A Writer's Guide to Formatting

Okay, you've gotten your story written up, all nice and polished (perhaps even with pictures ), and you're ready to post. But then you're struck by a serious obstacle -- what is the default font and formatting of the Starbound forum, and how the heck do I get there?

Well, that's why this is here, as a guide.

First off: General Tips and Info.

• The default font is Tahoma

• The default color of the text is grey

• The default font size is between 3 and 4, interestingly enough. A workaround to this is pasting the desired text in a program that supports no text size changes (such as Notepad) and copy-paste that text into the story.

Paragraphing
The XenForo software doesn't support indents. As much as it is of an irritating issue, we forum members have found an alternative -- adding a line in between paragraphs.

What does this accomplish? It streamlines your ideas, and makes it easier on the reader's eyes -- you never want a Wall of Text. Those can put off most readers, unless you stick in a bunch of pretty pictures and the like.

However, recently, another solution has come up, created by Chokladakan of the Unofficial Starbound Forums. Essentially, it makes for inserting a transparent picture/text of an indent whenever you need it. This is easily facilitated by use of the program AutoHotKey, and setting the shortcut to insert an indent whatever you need -- qq, zy being some unique examples.

Spacing​

When you have indents in your text (probably hangovers from documents that support indents), pressing enter produces no response. This is occasionally a visual issue -- when you publish the text, the line you put in may be there. However, Shift + Enter seems to force this change into effect.

Technical Spoiler Issues
Spoilers have a nasty reputation of forming into double, triple, or multi-spoilers. The technical issues rising from these spoiler issues is the misplacement of BBCode. The forum software sometimes is unable to place them correctly, especially when there's other links, boldings, italics, and/or other stuff, and as a result, you have that nasty spoiler issue.

Code:

[spoiler][b]TextGoesHere[/spoiler][/b]

This above issue is something most HTML programmers will notice. The most reliable remedy to this is going to the "BBCode Editor" up in the top right of your edit/comment/thread post box.

EDIT: This issue appears to have been fixed in the 1.2 XenForo update. However, the rest shall be kept in the event that this kind of error may appear if particularly nasty formatting causes some problems.



Go in there, and change the BBCode. A solution, found by Mercenary Lord, is to just replace the BBCode of whatever you're fixing with exactly what you want. An example is shown below.

Code:

[spoiler][b][Font=Tahoma]Aliens[/b][/Font][/spoiler]

Replace all that mixed-up gunk with:

Code:

[spoiler][b]ALIENS[/b][/spoiler]

It's important to note that you must place them so that the corresponding codes (marked by [stuff][/stuff]) match -- if one thing is on the most outside, it must remain that way. Like layers of an onion.​

​

Well, I hope that covers most of the problems/issues. I added in a few tips as well, and if you have any to share, feel free to give them. I'll credit you and add it to the OP.

Happy writing, my friends. Hope this helps


1-12-14 Edit: Things changed with the XenForo update. Most notably, the bolding issue with Google Docs and Microsoft Word 2008 seems to have disappeared. Did some minor cleaning up of certain sentences as well.​

 

This is good. Can we get a sticky on this?

 

I agree, this should be stuck. I'll also be adding a link to this in The List.

 

I...can add some stuff to the list. LIKE GOD DAMN SPOILERS. AARHARJTZNXGHMN

I'll do it later, though- I have so much Schoolwork to do this week.

 

I plan on adding that

I've notified moderator Sokina about it. Feel free to give recommendations, though. Always appreciate the help

 

Deleted those annoying asterisks, and added a section about spoilers.

 

I've stuck it with some StarPaste™.

I​

don't​

know​

what​

you're​

talking​

about.​

 

Too bad most people don't like messing around with the actual indent code thing...

 

No need. Your new friends:

 

I'm saying more along the lines of doing something like this because if the indent software is the same as the TO one​

then an indent indents all the following lines, requiring you to actually revert it to allow the indents to actually stick out. It seems the problem isn't the same over here, but instead the indent thing seems to make everything in a paragraph become indented, requiring you to hit "enter" to make it look the way it is supposed to look.

This is an example of what happens when you use indent without hitting the enter button to make another paragraph afterwards, likely leaving words hanging. If this test doesn't work, then the reason why I say such things is because the preview shows the whole paragraph being indented.​

 

Wait, what? I'll mess around with it a bit here...

Screens and blocks

​

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to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to Boxes and gravel are extremely difficult to


Ah, I see.

Is this a new feature?

 

When you have huge paragraphs, and lots of BBCode, those indents hurt more than they help. :/

From experience.

EDIT: Experimentations.

I saw it. I've tried it. It don't work for expediency and larger works.

EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE​

EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE

That is what happens when I only put the indent BBCode on the first line.

EXAMPLE​

EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE

First word.

EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE​

Entire paragraph.

The first one works...ish. But it makes things weird looking...

 

I think...

 

Nope. It's always been there. Though, it might not perfectly as demonstrated above.

 

Hmm... perhaps I should bring it up in the Feedback section. Perhaps the code-centric people may be able to address this issue.

 

Nice little guide.
Though spoilers no longer automatically induce italics.

 

Yeah, gonna edit that bit.

 

Indented(Click here for three methods of indenting.)

 

That transparent image is broken for me. Apparently dropbox is not being nice.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Fixed. (Once again to Chokladkakan's help.)