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It looks like it has been a while since last discussed (last time was 2019), so wanted to request it again: When can HTML email be supported in Scoutbook? This would dramatically improve the utility of the email features.
Without HTML support, it’s hard to draft emails that aren’t simply a wall of words.
With HTML support, it’s much easier to slap on a WYSIWYG-like editor.
I know BBCode is supported. However, it’s finicky and not a replacement for WYSIWYG editing.
I’ll wager the vast majority of Scoutbook users aren’t computer nerds, so WYSIWYG functionality would be a great UX improvement.
Bearing in mind what @DonovanMcNeil said, if you have the Feature Assistant add-on enabled, it has a pretty good “preview” feature for messages, so you can get a quick visual check of what you’ve written. It’s not as user-friendly as a WYSIWYG interface, but it does a good job at it until the message module is updated.
It is interesting that it is in the backlog. It is powerful, but one of the reasons to do the bbcode thing is to not be so powerful. Full html support brings some risk of scripts and such.
WYSIWYG is more important. I had to explain to two troop scribes what a markup language is/was. They acted like I was programming in FORTRAN.
Well, if you’re going to go back to punch cards, you might as well just publish a print newsletter. Then you can have all the formatting you want
As far as formatting, I wonder if supporting Markdown might make more sense these days, as it’s become fairly standard. And there are certainly plenty of wysiwyg editors for that. That said, for the typical Scoutbook user, it might not be any better either.
I thought about that. I think Markdown may seem easier to more technically adept people, but a WYSIWYG-like editor can’t be beaten for intuitiveness.
If on the back end, BSA wished to use Markdown as the markup language and add a WYSIWYG Markdown editor, I could see that being a reasonable choice, although I suspect the main value may be in ease of eliminating bad code and allowing hand-editing when desired.
IBM 360 Assembly, FORTRAN 4 and PL/1 on Punch Cards, sometimes using 9 track 1/2 in mag tape for intermediate storage would be interesting today. Dating my self.
We had 256 k magnetic core main storage and 4 28 Meg replaceable hard drives (14" platters) for backing store, Operating System, etc.
Ran the whole university. Just had to change out hard drives depending upon what specific University data was being operated on.
Ha! I remember when we used sticks as registers and piles of pebbles as memory. That system worked great until Thag Simmons made a campfire with the cave’s inventory database.
I probably would have picked something more obscure like Scheme as the comparator, but that’s just me.
