did not add the junk text to the end of these paragraphs. When I look up the junk text it seems like it's an error when people are storing raw text as html?

This is a combination of the input from your word processor and the RTE functionality in CHYOA. If you edit and save the chapter again and again, usually more and more HTML tags are created and the < replaced with &lt;

When typing the story into a text document and copy-pasting, the formatting absolutely breaks and requires heavy editing.

CHYOA's database saves chapters as plain Markdown.

By default, RTE is activated. (See Settings "Use the richt text editor to create and edit chapters"
The formatted content that is created with RTE is converted into Markdown syntax before it is saved to the database.
If you paste something from other programs into the RTE field, it might contain formattings or tags that don't work well with RTE.

If RTE is deactivated, you can't use the buttons to format your text. If you insert formatted text from other sources, the formatting might be deleted or insert the formatting as plain text.

If RTE is deactivated, you can write plain Markdown and add your formatting with formatting characters.
E.g.
This is **bold** and this *italics*
will later be shown as
This is bold and this italics

Some word processors allow you to save content as Markdown. (There might also be plugins that do that.)
Alternatively, you could use a simpler word processor and write the Markdown syntax yourself. (If needed.)

I usually write plain Markdown in the Grammarly desktop app and then copy it to CHYOA.
Grammarly doesn't mess with the Markdown and even performs grammar and spelling checks.

 

[insertnamehere]

Gene.sis is correct. I personally use Notepad and use symbols to mark words I want italicised, which I then copy into RTE and CTRL+F the symbol to find and manually italicise those words. That's not the most efficient way - it'd be better to write in Markdown and have RTE turned off - but for various reasons, I need RTE turned on for things I'm doing in drafts, so this is my compromise.

It is true that an autosave feature would be very useful. I guess for now you could remove the backspace shortcut so you don't accidentally trigger it.

I think these issues are less common because most stories have fairly short chapters, perhaps 500 words on average as a generous estimate. As such, most people just type a few paragraphs directly into the RTE and immediately publish it. There's not much opportunity to lose content when it's straight from the keyboard to the public.

 

[haileytraynor]

Definitely nothing worse than typing an entire chapter, and having an error or something and having it all just disappear like Thanos snapped it out of existence. And it’s always hard to duplicate the same result cuz it’s lost in the moment. I’ve had entire ideas just erased never to be published. Brings me back to the days before Word/Docs had autosave features and if you spent 2 hours working, and your computer suddenly needed updating or worse, the entirety of it would just be gone. So yeah it would be nice to have some sort of auto save feature or maybe a way to keep the cache so that at least when I reload the page, the text is still there. But I believe the former would be easier than the latter.

 

[Guromancer]

This site has been up for years and has many major issues that might not be immediately glaring but quickly reveal immense frustration.

From sending messages to discrepancies between the forums and base site to format issues... Fuck.

 

[vmarissa]

My suggestion: Disable RTE in your settings and write stories in markdown. And you can copy paste all you want without worrying about the formatting getting messed up.

 

[Dissonant Soundtrack]

Bumping this thread because I was experimenting and found something that might work. I tend to write in Google Docs so that I can easily pick it up across multiple devices or collaborate. I found an addon called "Docs to Markdown" that will put the document in a separate window in Markdown mode, so that you can C / P directly into the CHYOA window and post. It doesn't seem to handle underlining, but bold and italics are fine.

 

[insertnamehere]

This actually isn't an issue anymore. Attempting to leave the editor with unsaved content is now interrupted with a warning asking you to confirm.

 

[gene.sis]

I found an addon called "Docs to Markdown"

I think there are similar addons for programs like Word as well.

It doesn't seem to handle underlining, but bold and italics are fine.

Underlined is usually not part of Markdown.
The used syntax is applied on top of Markdown.
Maybe it's possible to add a special definition to the mentioned Markdown converter to cover that as well.