Twenty Twenty: [em] tag with blank string inside ruins theme layout

[derlynad]

Hello!

I’ve found a layout issue, concerning to "em" tag.

When we use the "em" tag and try to separate paragraphs inside this tag with blank strings, all the parts that are not in “touch” with opening and closing tags are "on their own" in layout. Tags were used in Classic Editor. See the screenshot below.

Here’s the source:

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KWMwDFlodidBTqjDJRfP9j0mmw6QMuo8/view?usp=sharing

And here’s the result:

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tzhi-hsaGDLDdJax8kMUonHe7tJaX2Q7/view?usp=sharing

Here's addition example in English. The source code:

<em>This is some random text on the first line

Here is more text on a second line

Additional text on a 3rd line with the closing EM tag</em>

And here's the result

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v9R127wdjPHjlXThMe9zjKXWz6V3xk8Y/view?usp=sharing

Tested on clean Twenty Twenty theme without any additionsl CSS code.

Tested on two different sites.

The issue is recreated for WordPress versions 4.7.15, 5.2.4 and 5.3.

One more experiment: if I put the strings in <p>...</p> tag, all the strings go to the left and ignore theme styles.

Also tested the case for Twenty Nineteen: there is no such issue.

[audrasjb]

Twenty Twenty VS Twenty Nineteen - Classic Editor Text Mode

[audrasjb]

Hi there, thank you for this ticket @derlynad and welcome to WordPress Trac!

I can reproduce the issue on my side, though it's not related to <em> tag.

See video screenshot above.
Investigating…

[audrasjb]

The issue doesn't appears anymore if I remove this bit of code from functions.php:

/**
 * Output Customizer settings in the classic editor.
 * Adds styles to the head of the TinyMCE iframe. Kudos to @Otto42 for the original solution.
 *
 * @param array $mce_init TinyMCE styles.
 *
 * @return array $mce_init TinyMCE styles.
 */
function twentytwenty_add_classic_editor_customizer_styles( $mce_init ) {

	$styles = twentytwenty_get_customizer_css( 'classic-editor' );

	if ( ! isset( $mce_init['content_style'] ) ) {
		$mce_init['content_style'] = $styles . ' ';
	} else {
		$mce_init['content_style'] .= ' ' . $styles . ' ';
	}

	return $mce_init;

}

[audrasjb]

Hm, looks more complicated than I thought at first.

[audrasjb]

It looks like the issue only occurs when editing the Hello World default post.
Other posts are looking good on my side.

Can you reproduce that @derlynad ?

[derlynad]

Replying to audrasjb:

It looks like the issue only occurs when editing the Hello World default post.
Other posts looks good on my side.

Can you reproduce that @derlynad ?

@audrasjb I reproduced it on a sample page in WordPress 5.2.4 (new site) but the first time I noticed this issue on the old posts on my blog (WordPress 4.7.15), so it wasn't connected to default pages.

Created new page in WordPress 4.7.15 and checked one more time. The issue is still reproduceable.

[derlynad]

Replying to audrasjb:

The issue doesn't appears anymore if I remove this bit of code from functions.php:

/**
 * Output Customizer settings in the classic editor.
 * Adds styles to the head of the TinyMCE iframe. Kudos to @Otto42 for the original solution.
 *
 * @param array $mce_init TinyMCE styles.
 *
 * @return array $mce_init TinyMCE styles.
 */
function twentytwenty_add_classic_editor_customizer_styles( $mce_init ) {

	$styles = twentytwenty_get_customizer_css( 'classic-editor' );

	if ( ! isset( $mce_init['content_style'] ) ) {
		$mce_init['content_style'] = $styles . ' ';
	} else {
		$mce_init['content_style'] .= ' ' . $styles . ' ';
	}

	return $mce_init;

}

Tried to remove this fragment of code, but the issue is still here.

[audrasjb]

@derlynad yes, removing those lines don't do anything, I messed up with my tests, sorry.

I can reproduce the issue on every default theme, like Twenty Nineteen for example. It seems to happen only when editing posts made with or for the Block Editor. Like default posts/pages or posts/pages created with the default editor. It doesn't seems to happen with new posts/pages manually created with the Classic Editor.

Can you reproduce that on your side?

[derlynad]

Replying to audrasjb:

@derlynad yes, removing those lines don't do anything, I messed up with my tests, sorry.

I can reproduce the issue on every default theme, like Twenty Nineteen for example. It seems to happen only when editing posts made with or for the Block Editor. Like default posts/pages or posts/pages created with the default editor. It doesn't seems to happen with new posts/pages manually created with the Classic Editor.

Can you reproduce that on your side?

Yes, I can. I've tested it today, created new page in WP 5.3 in block editor, classic block, html mode. Here's what's happening when we enter preview mode in Twenty Twenty:

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X1q8yPGwN4-ZBZr_laPCLwo8p9GqlnK7/view

Here's the tag transformation in the block after saving the page and switching to visual editing mode:

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wL61TWbMIrJgO34dd_HkUIaDCLg58N5v/view

Somehow em tag was automatically closed before empty string.

Here's how it looks like on Twenty Nineteen preview:

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lbalf2_9n-nOisrX-DL0DXBbUlOCD1s8/view

Looks like everything is OK.

Oh, and by the way. If we change EM tag with STRONG one, the issue is the same, here's the screenshot:

​https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q3nQKnIk6HcrEx3MIDcnKkOkX_uSKIRK/view

Hope it helps.

[sabernhardt]

The Classic Editor and the Classic block try to make HTML valid, which includes efforts to close tags.

Using Twenty Twenty and the Classic Editor, I added four paragraphs within an <em> tag. The em tag started at the beginning of the first line and closed at the end of the fourth paragraph's line. Each paragraph was separated by an empty line (instead of explicitly adding the <p> tags).

The editor correctly adjusted the first and last paragraphs by putting the em tags inside the paragraph tags. But the second and third paragraphs were placed inside an em tag. That causes a misalignment in Twenty Twenty because the em does not currently honor the width and max-width intended for paragraph and heading tags.

I see two different ways of fixing this for similar situations:

1. Make sure the editor properly recognizes that all of those paragraphs should nest any em or strong tags inside each paragraph tag.
2. Edit the stylesheet for Twenty Twenty so that any em or strong tags (but not span) immediately within the .entry-content section can honor the width styles:

   .entry-content > strong,
   .entry-content > em {
       display: block;
   }
   

(I'll upload a patch for the second option.)

However, for better semantics and readability in this case, I highly recommend not having so much text in an emphasis tag and/or italicized (see ticket:47327 for some reasons).

Or if all of that text should be italicized, it could be better inside a div tag. Note that this option requires the empty line after the opening tag in Classic Editor, and it might combine paragraphs if you switch from Text to the Visual editor.

<div style="font-style: italic;">

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

paragraph 3

paragraph 4
</div>

[sabernhardt]

style em and strong tags as display:block when not inside heading or paragraph tags

[sabernhardt]

If setting the em and strong tags to display:block is desired, the patch would need refreshing after [47820] and [47846].

[karmatosed]

@audrasjb I think this is assigned to you but not being progressed right now so I am going to remove you so it can continue on it's journey. If that isn't correct we can always add you back in.

[shailu25]

Patch Refreshed.

[karmatosed]

Thank you @shailu25. Before I do progress though, I am just checking here but it seems a few things on the refresh and I want to be sure before I move to commit.

1. It depends on the two mentioned tickets [47820] and [47846].
2. Once those are done this should then be committed and only then.

@sabernhardt is that your expectation here so I can make sure to be aligned.

[sabernhardt]

Thanks for updating the patch. I'm not so sure about setting display: block now.

Having a strong or em element without a parent div or paragraph is already an edge case, and the situation described on this ticket is actually caused by invalid HTML.

The case of someone actually wanting parent-less inline elements to continue displaying inline is likely even less common, but it technically is possible. Adding text <em>without</em> paragraph in a Custom HTML block did not honor the margin, and display: block made it more broken than it already was.

Also, the numbers I mentioned earlier are the changesets that made the first patch unusable, not ticket numbers.