A Tool To Copypaste from Theoryland More Easily

[Moogle]

Theoryland, the place where most WoBs end up, has a notable issue: copypasting (with a link to the right question in the right interview!) is a pain. You have to do some manual URL editing, and head directly to the interview page, etc. And even then, if you just directly copypaste, you lose the nice bolding and get weird spacing issues.

 

I made a script to solve this. It adds a nice button that says "Copy" underneath every question in the search results of Theoryland, and a button under every question in the actual interviews themselves. You just hit the button, and it copies the question onto your clipboard in a format intended for these forums.

 

Screenshots

 

Installation

• Install the Greasemonkey addon.
  • Firefox: Get Greasemonkey here.
  • Chrome: Get Tampermonkey here.
• Install the script itself by clicking this link and hitting 'install'.
• You're done! Whenever you load a theoryland page, the script itself will run and you should now have copy buttons everywhere. You may have to scroll down on each individual search result thing, because longer questions are cut off and the button is at the bottom.
• If you are having issues pasting, hit the light switch button at the top left of the posting area, and then paste the result there. You can use the lightswitch again to return things to normal.

 

I Could Use Your Help!

If you have suggestions for feature improvements, or can find questions my script fails to parse correctly, please let me know here or by PM. It is quite likely this script has a few bugs that will need to be ironed out.

 

Currently, I'm thinking of adding a button to allow copying into a reddit-style format (r/stormlight_archive is quiet, but occasionally I do like posting WoBs there). I might also add a button that just links directly to theoryland next to the "post" button on every 17th Shard thing? Let me know if you have ideas!

 

I also understand that some people might like the (source) tag outside the quote, because the forum doesn't allow nested quotes. I've asked Chaos to allow the forum to do nested quotes, though.

 

If you have any feedback (in particular, design-related feedback - perhaps the buttons should be smaller?), let me know.

 

How It Works

Essentially, the issue with the search results on Theoryland is that to actually link to the source of a WoB, you need to click on the interview, find the question in the actual interview page, then add #<num> to the end of the url, then you have to link that into your post. This is annoying. When you hit the button on the search results page, it loads an iframe of the interview page itself, looks for the question, finds the number, and automatically does the url business.

 

Theoryland itself is a horrifying eldritch mess of HTML. It did things with HTML tags I didn't even realize anyone would do on purpose. Parsing it is painful, and I'm not entirely sure I did things right. What I do to make it forum-friendly is convert h4 tags to b tags, and then do some crazy stuff with linebreaks etc.

 

The script itself is quite small, though I imagine it might be hard to read. I'm available for any questions. I polished the script a bit, but it's still a mess in some ways. I'm a computer engineer, not a web programmer.

 

The script is available as a gist on Github here.

 

You're free to modify and use this however you wish.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Moogle

[Kurkistan he/him]

Cool effort, Moogle.

 

I am one of those who falls into the "put source links outside the quotes" camps, I must say. As is, it can become confusing if you Quote someone and just see a few gaps in the post where the WoBs used to be; having a "Source" url there both points out that the text of the WoB is omitted from the quote and directly links you to the WoB if you just want to quick and look at it (versus the somewhat easier option of just going back to the quoted post, but hey options are fun).

Edited January 18, 2015 by Kurkistan

[Moogle]

I agree that it is nicer when quoting for the source to be outside the url. I feel that it's still a sort of hack, though, because the forums aren't allowing nested quotes. If Chaos gets back to me in the negative on allowing nested quotes, I'll definitely move the source to the outside.

 

Another possibility is to swap to using a different format for WoBs than quote blocks. The forums would copy the text as well in that case. I've had a fondness for the Courier New font for posting passages from the books for a long while (forget who I saw doing that originally).

 

Edit: Blaze said this:

In my opinion the interface is tolerable though, with my only wish that we could search non-WoT only, rather than WoT WoJs and WoBs being included (particularly now that WoT is done).

 

This is an excellent idea, and I'll add it to the script.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Moogle

[Blaze1616 he/him]

I use spoilers to avoid the WoBs being removed when quoted, as well as placing the source link outside the spoiler in case someone wants to delete the spoiler from the quote. My only issue with nested quotes is that it can quickly make a post obnoxiously long (even by 17th Shard standards). the problem, then, with spoilers like I use is that the spoiler function does not tag time, which Moogle included in the script. I almost wish we had a [wob]...[/wob] function which acted like quotes (with a time stamp if you get creative), but nested upon being quoted. That's my opinion though.

 

Thanks Moogle! Now if I can only convince IT to install chrome on these darn work laptops...

Edited January 19, 2015 by Blaze1616

[Pestis the Spider she/her]

Doesn't work for me. Only word "Question" is in quote for some reason. The code looks fine, just the result looks wrong, I don't know why. 

 

Example:

 

QUESTION

Can someone bond more than one Honorblade?

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

Honorblade?  You can't bond an Honorblade, though it can be given to you. Shardblades, however, come from a spren bond and it is possible to bond more than one.

 

Footnote

Later clarified, Brandon misunderstood the question. One may be bound to multiple Honorblades.

(source)

 

And code:

[quote name="Around Mar 4th, 2014, Brandon Sanderson"][b]QUESTION[/b]
Can someone bond more than one Honorblade?

[b]BRANDON SANDERSON[/b]
Honorblade?  You can't bond an Honorblade, though it can be given to you. Shardblades, however, come from a spren bond and it is possible to bond more than one.

[b]Footnote[/b]
Later clarified, Brandon misunderstood the question. One may be bound to multiple Honorblades.
([url=http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1086#26]source[/url])
[/quote]

 

Any ideas how to fix it? 

Edited January 27, 2015 by Pestis the Spider

[Moogle]

...

 

I'm deeply sorry I didn't get a chance to respond to this. For some reason, my notifications for this thread were off. To fix this, hit the light switch button at the top left of the posting area, and then paste the result there. You can use the lightswitch again to return things to normal.

 

---

 

I've updated this to allow for only grabbing the URL (I kept wanting that function when talking in #cosmere), and for making a pastable thing for Reddit. Just go click the install link for the URL at the top to get the latest version.

 

Screenshots:

 

[Moogle]

Double post because I'm not entirely sure how else to make sure people get the news:

 

I noticed the script was not copying things for Reddit perfectly due to a very stupid bug on my part. It's been fixed. You can update the same way you installed it.

 

Then again, I'm not actually sure if anyone uses this.

 

I think I saw one person using it the other day...