Realtime post previews

[Taullo]

Pitch

Text formatting should either display in realtime or a preview button should be added. Preferably, the formatting would be displayed in realtime as the user writes then get converted to HTML upon being submitted. The compose button formatting buttons would then play into this behavior. Users would select the formatting buttons to change the text formatting (e.g. bold, italics, underline, strikethough, URL, etc.)

Some questions:

• Should markdown be removed as an option?
• Allow markdown only from mobile apps?
• Allow switching to HTML formatting for posts and have the syntax inputted upon switching?
• If markdown is kept, should it be converted in realtime?

Motivation

Text formatting isn't end-user friendly and it's confusing whether something will render or not.

[The-Beebz]

I think if we're getting a WYSIWYG editor, I'd still appreciate markdown

[rudytues-day]

+1 keeping markdown as an option

[largesnek]

I find most WYSIWYG editors unpleasant to use and writing raw HTML on mobile is awkward. Having a live "formatting preview" appear above or below the post box would be better IMO.

If anything I would like to be able to switch back to the current way if WYSIWYG is implemented.

[Taullo]

I was thinking it'd be kinda cool to have the option to have a WYSIWYG editor but allow it to switch to Markdown and an HTML editor and have it convert the WYSIWYG stuff on the fly. But that kinda sounds like a PITA to code and I dunno if there's a library for it.

I still haven't even touched the compose box outside of restyling it cuz the whole thing sounds like a PITA asdklsdf