EuroGA is slightly different from others in the way the text you type is formatted to appear on the page. It uses a modified version of Textile; full details can be found here but below are the basics which will do for most purposes:
<pre>
Multiple lines
are retained
</pre>
To make text bold, put * before and after it:
*this is to be bold*
Or highlight the text (by swiping with the cursor) and click the Bold button on the toolbar.
To make text underlined, put _ before and after it:
_this is to be underlined_
Again you can use the Underline button on the toolbar.
To make text italic, put __ (two underline characters) before and after it:
__italic__
Once again, you can also use the Italic button on the toolbar.
The above three features work on multiple paragraphs too. However they all require no spaces at the two ends of the text, so e.g. _text to underline_ is OK but _ text to underline_ or _text to underline _ is not going to work. But if you use the Bold, Underline or Italic buttons to apply these attributes, any trailing space will be removed automatically and it will work as you intended.
An alternative way to italicise a multi paragraph block of text is to manually insert <aside> at the beginning and </aside> at the end of it. The <aside> must be either at the top of a post, or have a blank line above it
To generate a numbered list start each
line with a # followed by a space, or type the list and highlight the whole paragraph and click on
the Numbered list icon.
# One
# Two
# Three
There must not be blank lines between the paragraphs.
For a bullet-point list, use the toolbar button or begin each line with an
asterisk * followed by a space:
* Bullet 1
* Bullet 2
* Bullet 3
"hyperlink text":URL
"Google":http://www.google.com
Other emoticons are possible by inserting a graphic file into the text - see the examples further below.
Suppressing Formatting
There are cases where the automatic text formatting is undesirable. For example to insert URLs containing sequences of multiple dashes, or text like EU(WA). The solution is
<notextile>text to be preserved</notextile>
EuroGA offers two ways to insert images into your posts.
Drag/Drop Upload
You just drag and drop your image on to
the page and it’s inserted into your post. This is the preferred method.
If you can't drag/drop (e.g. because your computer cannot display a file browser on the desktop at the same time as a web browser) then you can use the Upload Image button.
You can even upload multiple images at once, up to 100 files in one go. Each image is placed on a new line which is normally what is intended. Note that the order of the uploaded files is dependent on the source application. With Windows Explorer, they may not be uploaded in the sequence displayed in the Explorer window. Tests of other sources e.g. ACDSEE show that the displayed order is preserved, however. Another way to achieve a particular order is to drag and drop them one at a time; you can start each before the previous one is finished if they're all of similar size, so they arrive in the right order.
Drag/Drop upload is the preferred method because the images are stored safely on the EuroGA server and e.g. there is no policy to remove images not viewed for a certain time period, etc. This ensures that EuroGA remains a useful and interesting resource for the reader who may read your posting a long time after you made it.
Only still images can be drag/drop uploaded - not videos. Supported formats are GIF, JPG and PNG.
Small
images (below 925 pixels wide) are displayed in their original
size. Above that size, they are automatically scaled down to 925 pixes
wide (but maintaining the aspect ratio) to fit the forum width. The height is limited to 1645 pixels which supports the display of a portrait image taken on a 16:9 camera. This scaling is done on the EuroGA server so the reader's web browser downloads only the scaled version.
Maximum file size for drag/drop is 20MB. However, a file of that size will take you a long time to upload...
Currently there is a time limit of around 300 seconds for the entire transfer (single file or multi file) and this imposes some practical limits. For example uploading 100 files, 925 pixels wide, average size say 150kbytes, over a slow ADSL connection (448kbits/sec UP speed), may not work, but will work over a 1mbit/sec connection. Therefore, for multi file transfers of many files, it is recommended to downsize all files (to 920-925 pixels) before uploading them.
External Image Storage
This is the less preferred method.
It involves storing the image externally and posting a link (a URL) to the image. Photo library sites e.g. Photobucket (used for creating fancy
personal albums) or Imgur (quick
for ad-hoc images, especially with the Hyperdesktop screenshot program) are among many options.
When you upload the image to the external photo library site, it will give you the URL to
insert into your post. Generally the image URL should end with one of the image file extensions commonly used on the web - .jpg, .png or .gif.
If using Imgur, use the "direct link" - see here.
If in doubt about whether this URL is OK to use, paste it into a new web browser URL window and check that the result is just the picture, with no text etc around it.
To insert the image into your message, place the cursor where you want the
picture to go (usually on a new line) and press the IMAGE button located
above the text entry box. Then paste the URL into the window which opens.
Or simply wrap the image URL with exclamation marks:
The result is like this:
!http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m74/peterh337/jetprop.jpg!
The way images are displayed in the reader's browser is handled very nicely. Small
images (below 925 pixels wide) are displayed in their original
size. Above that size, they are automatically scaled down to 925 pixes
wide (but maintaining the aspect ratio) to fit the forum width.
Small images can be placed inline within text. Example:
This text preceeds the icon !http://peter-ftp.co.uk/icons2/rolling.gif! and this text follows the icon, all on one line
gives
This text preceeds the iconand this text follows the icon, all on one line
Images that approach the forum width, and Youtube and Vimeo videos, will
always be placed on a new line, otherwise the result would be a mess.
When compared to the drag/drop method, external image storage has various drawbacks. The main one is that the images tend to disappear! There is no free lunch and all of the free image storage sites have a policy on removing images after some time, or not serving them in certain circumstances. They are advertisement funded and if you use them to host and serve just a bare image, they don't make any money. Your postings then get trashed because the images are missing. Also it is easy to delete an image from e.g. Dropbox while forgetting that you posted the URL to it on EuroGA.
If your image fails to appear, it could be due to the fact that many picture hosting sites do not allow the images to be accessed by another server (they allow them to be downloaded only directly into a browser). Some sites work only sometimes e.g. Photobucket doesn't seem to like being used for hosting small images like emoticons. Imgur appears to do the same for images below about 100-200 pixel wide. Please therefore use the Drag/Drop method whenever at all possible - even if this means downloading the image file temporarily to your PC (e.g. right-click and choosing Save Image As) and then drag/drop uploading it to EuroGA.
EuroGA supports the insertion of PDFs in the same way as insertion of graphical files described above.
However the full Youtube URL may also be used e.g.
For Vimeo, use the actual URL of the video e.g.
All times are displayed in UTC.
This page last edited 19th September 2021
