Grammarly & Markdown Support

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

Post Reply
Andy Micone
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:14 pm

Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Andy Micone »

Grammarly for proofreading support would be very helpful. Right now, I publish to word, run grammarly in word, and make parallel edits by hand in H&M, and that's an extra step.

Markdown is becoming popular way to publish helpfiles to the web, and though it's a downgrade from H&M, would it be an easy feature to add Markdown support to the product? The format is fairly simple, but it's the default format for GitHub and Atlassian productions.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Andy,

We are already considering Markdown. Definitely import but also, possibly, export. The prospect of export gives us a belly ache, however, because of the huge restrictions on what can be exported to it. We need to think about that very carefully.

We're also considering grammar checking software but we need to vet the service that would be used very carefully. There are huge privacy issues (all these services literally have access to every word you type, 100% of the time) and if we integrate something like this we want it to be genuinely useful and not just a placebo. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Simon_Dismore
Posts: 205
Joined: Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:57 pm

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Simon_Dismore »

Tim Green wrote:The prospect of [Markdown] export gives us a belly ache, because of the huge restrictions on what can be exported to it. We need to think about that very carefully.
Would you be doing the export via XSL transformations? That would allow export using a variety of mappings, not just to markdown but to other structured formats. That could be very interesting.

One obvious possibility is round-tripping individual topics to subject-matter experts for review/updating in a cloud editor based on Markdown or ProseMirror. Or even publishing entire titles in a round-trip editable form, etc.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Simon,
Simon_Dismore wrote:One obvious possibility is round-tripping individual topics to subject-matter experts for review/updating in a cloud editor based on Markdown or ProseMirror. Or even publishing entire titles in a round-trip editable form, etc.
I'm not experienced with two-way XSL transformations. Provided that the source H+M XML topics remain unchanged, would it be technically possible to round-trip the text to Markdown and then re-import it with transforms in the other direction without losing the higher-level H+M attributes, tags and elements in the process? I.e. merging it back in silently to the original locations?

The only way I could see that working would be if the original exported text remained completely untouched and any additional material -- comments, edits -- was in additional, clearly defined "external" tags that would then be added to the unchanged original material on re-import. Changes to the original would have to be 100% taboo, and since Markdown is plain text there would be no way to prevent that from happening. That is the main problem I would see there... :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Simon_Dismore
Posts: 205
Joined: Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:57 pm

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Simon_Dismore »

Very true. I wrote a more thoughtful answer :typing: :typing: :typing: but lost it when I was automatically logged out :cry:
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Tim Green »

Simon_Dismore wrote:Very true. I wrote a more thoughtful answer :typing: :typing: :typing: but lost it when I was automatically logged out :cry:
This is still one of the most annoying quirks of PHPBB. There was a default editing time limit of 120 minutes although I doubt that was what you ran into. I've disabled that so that editing time is now technically unlimited, and have increased the "session length" from 30 to 60 minutes, which should also help. I find that allowing the login cookie that automatically logs me in whenever I visit obviates automatic logout problems pretty reliably. Even so, I've got into the habit of always doing CTRL+A > CTRL+X > CTRL+V before posting or previewing anything I've written. (CTRL+X instead of CTRL+C because of the copy-to-clipboard bug in Windows 10 -- it frequently doesn't register a CTRL+C copy the first time.)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Simon_Dismore
Posts: 205
Joined: Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:57 pm

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Simon_Dismore »

Tim Green wrote:I find that allowing the login cookie that automatically logs me in whenever I visit obviates automatic logout problems pretty reliably.
Maybe I should consider selecting 'Log me on automatically each visit' for this site. I normally avoid that sort of thing (have Enterprise LastPass anyway).

I just checked my browser history BTW, and the message submission was less than 60 minutes after opening the reply window, so there's something forcing the fresh login. The helpmanphpbb_track and style cookies seem to have short lives.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Tim Green »

Simon_Dismore wrote:I just checked my browser history BTW, and the message submission was less than 60 minutes after opening the reply window, so there's something forcing the fresh login. The helpmanphpbb_track and style cookies seem to have short lives.
That was most likely the 30-Minute session default, which I only increased to 60 after your posting. So the original posting you lost still had the 30-minute window. Hopefully that should be improved now.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
akpdionne
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 5:13 pm

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by akpdionne »

I would seperate this in two
1. Convert the .md to generate html, chm, pdf, docx, ...
2. generate the md from h&m

For me the 1. is more important and would like to see it even if the 2. get implemented later.

Plus the optimum would be to be regenerate (convert) at the generation time. This is a must for all format. I do have external people that translate text. Must of them are using MS word. The best would be to just replace the file and gets loaded at publish time.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Dionne,

Importing Markdown is not a problem at all and is definitely going to be implemented in a future version. Exporting to Markdown is also not technically a problem, although it would involve ignoring a large amount of the formatting and features that HM projects can contain.

The real problem comes when you want to re-import your edited Markdown, or anything else, to an existing Help+Manual project. By definition other formats cannot contain the information needed by a Help+Manual project, so all you can do is either create new topics or overwrite existing topics. And what you import will only contain the limited formatting that Markdown can contain. Things like toggles, index keywords and much more will all be missing. Most users won't accept that because it will involve a huge amount of unnecessary repeated formatting and editing just to get back to the original project status. That is the show-stopping issue involved in all this. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
akpdionne
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 5:13 pm

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by akpdionne »

Hi Tim,

Do you have any date frame? At least for the import.

Later on, the best would be to link to the git account.

Many thanks!
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Tim Green »

akpdionne wrote:Do you have any date frame? At least for the import.
All I can say at the moment is that the next major version should be out in the second half of the year. I'm afraid I can't say anything more definite than that, or anything about features. Sorry about that, but my lips are sealed... :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Frank_Wibu
Posts: 32
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:10 am

Re: Grammarly & Markdown Support

Unread post by Frank_Wibu »

Hi Tim,
anything new on the Markdown front these days?
Regards
Frank
Post Reply