The discussion revolves around viewing a simple version of a topic. Isambard asked for a way to see a topic without metadata, to easily copy and paste text into a document. Moin suggested two alternatives: adding /print to the URL for a printable view, and using the raw view by replacing /t/topic-title/ with /raw/ in the URL. However, both methods still show the author and post date. Firepup650 noted that the raw view is limited to the first 100 posts, but Moin pointed out that additional posts can be accessed by adding ?page=2 to the URL. Ed_S mentioned a limitation with in-tab navigation when using the printable view. Lilly suggested a CSS solution, but it didn’t directly address the original request. In the end, Isambard found the raw view to be the solution they needed.
Is there a way of seeing a simple version of a topic? Use case is that I simply want to highlight all text in a topic to copy and paste into a document and want to avoid metadata such as poster name, dates, button text etc.
Some forums have a ‘printable view’ or something similar.
I am not sure if one of those options is what you are looking for. Both still show not only the text but also, for example, the post author.
You can Printing a topic as a PDF by adding /print to the URL. For example, https://meta.discourse.org/t/expand-composer-button-on-mobile/296469 is printed like this:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/expand-composer-button-on-mobile/296469/print
Discourse also offers a raw view.
Therefore, you can replace the /t/topic-title/ in the URL with /raw/. If there is a post number at the end of the URL, you see the raw of that post; otherwise, you see the one for the whole topic. However, the author and the post date also appear in the raw view.
The topic looks like this in raw view: https://meta.discourse.org/raw/296469/
IIRC, isn’t that limited to the first 100 or so posts in that view? (Could be wrong, been a minute since I tried it on a bigger topic)
You can add ?page=2 to get the next 100 posts and so on.
Just to note, this is another case where in-tab navigation doesn’t do the thing requested - need to open in a new tab or new window.
out of the box css solution
Thanks. Raw was exactly what I needed. Now if you could please implement this feature in an old vBulletin 3.8 board… 