You can now import posts directly from Google docs
Plus, internal links to headers[1] will now be mapped over correctly. To import a doc, make sure it is public or shared with âeaforum.posts@gmail.comâł[2], then use the widget on the new/âedit post page:
Importing a doc will create a new (permanently saved) version of the post, but will not publish it, so itâs safe to import updates into posts that are already published. You will need to click the âPublish Changesâ button to update the live post.
Everything that previously worked on copy-paste[3] will also work when importing, with the addition of internal links to headers (which only work when importing).
There are still a few things that are known not to work:
Nested bullet points (these are working now)
Cropped images get uncropped (also working now)
Bullet points in footnotes (these will become separate un-bulleted lines)
Blockquotes (there isnât a direct analog of this in Google docs unfortunately)
There might be other issues that we donât know about. Please report any bugs or give any other feedback by replying to this quick take, you can also contact us in the usual ways.
Appendix: Version history
There are some minor improvements to the version history editor[4] that come along with this update:
You can load a version into the post editor without updating the live post, previously you could only hard-restore versions
The version that is live[5] on the post is shown in bold
Hereâs what it would look like just after you import a Google doc, but before you publish the changes. Note that the latest version isnât bold, indicating that it is not showing publicly:
Previously the link would take you back to the original doc, now it will take you to the header within the Forum post as you would expect. Internal links to bookmarks (where you link to a specific text selection) are also partially supported, although the link will only go to the paragraph the text selection is in
Sharing with this email address means that anyone can access the contents of your doc if they have the url, because they could go to the new post page and import it. It does mean they canât access the comments at least
Iâm not sure how widespread this knowledge is, but previously the best way to copy from a Google doc was to first âPublish to the webâ and then copy-paste from this published version. In particular this handles footnotes and tables, whereas pasting directly from a regular doc doesnât. The new importing feature should be equal to this publish-to-web copy-pasting, so will handle footnotes, tables, images etc. And then it additionally supports internal links
For most intents and purposes you can think of âliveâ as meaning âshowing publiclyâ. There is a bit of a sharp corner in this definition, in that the post as a whole can still be a draft.
To spell this out: There can be many different versions of a post body, only one of these is attached to the post, this is the âliveâ version. This live version is what shows on the non-editing view of the post. Independently of this, the post as a whole can be a draft or published.
Yep images work, and agree that nested bullet points are the biggest remaining issue. Iâm planning to fix that in the next week or two.
Edit: Actually I just noticed the cropping issue, images that are cropped in google docs get uncropped when imported. Thatâs pretty annoying. There is no way to carry over the cropping but we could flag these to make sure you donât accidentally submit a post with the uncropped images.
I have thought this might be quite useful to do. I would guess (people can confirm/âcorrect me) a lot of people have a workflow like:
Edit post in Google doc
Copy into Forum editor, make a few minor tweaks
Realise they want to make larger edits, go back to the Google doc to make these, requiring them to either copy over or merge together the minor tweaks they have made
For this case being able to import/âexport both ways would be useful. That said itâs much harder to do the other way (we would likely have to build up the Google doc as a series of edits via the api, whereas in our case we can handle the whole post exported as html quite naturally), so I wouldnât expect us to do this in the near future unfortunately.
There might be other issues that we donât know about. Please report any bugs or give any other feedback by replying to this quick take, you can also contact us in the usual ways.
2 nitpicks:
The title of the doc is imported as the 1st paragraph of the EA Forum post, instead of being imported as the title.
Blank lines without spacing before and after in the doc are not imported, although I personally think this is a feature! Blank lines without spacing before and after in the footnotes of the doc are imported, but I would rather not have them imported.
Iâll think about how we could handle this one better. Itâs tricky because the doc itself as a title, and then people often rewrite the title as a heading inside the doc, so there isnât an obvious choice for what to use as the title. But it may be true that the heading case is a lot more common so we should make that the default.
That was indeed intended as a feature, because a lot of people use blank lines as a paragraph break. We can add that to footnotes too.
Iâll set a reminder to reply here when weâve done these.
You can now import posts directly from Google docs
Plus, internal links to headers[1] will now be mapped over correctly. To import a doc, make sure it is public or shared with âeaforum.posts@gmail.comâł[2], then use the widget on the new/âedit post page:
Importing a doc will create a new (permanently saved) version of the post, but will not publish it, so itâs safe to import updates into posts that are already published. You will need to click the âPublish Changesâ button to update the live post.
Everything that previously worked on copy-paste[3] will also work when importing, with the addition of internal links to headers (which only work when importing).
There are still a few things that are known not to work:
Nested bullet points(these are working now)Cropped images get uncropped(also working now)Bullet points in footnotes (these will become separate un-bulleted lines)
Blockquotes (there isnât a direct analog of this in Google docs unfortunately)
There might be other issues that we donât know about. Please report any bugs or give any other feedback by replying to this quick take, you can also contact us in the usual ways.
Appendix: Version history
There are some minor improvements to the version history editor[4] that come along with this update:
You can load a version into the post editor without updating the live post, previously you could only hard-restore versions
The version that is live[5] on the post is shown in bold
Hereâs what it would look like just after you import a Google doc, but before you publish the changes. Note that the latest version isnât bold, indicating that it is not showing publicly:
Previously the link would take you back to the original doc, now it will take you to the header within the Forum post as you would expect. Internal links to bookmarks (where you link to a specific text selection) are also partially supported, although the link will only go to the paragraph the text selection is in
Sharing with this email address means that anyone can access the contents of your doc if they have the url, because they could go to the new post page and import it. It does mean they canât access the comments at least
Iâm not sure how widespread this knowledge is, but previously the best way to copy from a Google doc was to first âPublish to the webâ and then copy-paste from this published version. In particular this handles footnotes and tables, whereas pasting directly from a regular doc doesnât. The new importing feature should be equal to this publish-to-web copy-pasting, so will handle footnotes, tables, images etc. And then it additionally supports internal links
Accessed via the âVersion historyâ button in the post editor
For most intents and purposes you can think of âliveâ as meaning âshowing publiclyâ. There is a bit of a sharp corner in this definition, in that the post as a whole can still be a draft.
To spell this out: There can be many different versions of a post body, only one of these is attached to the post, this is the âliveâ version. This live version is what shows on the non-editing view of the post. Independently of this, the post as a whole can be a draft or published.
Omg what, this is amazing(though nested bullets not working does seem to make this notably less useful). Does it work for images?
Ok nested bullets should be working now :)
Yep images work, and agree that nested bullet points are the biggest remaining issue. Iâm planning to fix that in the next week or two.
Edit: Actually I just noticed the cropping issue, images that are cropped in google docs get uncropped when imported. Thatâs pretty annoying. There is no way to carry over the cropping but we could flag these to make sure you donât accidentally submit a post with the uncropped images.
Oh wow actually so happy about this, had definitely been an annoying challenge getting formatting right!
Although Iâm no expert, maybe next you could try to be able to convert/âdownload posts into google docs? Super cool btw.
I have thought this might be quite useful to do. I would guess (people can confirm/âcorrect me) a lot of people have a workflow like:
Edit post in Google doc
Copy into Forum editor, make a few minor tweaks
Realise they want to make larger edits, go back to the Google doc to make these, requiring them to either copy over or merge together the minor tweaks they have made
For this case being able to import/âexport both ways would be useful. That said itâs much harder to do the other way (we would likely have to build up the Google doc as a series of edits via the api, whereas in our case we can handle the whole post exported as html quite naturally), so I wouldnât expect us to do this in the near future unfortunately.
Thanks, Will!
2 nitpicks:
The title of the doc is imported as the 1st paragraph of the EA Forum post, instead of being imported as the title.
Blank lines without spacing before and after in the doc are not imported, although I personally think this is a feature! Blank lines without spacing before and after in the footnotes of the doc are imported, but I would rather not have them imported.
Thanks for reporting!
Iâll think about how we could handle this one better. Itâs tricky because the doc itself as a title, and then people often rewrite the title as a heading inside the doc, so there isnât an obvious choice for what to use as the title. But it may be true that the heading case is a lot more common so we should make that the default.
That was indeed intended as a feature, because a lot of people use blank lines as a paragraph break. We can add that to footnotes too.
Iâll set a reminder to reply here when weâve done these.