[center][h3]Opinions Needed[/h3][/center]

While a dangerous thing to ask for, I'd like some opinions on the error-handling of the BBCode parser. More specifically, how would you as a user like to see the parser handle BBCode errors? We've all had the experience of hitting that Preview button and getting the dreaded [color=ed1c24]Some tags appear to be misaligned.[/color] And when we see that, we're inspired to fix the issue and make our posts. But what if we [i][b]didn't?[/b][/i]

To clarify, what would you expect to happen if you made a post with broken BBCode? What would you expect to see in the Preview window? Right now, the Guild takes any BBCode that has an error and refuses to display any style in that BBCode "nest." For example, [code][b][i]Test[/b][/b][i]Test2[/i][/code] displays as [noparse][b][i]Test[/b][/b][/noparse][i]Test2[/i].

In my version of the parser, if a user posts bad BBCode to the forum, it attempts to do error-correction, so any incorrect tags are automatically converted into the correct ones, and any missing tags are added to the end (it still displays the [color=ed1c24]Some tags appear to be misaligned.[/color] error). There are pros and cons to every approach, and because it's going to be an error state either way, I would expect that most users are going to fix the error before posting it to the Guild. But I'd like to hear your opinions on what you would expect/like to happen in the Preview window and the forum if there's an error in your BBCode. Or if it doesn't matter, I'd like to hear that too.

 

As a final note, I'd love to collect more test cases, so if you'd like to help me out, PM me the most [i]horrendously[/i] broken BBCode you can imagine. I'll plug it in and see what it does. If you don't mind putting a letter between each tag so I can see what it does at every step, I'd appreciate that too.