Editing 2109: Invisible Formatting

{{comic
| number    = 2109
| date      = February 8, 2019
| title     = Invisible Formatting
| image     = invisible_formatting.png
| titletext = To avoid errors like this, we render all text and pipe it through OCR before processing, fixing a handful of irregular bugs by burying them beneath a smooth, uniform layer of bugs.
}}

==Explanation==

A''' '''fast''' '''way''' '''to''' '''select''' '''a''' '''word''' '''in''' '''many''' '''systems''' '''is''' '''to''' '''double-click''' '''it,''' '''which''' '''also''' '''selects''' '''the''' '''following''' '''space.''' '''After''' '''applying''' '''formatting,''' '''one''' '''may''' '''select''' '''only''' '''the''' '''word''' '''to''' '''remove''' '''this''' '''formatting,''' '''by''' '''clicking''' '''and''' '''dragging''' '''with''' '''the''' '''mouse,''' '''which''' '''leaves''' '''the''' '''space''' '''formatted.''' '''Since''' '''in''' '''most''' '''fonts''' '''the''' '''word''' '''space''' '''looks''' '''identical''' '''between''' '''the''' '''bold''' '''and''' '''the''' '''regular,''' '''this''' '''has''' '''no''' '''effect''' '''on''' '''how''' '''the''' '''end''' '''user''' '''will''' '''read''' '''the''' '''document,''' '''but''' '''could''' '''theoretically''' '''cause''' '''a''' '''problem''' '''on''' '''later''' '''occasions.''' '''[[Randall]]''' '''worries''' '''about''' '''this.

In this case, he does not appear to have used the double-click method of selecting the word (based on the fact the cursor is depicted past the end of the word instead of on the word), but instead clicked-and-dragged to select it, a process that makes it easy to accidentally select the space as well—it's a thin character, hard to avoid highlighting, and most people don't worry about trying to avoid including it anyway. So either method of highlighting a word makes it easy to include the trailing space in the selection.

If later the same word is highlighted to have the bold removed, but this time the highlighting did not include the space, you would end up with an invisible character that is still bold, but since there is no visible component to it there is no easy way to tell it is still bold—even if it is of a different size, it may be hard to notice. This is the situation the comic is highlighting... [[559: No Pun Intended|no pun intended]].

Occasions where a hidden bold space may be a problem include:
*Wikis. In the first paragraph of this article, every space is a hidden bold space. From the editing view, all the spaces look <code><nowiki>like''' '''this</nowiki></code>. This will annoy all future editors of this article, due to the hidden apostrophes which are formatting the spaces. They may also accidentally introduce bold words.
**By default, MediaWiki attempts to prevent this by not including the trailing spaces in the bold formatting when you click the “bold” button, so someone has to manually type the formatting apostrophes to do this.
*Editing that adds some text at the location of the space will make this text bold.
*A situation where formatted text is not allowed, and is rejected, but the user failed to strip formatting from the spaces, and this is noticed.
*If a font has the word space look different between the bold and the regular, perhaps to make it so bold words are spaced closer to each other, the spacing will look inconsistent if there is a hidden bold space.
*Unnecessary extra formatting will usually unnecessarily increase file size, which may put the file above some file maximum file size threshold.

Randall’s background in {{w|programming}} could be what makes him more attentive to these types of technical problems, and therefore the reason for his worries.

In the title text, Randall says that he “fixes” this by running the text through OCR, which turns physical copies or images into text. It would usually ruin even more formatting and add inaccuracies to the text. This way, no one can tell which bugs were introduced by him and which ones by the OCR, which he thinks is better somehow.

Popular modern word processing programs have features which may make it easier to notice improperly formatted invisible characters. In the tutorials linked here, one may learn how to view invisible characters in [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-or-hide-formatting-marks-c2d8a607-5646-4165-8b08-bd68f9d172a0 Microsoft Word], [https://support.apple.com/kb/PH23650?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US Pages] and [https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Nonprinting_Characters LibreOffice Writer]. In the older word processor {{w|WordPerfec}}t, one could do this with the “Reveal Codes” feature, which showed you character codes in place of the characters.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A text editor, with [...]. The word "not ", including the following space, is highlighted in blue. There is a cursor below it.]
:Text: ...ere, but would <span style="background:#64D5FF">not </span>have to mo...
:Action: Select

:[The cursor is on the bold option and the selected word is bolded.]
:Text: ...ere, but would <span style="background:#64D5FF">'''not '''</span>have to mo...
:Action: Click

:[The cursor is next to the "to".]
:Text: ...ere, but would '''not '''have to mo...
:Thought bubble: ...Nah, the bold is too much.

:[The word "not" is highlighted.]
:Text: ...ere, but would <span style="background:#64D5FF">'''not</span> '''have to mo...
:Action: Select

:[The cursor is on the bold option and the selected word is not bolded.]
:Text: ...ere, but would <span style="background:#64D5FF">not</span>''' '''have to mo...
:Action: Click

:[The cursor is gone. There is an arrow pointing to the bolded space with a dashed box around it.]
:Text: ...ere, but would not''' '''have to mo...
:Arrow: Hidden bold space

:[Caption below the panel:]
:When editing text, in the back of my mind I always worry that I'm adding invisible formatting that will somehow cause a problem in the distant future.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]