Make Smilie Shortcuts Different

[Dragonfree]

It has always annoyed me when forums impose their graphical smilies upon my posts when the text smilies I actually typed fit the emotion I was trying to convey much better. Furthermore, I just made a post in which I happened to write the word "fanfic" followed by a colon, and it automatically turned into a c: smilie.

How about, instead of imposing these graphical smilies on everyone unless they specifically disable smilies in their post, simply making the shortcuts for the graphical smilies something that cannot be mistaken for anything but an attempt to make a graphic smilie? For instance, including an extra colon before the actual smilie, or making the shortcuts :smile:, :laugh:, etc. instead of involving the textual representations of those same smilies?

EDIT: Oh, look, it's a self-demonstrating post!

[Camisado]

Oh dear, that's annoying. I'll have a look into it later when I'm home. Sorry!

[An-chan]

It has always annoyed me when forums impose their graphical smilies upon my posts when the text smilies I actually typed fit the emotion I was trying to convey much better. Furthermore, I just made a post in which I happened to write the word "fanfic" followed by a colon, and it automatically turned into a c: smilie.

How about, instead of imposing these graphical smilies on everyone unless they specifically disable smilies in their post, simply making the shortcuts for the graphical smilies something that cannot be mistaken for anything but an attempt to make a graphic smilie? For instance, including an extra colon before the actual smilie, or making the shortcuts :smile:, :laugh:, etc. instead of involving the textual representations of those same smilies?


I can totally see where you're coming from with this. I've also noticed a couple of instances where c followed by a colon turned into a c: unintentionally and a couple of other things, as well. What saddens me about making the shortcuts different, though, is that they'll be more annoying to use then. Also, people might not know there is a graphic smiley for their favourite one and therefore not use it even though they would have used it, had they only known it was there.

Also, are you suggesting a new shortcut for every smiley? I've noticed that many boards have the text version be the shortcut for the most common and simple ones like :) and :D, but then have longer shortcuts for the other smilies, such as :laugh: . Adding another colon in front of the already existing shortcut could work, though, as it wouldn't be as troublesome to type out.

[Dragonfree]

Well, I know most boards replace :) and :D with graphical representations of those basic emotions, but as I said, that has always annoyed me, because the graphical smilies don't look the same as the text smilies I actually typed and are not expressing exactly the emotion I was trying to convey. (The :) smilie here, for instance, looks rather loopy, but if I'm just smiling, I'm not necessarily feeling loopy in the least; replacing one with the other is in fact changing the meaning of my post.) Sure, it's sad when people never find out about some of the graphical smilies, but I find it sadder to forcibly replace what people said with something they didn't say, even if that's the convention on most forums. :/

[Camisado]

I'm actually trying to find the mod that allows users to disable smilies in all their posts, but I'm having little luck so far. I'd really like to implement it.

I know what you mean. I'll have a go at altering most of the smilies as we see fit (we'll carry on this discussion as I do that). I set the codes to what the icon artist suggested but clearly neither of us thought too much about them. xD;

Thanks for your feedback. =)

Edit: I've changed all the smilie codes in order to stop them interfering. I've still not found a decent "Disable smilies in my posts" mod, but this should do in the interim.

Sorry guys, you'll have to find out the new smilie codes here (http://bbs.studio-revolution.net/misc.php?do=showsmilies").