Improved handling of special characters for formatting

[Sean McClowry]

When using mediawiki in fckeditor, heavy use of special characters for page formatting <br> nbsp and &lt;br&amp;gt can make wikitext difficult to read.

Is it possible to reduce use of these tags for example or make this a user option?

[Artur Formella]

You want to have a button which clears special characters?

[Sean McClowry]

That could be an option, but the downside is obviously remove the ones you needed.

What I was wondering is if they are always required. For example, would it be possible to have a few blank lines as opposed to multiple <br>s.

[satinder.parmar]

I tend to agree with the request. Since its a collaborative environment, one user may prefer to work with the editor while another may not on the same document. Fewer special characters would make it easier to work with..

[Artur Formella]

You just want to have less diffs? Just like #1810?

[Sean McClowry]

Yes, diffs can be an issue. The perspective I was looking at it from is that some users typically write in wikitext while others use the WYSIWYG editor. In addition, some functionality is best added directly through wikitext. If you wikitext after using the editor it can be complex to read due to special characters being added. The primary cases relate to whitespace and carriage returns.

[Artur Formella]

This ticket will be solved with #1810, so this is a DUP of #1810.