Issue 222: Adding roles to users - Issue tracking, code review, source browser for git, mercurial and subversion.

Reported by Mehdi Kabab, May 22, 2009

It would be possible to polish/improve component display by adding 
roles to users, such as "normal", "advanced"…

For a normal user, the environment could be richer, displaying more 
help levels for example. I'm thinking especially about ticket 
creation help. That would allow the use of Markdown syntax in bug 
reports without scaring regular users.

For example, a user whose role is set to "normal" would 
have:

1. A description field for ticket/advanced comment. A non-WYSIWYG 
editor with basic Markdown syntax shortcuts[^1].
2. Compulsory preview before ticket submission, so that s/he can 
check her/his data.

Advanced user's display would default to the usual Textarea form.

[^1]: This function might be available as an option for every users, 
though.

Comment 1 by Sindre Myren, May 23, 2009

Not that I should have any say in this..

But actually, one of the things I like about InDefero, is that it, 
unlike Trac, *doesn't* have any wiki/markdown syntax in the issue 
report.

So my personal opinion is that I disagree in having markdown syntax 
in a issue report.

I have at least five reasons for this:
1) Markdown syntax in an issue report would make it more difficult 
to write issue reports (even for advanced users), as one would have 
to think about the the syntax.

2) It would probably lead to some ugly formatted issue reports.. (It 
does in Trac)

3) As issue reports/comments can not be edited after submit, 
markdown is really not a good idea..

4) I like not having to type enter two times to get a line-break.

5) I like clean monospaced fonts.

That said, I am sure there is upsides to having Markdown in a issue 
report as well..

Comment 2 by Loïc d'Anterroches, May 30, 2009

I think the roles for the users is more a line to explore. I still 
think that the issue input should stay clean from any markup, also 
because people tend to copy/paste the error messages they have.

Anyway, I am more thinking along the lines of Karma/badges for the 
users, and with each level, this would unlock more functionalities. 
For example as you both have submitted patches, you would get more 
rights like changing the tags of an issue or so.

This is what I have in mind at the moment.

Labels: Type:Enhancement, -Type:Defect

Comment 3 by Andrew Nguyen, Jul 15, 2009

What about having the ability to specify if a particular 
comment/report uses markdown (e.g. a checkbox or something)?  

This would allow using it if necessary / useful - the default will 
still be the monospaced font we currently have.

Just a thought since I know it deviates from the concept of 
simplicity.

Comment 4 by Dave Abrahams, Feb 17, 2010

Tender (http://tenderapp.com/) does it with a per-comment checkbox 
that turns on Markdown, and I think it works pretty well, without 
unduly complicating things.  Note also that Tender allows comments 
to be edited after-the-fact.  Both these features increase the 
expressivity of the interface in useful ways.  Whether or not it is 
worth the (small) additional complexity I think is a toss-up, 
especially where the use of Markdown is concerned.