Abstract content limited -> formatting needs characters

Hallo,

when the abstract content is limited to f.e. 300 characters. I write my text with exactly 300 characters. After that I want to do some formatting, like emphasize or writing words italic or bold. When I try to submit the abstract now, it is not possible because every formatting used characters.
Is it possible not to count characters for formatting?

Thanks and regards

That’s currently not possible. Interesting suggestion though.

However, if you use a word count limit I think it shouldn’t be a problem, just if you use a character count.

I have the same problem and would be happy if a solution is developed with a next update. The solution with the word count is out of the question, because that is unfortunately not desired by the conference team.

I have noticed another problem with the formatting. If you use the gender asterisk * (e.g. Teilnehmer*innen) in German, a lot of italic formatting is inserted. Is it not possible to integrate another editor and insert the formatting in the code, as it is for example also with Moodle.

Personally I’d consider whether ‘gender asterisks’ are a good idea to begin with (there are alternatives like : after all, if you really need to use something there), but probably not something to discuss here since clearly your community uses them :wink:

Unfortunately the markdown spec which is used for formatting of abstracts and similar content doesn’t really take single asterisks within words into accounts, so there’s no good and standard-confirming solution here… some context: Single asterisks in subsequent words should not lead to emphasis - Spec - CommonMark Discussion

The easiest workaround - and I think if people understand it’s formatted using markdown, they may realize that as well - would be to put a backslash before the asterisk if it’s not meant for formatting but rather supposed to stay there literally.

I’m not familiar with Moodle, but I assume they use some kind of HTML-based WYSIWYG editor? If yes, I don’t think that’s something we want to use in Indico - many people actually appreciate the flexibility and ease of use in a markdown editor, where they don’t end up having to “fight the editor” in some cases…

We could possibly look into whether we can easily calculate the length based on the pure text content after stripping formatting (either directly on the markdown level, or converting to HTML and then stripping all tags). No promises on when though. In case you have a GitHub account feel free to open an issue suggesting this; otherwise I can create one as well.

Thanks for your answer. It would be nice, if you start a case an GitHub.