Ummmm....
The posting screen has a [str] button which gives you <strong></strong> ie "bold", and an [em] button that gives you italics.
Am I missing something?

I'm not sure if you know how long normal book chapters are. Most of the editing doesn't take place in the B2evo interface. The editor is a bit awkward for items of that size. It also doesn't provide a lot of the functionality we get elsewhere for document formatting. Formatting for print isn't the same as it is for on line and we use and editing program that does both.

This kinda sounds like a job for a special-purpose regex type of thing. Like for example finding

some random text <span style="font-style: italic;">something in italics</span> some more text

and replacing it with

some random text <em>something in italics</em> some more text

A regular plain old-fashioned "find and replace" text editor wouldn't work because if span is used for multiple purposes it'll break it all over the place, but I know slightly more than nothing about regular expressions. There's a thing called "regexbuddy" that wants something like $50 bucks for a tool that builds regular expressions for you which might be worth it ... or not.

Anyway it seems like for this specific application it makes more sense to build a tool that does the conversions to a format more appropriate for this application (which is a blog tool yah?) than to try to make the tool do what you need done.

In /conf/_formatting.php change line 63:

/**
 * set this to true to allow id && style as core attributes for comments
 * WARNING : This would allow spammers to post hidden content in comments
 *           enable it at your own risk !
 */
$comments_allow_css_tweaks = false;

Afwas wrote:

In /conf/_formatting.php change line 63: ...

I'm so far behind on the new stuff it makes me *feel* old-school :(

Yesterday you saw my flaws by missing settings in the admin.php I thought were long in the Dashboard.
Did you notice the formatting.php being empty?

I'll tell ya straight: I RARELY mess with anything to do with formatting options because I've never actually felt the need. Allowing links in comments was my boldest effort ever :) But it works for me that way because 'just blogging' is good enough for me. Morrighu's needs are a bit different than mine eh?

On thinking about this a bit... Morrighu you probably have the ability, or at least access to the ability, to implement a customized regex replacement tool that will transition your content to a "b2evo-friendly" format? If so I think that would be the ideal way to go because it would represent one step that would not have to re-done when a new release comes out with features you want.