1.14 removed formatting of books

Discussion in 'General Minecraft Discussion' started by 607, Apr 24, 2020.

  1. Hi, it's me again!

    I am mad right now. :mad:
    As you might know, for over two years now, there has been a bug on EMC where the reset character for formatting was not persistent. This meant that it was dangerous to use bold, italics or underline anywhere except at the end of a page, as otherwise all the rest of the text might change to.
    I was hoping this might be able to be fixed after the update to books in 1.14, although I wasn't counting on it. But the situation is much, much worse. :( This bug cannot be fixed anymore. Formatting of books was completely removed in Java edition. This is a much bigger detriment than the loss of bold, italics and underlined. Why? Well, because we used to be able to use 16 different colours in books. These colours could be used for a lot of things, but they could also be used for emphasis, as a surrogate to bold, italics and underlined. But now the only option we have is writing in caps, or with spaces, or with accents, or whatever... but no actual formatting at all anymore. :(
    This is a big deal to me, because I give out books in Minecraft.

    Do you reckon it might be possible to install a plugin to EMC so we can format books again? Yeah, I don't think so... :(
  2. Well, has anyone figured out new ways to format books yet? I had hoped all unicode characters would be supported, but when I went through this website, almost everything turned out as question mark boxes. The only two things I could find that work well are these.
    FadedMartian and liamwill like this.
  3. I found one new one, but it doesn't work on capitals. It is parenthesized text. There are really very few options, it seems like... :(
  4. I wasn't aware of this and just like you I don't like where this might be going. However... I may have a solution (I have something in mind, will test later).

    Keyword: strict JSON.

    I think (80% convinced) that's the solution here and I will get back with my findings!
    607 likes this.
  5. True, JSON does work, but only senior staff can make use of that. ;)
  6. I fear for the worst.. if you look into the wiki page for writable books (book & quill) then:

    https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Book_and_Quill

    ... it claims that color formatting is an exclusive bedrock feature, which we all know is nonsense. I haven't kept up with recent developments but it might be a good idea to verify that this really got changed in the snapshot and not somewhere sooner.
  7. I had no idea about this - does it retroactively affect older books as well? This seems like such a silly thing to remove
  8. Nope, old books still look the same, and moreover you can still get coloured books using commands (I just checked in 1.15). But I used colours a lot in my books on EMC as well. :/
    I agree, I don't get why they removed it. Here's the only reason I could find:

    We are not supposed to be able to. Well, we were able to since the book and quill was added. :/ Strangely, this feature is not mentioned in the History section on the Minecraft Wiki page, so I guess they consider it a bug too and find bugs and bug fixes not worth mentioning.
    Anyway, "until we implement proper component-based styling" is honestly not a comfort to me. Why has to do with a post I just wrote in another thread: custom world generation was removed in 1.13 and functionality has just started to reappear, in 1.15 snapshots. It might take years until we can use formatting again. Why don't they keep a working thing until the replacement's ready?!?
  9. I've got to say, while looking for alternatives to formatting, I did end up finding a lot of fun stuff that does work!
    For instance, I think this cover looks pretty good. :)

    And I could probably make it look better if I try some more.
    It still would've been nice to have colour as well, though!
  10. Colour codes appear to work in book & quills now, albeit using § instead of &. :D
    607, liamwill and Joy_the_Miner like this.
  11. what the helllll how long has this been a thing? :eek:

    *goes to try on emc*
  12. I'm pretty sure books have never used & colour codes. Would be quite inconvenient, as ampersand is a frequently used character. :p
    But you're right, they work again!! Hooray!
    The change is not on the Minecraft Wiki, so I'll have to find out myself when it was added back... I might have written a book or two without colours when it was possible to use colours. o.(o) Okay, it wasn't yet possible in 1.15.2! But it is in 1.16, which has been out for a while too.
    Thanks for letting us know, waffle! How did you find out, especially if you didn't know how to use them before? :p
    Edit: I don't have time for it now, but we should check whether the EMC bug mentioned in the OP is intact!
    wafflecoffee likes this.
  13. JohnKid had used them for a while, apparently, and I had not known until they mentioned it after someone asked for a signature in town chat. :p
    607 likes this.
  14. Well, I guess this ought to be motivation for me to write my YouTube comments book. ;)
    FadedMartian likes this.
  15. Most excellent to know. \o/