Comments on: Blogging application that includes line-numbering?

Question: Blogging application that includes line-numbering?

scarabic — Sun, 25 Jan 2004 23:02:34 -0800

Blogging application that includes line-numbering? I'd like to publish content for peer review, in chonologic blog format, with automatic line numbering, so that people can comment, by line number, on my writing. Obviously, the line breaks and numbers have to be the same for everyone. AfterDinner.com offers this functionality, though it isn't really a blogging application. I'm a veteran Blogger user, and willing to do a little bit of creative coding (eg: light hacking of Moveable Type). Any help?

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 03:48:30 -0800

I reckon one or more of these might give you the functionality you need.

When I first read this I thought it would be trivial to code into a template. The more I think about it, the more I think it might not be. With MT you have MTGetVar and MTSetVar so you could establish and retrieve a variable to get a count, and with a fixed-width layout, you should be able to make the result the same for all users, but I can't see off the top of my head how you'd increment line numbers without manually typing in some token at the end of each line (possible, but clunky)...

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 04:58:10 -0800

relying on fixed width to give the same display to everyone sounds risky (fonts, browsers). <pre>, <br> and <table> are all going to be more reliable, if less fashionable.



1 maybe the simplest solution is to take the final text, add

2 line numbers to the text using a simple script, and stick

3 the whole thing in <pre>.  i know the typewriter look

4 is a bit of a cliche (courier etc), but for presenting draft

5 text it might be appropriate.  there's probably a font out

6 there somwhere that has the vertical position shifted

7 slightly for each letter... :o)

(which would look a lot better without matt's weird <br> paragraph hack (which is giving the double spacing)).

By: staggernation

staggernation — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 05:03:12 -0800

There's a pretty simple way to do this in Movable Type by using the Loop plugin. The documentation has an example of how to do it (scroll down to the code fragment under the "delimiter" attribute).

By: staggernation

staggernation — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:53:16 -0800

Although, upon rereading your post, I see that the content is not necessarily already broken into lines (like a code listing), so that wouldn't quite work. Hmm. You'd have to combine it with a plugin that wrapped the text. That would be pretty simple. Stay tuned...

By: trondant

trondant — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 09:51:25 -0800

If you used a bit of CSS (or just HTML,)
you could get this effect by making your lines of text
list items. You would just have to watch the length
of your lines of text, or find some other CSS attribute
which covers that. Still, it'd beats writing a script to
number your lines.

By: staggernation

staggernation — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 10:42:44 -0800

OK, I just threw together a little plugin called TextWrap. Won't have a chance to write documentation and release it until tomorrow, but you can grab it here. And the MT template code you'd use to display numbered lines wrapped to 80 characters would be something like this:

<MTEntries>

 <MTLoop delimiter="\n" values="[MTTextWrap columns='80'][MTEntryBody convert_breaks='0'][/MTTextWrap]">

  <$MTLoopN$>: <$MTLoopValue$><br>

 </MTLoop>

</MTEntries>

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 15:01:49 -0800

Wow. Not that's AskMe at its best. Well done, staggernation.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 15:02:19 -0800

Sorry : 'not'='now'

By: Danelope

Danelope — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 15:24:12 -0800

A non-Mefite friend recommends PurplePlugin for MT content numbering (in PurpleWiki format.) The additional wiki functionality it provides is reportedly optional, mind you.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 18:31:42 -0800

Awesome, staggernation! I'll be digging into Moveable Type for the first time here, so it might take me a while to get there, but I REALLY appreciate it!

By: adamrice

adamrice — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 18:48:18 -0800

Yet another (slightly different) option would be to use straight CSS to style plain paragraphs as numbered list items. Granted, this would give you numbering by paragraph, not line, but it's a start, and would have the benefit of more fluid layouts.

By: anildash

anildash — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 20:12:02 -0800

You could also try the Textile plugin for MT and start each line with #, making it a numbered list item automatically. The Loop solution is appealingly elegant, though.