Hunh. Interesting LJ feature

[yendi]

So when I made my Amazon post this morning, of course I screwed up the HTML. But when I opened the entry to edit it, I couldn't find any problem, and spent nearly ten minutes trying to figure out what had happened.

It turns out that when you screw up HTML in an LJ entry by putting in double quotation marks (a not-uncommon mistake for me, which is why the first thing I do is a search for two quotes), and then go to the "edit" page, LJ will strip the second quote out, and thus you can just hit save after opening up the edit screen, and you'll be set.

Of course, since I didn't know that, I spent ages on that damned edit screen trying to fix a mistake that had been rectified.

Dreamwidth, incidentally, does not do the same thing.

Comments

[jadelennox]

Hmm. Do you think it's a feature or a bug? *Should* DW do it?

[yendi]

I'm actually not sure (to either question). I mean, now that I know about it, I can use it like a feature, but a real "feature," imho, would have fixed the double quote on posting, instead of generating an error message.

I'm not sure if there's a good argument in favor of letting the errors stand from a back-end POV. As someone who makes mistakes all the time, it would be useful for me, but others might prefer to fix mistakes manually. It might be nice as a feature that can be toggled, though.