HOW TO make best use of the forum text editor

You might have used the radiomuseum.org forum to share informations on a repair done to a radio or a request with other radiomuseum.org members.

You can do this by using the "Reply" link in an existing forum article or by creating a new forum article. If you want to send a reply to a forum article to the community, use the "reply" link in the right upper corner. In case, this link is missing, you might not have the necessary rights to write in the corresponding board. You then might contact the thread owner (who did write the first entry) or a board moderator (found at the top, below the title of the thread) to post an answer for you.
The board "Talk..." is open to write for all, but it is only visible within rm.org when you are logged in. Answers written in this board will not be screened by google and referenced. If you are experienced enough with old radio technology and repair, you might apply (by email to Mr. Erb) to get the writing rights of an "Editor". Then you can post answers to questions in almost any board, your answers should have a certain quality level and must not contain potentially dangerous repair hints. This restriction for writing right to "Editors" who must have actively applied for this right, has been done for security reasons, as answers and repair hints in boards other then "Talk..." are screened by searching machines and your answer might turn up somewhere in Google's results - so they must not be hamful to people trying to do a repair without some basic knowledge.

1. Select the correct board

Please consider thoroughly, which board you will use to post a forum text. Go through the different boards ans select the one that fits best for your intention.

Do not post questions about a certain radio in the "Talk..." or "General" board. Go to the corresponding model page and use the "Uploads and Questions" > "Forum info or Question" link in the dropdown menu to create a new forum text which will remain connected to the corresponding model page. So users looking up this model will find your forum text; if you had been using "Talk..." for your information, this forum text might get lost somewhere in the depths of houndreds of postings in our forum.

When you have made your decision, in which board to post your text, the forum text editor will pop up in a new window after you click on the link.

2. Compose your forum text

If the forum editor window looks like this

your operating system and browser does not support all functionalities of the editing software which is used within radiomuseum.org.

You can post simple text entries to the forum, but you lack all other possibilities of formatting texts, adding links or images.

As far as I know the following OS / browsers are not supported:

• Opera browser for all platforms
• certain Mac internet browsers

If your forum editor window looks like this, then you are lucky and have full access to the forum editor's full functionality.

2.1 Write your text

Now start to type in your text like in a simple text processing software. You will soon find that our Forum Editor software is not MS Word, it does behave slightly different as it will create html-compatible text which will be displayed correctly in the internet browser software of all kinds of different operatins systems and browser software.

Some things are very similar, some things are slightly different

• you can format the text as bold, italic and underlined
• you can alter the text size, but not in points, as used from Word, but only "small", "medium", "large" and so on
• you can format paragraphs to be aligned to the left and right margin or be justified to both margins
• when you hit the crriage return / Enter button, you will end on a new line with double space. If you want to begin a new line in the same paragraph but without any space in between use the combination "Shift-Enter". (Yes it's html-like)
• you can automatically generate numbered or unnumbered lists (with bullets, like in this paragraph)

2.1.1 Import your text from a word processor

To prevent that a longer text might get lost because Windows decides to "crash", you can prepare the complete text (without any images) in your favourite word processor.

The copy the text from your text processing software (e.g. by hitting righ mouse button > "copy" in context menu after the text to be copies is highlighted, us osing the "Ctrl-C" command), use the "past as plain text" button in the upper row of icons and paste your text using the control "Ctrl-V" or "right mouse click > paste" in the window which will pop up. The editor will cut out all unnecessary command controls produced by Word, etc. from your text

2.2 Insert images to your forum posting

To insert an image in your forum text, keep to the following steps.

2.2.1 Prepare your images: 600 pixels maximum width, 200 kB maximum size

First prepare your *.JPG images in a folder where you later can find them, I usually put them on the "desktop" of my Windows system before storing them away after upload.
The image files have to be in JPG format, maximum width 600 pix., maximum file size 200 kB. Use your favourite image processing software to reduce image dimensions and file size (usually you can adjust JPG compression in the "save as" dialogue). The freeware image processing software is recommended for this tast, I use PhotoFiltre, of which an older version is available as freeware in the internet and which is a small excellent tool for my demands.

2.2.2 Upload your images to radiomuseum.org server

To insert an image at the cursor position, you first have to upload it to radiomuseum.org's server. You will have your own image folger there, you can even create subfolders.

Use the "Image" button to open the dialogue to insert a JPG image.

In the following window, select the image you want to insert. Use the "Browse server" button to go through the list of images you did upload before. You can re-use older images, but normally, you first have to upload the image file.

Use the "Duchsuchen" button (means browse, seems not to have been translated properly) and look in your computers folders for the correct image file to upload.

After you have selected the file, you come back to the window and use the "Upload Selected File" command to upload your image to the server, you will get an automated response that everything worked out properly and will find a miniature icon of your image in a gallery like preview.

2.2.3 Insert your image in your text

Double click this image and you will be taken back to the first "Image Properties" dialogue window. You will see the filename and size of your image and you can enter an alternative text which will be displayed if the image file is not available (which normally won't be the case), these text will also be used by google as image content information.

Then your image will appear in the editor window: done!

2.3 Internal anx external links

You can also create internal and external links. The Forum editor software is set not to allow plain text links and email adresses. Earlier, long links to eBay auctions were the reason to "blow up" the margins of a forum text window or were un-clickable.

To create an internal or external link, use the "Link" button with the small globe.

First highlight the text, where you want to start the link from, then press the "Link" (small globe) button. You cannot create an external html-link to a internet website adress, as every text which will look like an internet address will be automatically rejected by the editor software. In case you do not have ab better idea, you can link the text to "see here"

Insert the text (you can copy it from the navigation bar of your internet browser using the "Ctrl-C" command) in the corresponding field. Everything that looks lie a html-link is eliminated automatically.

After the procedure is terminated, you will find a blue underlined link text.

You can also place anchors within a very long forum text and set some internal links to go to a chapter found down somewhere at the bottom of your text in the same forum text, for this, you can use the "anchor" command, the symbol with the flag.

2.4. Insert special characters

As we use some special characters very often and not everybody has the "alt-..." combinations of all these in the mind, there is a function to insert special characters, like the "Ohm" sign: Ω

2.5 Working with tables

There is also a table tool: Tables are handled in the way, html editors do handle them. There is no spreadsheet funktion.

With the table tool, you can create a table with a predefined number of rows and columns. I think, it is not possible to add another row after the table is created, to it's worth to think about the content of the table before you create it. We are lucky to have an undo button, in case the table looks completely different from the thing you expected.

Tables are handled in html-style, usually they have no fixed column width, but the width of the fields is adjusted automatically to the browser window size. So fill the cells of your table with plaintext.

 

3. Working with the source code

If you are really familiar with html, there is the possibility to view the source code of your forum text. If you don't have the knowledge about html, stay away from this button

But if you are familiar with direct html editing, this option offers great capabilities. You can individually design your forum text, have fixed table cell widths and can specify alignment of single cells in a table, and so on. But hands off, if you are not familiar with html commands.

Hope this is of any help to you, just try all the possibilities of our Forum Editor software.
Kind regards Martin Boesch

EE: An old text which is still around as PDF - for the older editor.

To thank the Author because you find the post helpful or well done.