I just wrote a comment. I couldn't apply bold style anymore in that case (i got italic instead). Also, i couldn't use a * in the text as an index marker (or what the name is), because the according comment gets a
sign instead.
sigh <- you see? There again!
*sigh* <- no, that's not elegant. I have no idea how to escape those characters, or if it's possible anyway. 
If you want a literal * asterisk in those situations, you can use * to escape it:
Ok, got it now. Thanks. It was the asterix thing that bothered me. But why i couldn't get bold instead of italics, i yet have to find out. I had the impression, that it changed, using the > symbols for the menu paths. A few months ago i worked. Unless my memory fools me.
The forum software has gotten worse
Alle Menschen müssen sterbern
JSB
Gute Nacht
Bold is two asterisks, italics is one asterisk. It's always been like that.
You're right, of course. It was that unescaped lone asterisk in the middle, that thwarted my attempt to bolden the sentence.
I am sorry, but Discourse is ■■■■, and that is being polite. I use Pale Moon as my main browser and they never bothered to cater for compatibility issues. It's workaround after workaround for me, and now I am getting the infamous "Your browser will soon be incompatible with this community." warning.
Sorry, but it is YOU, Discourse, that are getting incompatible (i.e. following Google Chrome trends alone). Not the other way around.
As for the DOpus Resource Centre... what can I say? It's the only thing I hate about DOpus. I can only strongly suggest to ditch this horrible, bug-infested and Chrome-only Discourse platform, and either use your own, in-house implementation or switch to something friendlier and browser-agnostic. With a few missing -and useless- bells and whistles perhaps, but user-friendly and well... actually usable.
Oh, and I keep getting "CLICK HERE: Link your account for priority support" even though it is linked. Another great Discourse "feature", I imagine...
Not sure if that is my fault or theirs. It seems like my Discourse plugin is being called without being initialised properly sometimes, but it might also be because I've done something incorrectly.
Didn't get any response to my question about it so I need to find a workaround myself, but that requires setting up a Discourse dev/test environment again, as my old one stopped working many updates ago.
Discourse certainly has a lot of things I'd do differently, but I'm also not aware of any better forum software.
We're also still fixing problems with badly formatted posts due to the conversion from phpBB to Discourse (and then Discourse changing how it handled BBCode tags, which broke things even more). I'd be loathe to go through another conversion like that if we can avoid it.
Isn't this merely a cosmetic issue, quickly solved with a refresh?
I'd leave it; not every bug needs to be fixed 
Hey, isn't that Microsoft's motto?
I'm afraid phpBB is a million times more reliable (and OMG "old-fashioned"), but I guess that ship has sailed and you had your reasons to switch. Not a forum software expert, but I bet there are less "gardened" solutions than this. And they don't even reply to you? Not surprised.
Don't get me wrong but I have to be honest. I'd expect better from creative people like yourselves who grew up with nothing short of the Amiga, than to promote the closed, monopolised Internet we are heading towards (if not there already). Indirectly of course, but the end result is the same.
I am typing this, and the characters appear with a delay as if I were on a 1-MHz ZX Spectrum. If need to upload a file here, I will be forced to use Firefox. If that fails too (and it often does) it will have to be yet another browser attempt: Microsoft Edge. Only then, may the Gods of Discourse and Google allow us to post some text in 2025.
The same goes for similarly closed platforms and hostile to a truly open Internet such as Disqus and a few others.
Sorry for the rant, but I am sure you understand. Over at the Pale Moon community we recently had major problems with another Internet giant: Cloudflare. They were basically blocking access to many websites, unless you used the usual 3-4 "supported browsers". After lengthy protests and some media coverage, they finally admitted it's not their place to police user browsers and fixed their "browser verification" issues.
I don't see why Discourse should be an exception and get to decide which browser I use. If you are going to take the responsibility to downright allow/block access to 3rd-party websites, either do it properly or not at all. And I think you share that responsibility, too.
Leo and I probably use the forum more than anyone and we both vastly prefer Discourse to phpBB.
It sounds like most of your issues are caused by using a non-standard browser. Any hypothetical custom solution would quite likely have similar issues.
Not that simple. This isn't really about browsers, but browser engines. As is obvious, there's only a handful of them that are active, working and updated. It shouldn't be that hard to test them all. Pale Moon uses one of them: the only one not currently backed by a large corporation, and this is the crucial part.
You say: "most of your issues are caused by using a non-standard browser.". I have to disagree. The vast majority of the Internet works just fine. The issues are caused by non-standard platforms like Discourse, which target specific web browsers and features (essentially, just Chrome) instead of established web-standards.
What makes a browser "standard" anyway? Market share? Are we supposed to accept the mess that is Google Chrome as the golden example/standard of a browser, with Google itself constantly changing the web standards by sheer force? It's the Internet Explorer situation all over again. Sorry, but no.
There's actually an interesting parallel with Opus itself here.
A reasonably common post on this forum is about something (e.g. a context menu) that doesn't work in Opus but does work in Explorer.
Where possible, we try to fix Opus to make them work. We don't insist that all the third-party tools out there change their code to work with Opus.
That's because Explorer is the incumbent/major platform, and Opus is trying to replace it. It's up to us, as the minor platform, to ensure compatibility with as much third-party software as possible. This is exactly the same scenario as you have with web browsers.
Chrome/Firefox are the major platforms (or Chromium/Gecko if you want to talk about engines). Pale Moon (which I've never heard of before this thread) is trying to replace them.
In that scenario, it's up to the minor platform (Pale Moon) to try to ensure compatibility with as much third-party software (web sites) as possible.
Expecting every website developer to test against a minor browser, particularly when Chromium/Gecko together have such a huge market share, is as unreasonable as it would be for us to expect every third-party Windows developer to test their software against Opus.
I don't think the analogy works. Windows is a closed system. The Internet, supposedly, is not. If anything, it has become a necessity and a human right. Windows is not.
DOpus is trying to replace Explorer, a sub-feature of Windows. Pale Moon is not trying to replace anything. Not Chrome, Firefox or any browser. It can't and doesn't want to. It is an alternative Web Browser, fully compliant to established web standards.
Microsoft owns Windows. No one "owns" the Internet. Well, Google sort of does with our help.
And yes, expecting every website developer to test against the 5-6 available, updated and compliant browser engines (not web browsers) is far more reasonable, than expecting community-driven, small teams of web engine/browser developers to test against every website on the planet.
And I think your minor/major, i.e. weak/strong mindset is problematic here. I repeat, the Internet is supposedly free for all. It should not be driven by large, for-profit corporations.
Microsoft can do whatever they want with Windows. Google should not be allowed to control the Internet. And by using mostly Chrome-compatible platforms, that is exactly what happens.
Chromium is open source, Gecko is open source. They're dominant because of their market share, not because they "own" the internet. Pretending that's not the case won't get you very far.
Discourse is open source too. Have you asked the Pale Moon developers why their web browser can't handle a forum platform that the major browsers have no problem with?
Of course, many have. The answer: What is Discourse? | Discourse - Civilized Discussion
Discourse is specifically tailored to those FOUR browsers. Beyond that, you may get lucky if using a different browser, implementing one of those THREE browser engines. If using another browser engine: zero guarantees. Correction: guaranteed failure and no provided fallbacks, as any decently programmed website should provide.
Let me reverse the question: why would almost the entirety of the Internet (a gazillion websites) work perfectly with the Goanna browser engine, and Discourse does not? Isn't this a more sensible question for the Discourse developers?
Are their supported websites (including yours) supposed to be Internet websites, or Edge/Chrome/Firefox/Safari websites?
Their platform is not THAT advanced and "modern" that would require some super special, unique to Chromium/Gecko magical features. It's just JS-bloated. Some logical conclusions:
a) They don't care/can't be bothered (low market share)
b) They solely abide by Chrome's ultra-rapid release cycle. The other few browser engines left (like Gecko - barely mainstream any more) are desperately following Chromium-set trends anyway. So, Discourse mostly tests against Chromium.
c) Incompetence
d) All of the above
It's a fact -not a conspiracy theory- that Google controls and heavily pushes certain web standards via their dominant vehicle (Chrome) and participation in Web Standards Bodies. Not to mention their entire range of web tools, Search Engine, political/financial influence etc. Sorry, but the current browser landscape is not the open-source paradise you are painting.
Now imagine if Microsoft decided that only FOUR alternative file managers will work on Windows, and DO isn't on the list. It starts presenting severe bugs. You are conforming to all Windows "programming standards" etc. but Windows code is specifically looking for those "Big Four" no matter what you do. As mentioned earlier, I don't think the Microsoft/Internet analogy is proper but I hope you see what I mean.
Their announcement about July 2025 specifically mentions three browser FEATURE requirements. It remains to be seen if this will be respected, or if they'll keep supporting the usual browser applications alone.
Microsoft have decided that NO alternative file managers should work on Windows. There's still, 30 years after Windows 95, no official way of setting a different default file manager.
Anyway my gripe is not so much with your comments about Discourse (Leo complains about it a lot too), it was about your suggestion that we chose it through some sort of lack of vision or something, and that we (a team of 3 people) should dump it and spend time coding our own custom forum, simply because you choose to use a browser no one's ever heard of.
