The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by ketsugi:

@TH: Well, the (better) alternative would be to include both disemvoweled and emvoweled versions of the comment in the HTML source, with the emvoweled version hidden via CSS, and a Javascript link to toggle the disemvoweled version to hidden and the emvoweled version to visible in one fell swoop. That's a much better implementation of my idea.

However, perhaps I'm missing something: what precisely is the purpose of disemvoweling? I thought it was to obfuscate an offensive comment so that it was not easily readable by anyone skimming through comments. The reason I suggested a re-emvowel link was so that readers who did want to follow the entire discussion would be able to activate the comment and read it. For example, looking at the thread that Theresa linked to in the original post, it is very difficult to read any of the disemvoweled posts, and I no longer have any idea what it is that Phillip guy said that's so offensive.

If you really wanted to make the vowels reappear on command, perhaps what should be done, as TH mentioned, keep the original full comment in the backend/database, and have the plugin hide the vowels using CSS. For example:

"This is a sample sentence."

When disemvoweled, might be rendered as

"Th<span class="dsmvwl">i</span>s <span class="dsmvwl">i</span>s <span class="dsmvwl">a</span> s<span class="dsmvwl">a</span>mpl<span class="dsmvwl">e</span> s<span class="dsmvwl">e</span>nt<span class="dsmvwl">e</span>nc<span class="dsmvwl">e</span>."

Then using have a CSS definition for:

.dsmwwl {
display: none;
}

And then use Javascript to change the .dsmvwl's CSS definition to

.dsmvwl {
display:inline;
}

when clicking on a "Toggle disemvoweling" link or some such.

Seems like a fairly simple thing to do; I think maybe I'll go code a plugin for Nucleus CMS to enable this. Whee!

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