BBCode isn't really difficult. It's just a way to manually mark up text so the forum displays it in a certain way. When anyone writes a post, it's saved in a database. When someone requests to read a post (by clicking on a thread title), the software transforms the text between the tags. The actual syntax is trivial:
Tags can be nested, so you can have:
Why use something like BBCode? Because there's no real way to save text formatting inside the text data itself. There are many different character encoding systems, but no internal way to save a string of characters as bold characters, or italic characters, etc. So, some way to flag them as having different formatting is necessary.
Code:
[b]this text will be bold[/b]
[i]this text is italicized[/i]
[quote]this text will appear to be quoted[/quote]
etc.Tags can be nested, so you can have:
Code:
[b]this text is bold and [i]this text is both bold and italic[/i][/b]
[quote][quote]The first quoted text[/quote] the second quoted text[/quote]
etc.Why use something like BBCode? Because there's no real way to save text formatting inside the text data itself. There are many different character encoding systems, but no internal way to save a string of characters as bold characters, or italic characters, etc. So, some way to flag them as having different formatting is necessary.
"I was thirsty for everything, but blood wasn't my style" - Live, "Voodoo Lady"
