To support sectioning a user-submitted posts.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfqljSWcvhU
Motivation
In most writing, one or more coherent natural paragraphs form a structural paragraph. The authors may want a tool to semantically express structural paragraphs.
In fictional writing, authors sometimes want to semantically group paragraphs by scenes.
In essay-type writing, authors often want to divide the text into sections to present the logic clearly.
In writing challenges, submitters often need to group their texts into one submission instead of submitting in multiple posts. The submitters can use an alternative way to structure their texts.
At the end of a post, authors often put up special-purpose sections like citations, footnotes, message to the reader, etc.
Current Status
The online editor provides no supports for sections. Sections pasted onto the online editor are converted to normal paragraphs.
Users work around the lack of semantic sectioning using horizontal rules, extra line breaks, extra paragraph breaks, decorative lines of texts etc.
Suggestions
Enable the use of semantic sections (section elements) in user-submitted posts.
Provide explicit supports through the online editor. Preserve but sanitize sections during copy-pasting.
Render sections with appropriate styling to the readers.
Variations and Alternatives
Alternative 1: allow multiple levels of nested sections
This provides more freedom to users.
Alternative 2: only allow a “flat” level of sections
This gives developer more control by simplifying layout and styling.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEKZCDpyvzR
