Make "smart list" feature optional

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Users requested making the ‘smart list’ feature in the Discourse post composer optional, citing usability issues—especially for multi-level lists, multi-line items, and non-alphanumeric language input per1234 and Jintor. In response, martin implemented a user preference to disable the feature under Preferences > Interface, and added a site setting (default_other_enable_smart_lists) for admins to control the default behavior. Additionally, sam noted a new shortcut: pressing SHIFTENTER skips the smart list behavior, useful for ending list items cleanly. The feature, originally introduced to auto-inject list markup on Enter, is now configurable to accommodate varied user workflows.

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A feature was recently added to the post composer that causes the markup for a new list item to automatically be injected into the editor when the user presses Enter:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/27563

Please add a setting to enable or disable the feature.

As someone who frequently works with multi-level lists and multi-line list items, I find this “feature” to be very annoying. The time I spend fighting against incorrect markup injected by this feature (I speak from long experience with the same feature on GitHub, so this is not a matter of “just give it time and you’ll grow to like it”) is far more than the insignificant amount of time it would take for the keypresses to add the markup manually.

I’m sure some people will find such a feature valuable, but this sort of thing should always be made optional.

Because of this feature being forced on my forum, I will now be forced to compose my posts using an external editor rather than being able to use the convenient Discourse post composer.

6 Likes
Disabling auto bullet points in posts
3

Yes please, this issue is also causing issues on the language learning forum I frequent where enter is commonly used to confirm character inputs for non-alphanumeric languages (for kanji etc)

2 Likes
4

I merged a user preference for this today:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/29434

Go to Preferences > Interface and uncheck “Enable smart lists when writing in the composer”. Also site admins can change the default for all users with the default_other_enable_smart_lists site setting.

9 Likes
Editor: Auto-continuing lists
6

Note we added another fix/feature today…

If you hit SHIFTENTER the smart list feature will be skipped. This is handy when you are hitting enter on your last list item.

4 Likes