First of all, thank you all in advance!

Well, I've been looking for an article or guide on how to format text in a post, both in the website help as the search function, but to no avail, so...

1) The use of bold / italic / underline: I'm doing it manually. Mark the text and click the button does not work for me (just add the opening and closing brackets at the end of post). An old thread suggests it could be browser issue (IE 8 in my case and as a posting from a public library I can not change it). Any workaround?

2) I'm starting to use the quotation system but surely the hard way too. Any suggestion about multiple posts quotation and nested (?) ones?

3) I have seen that it is possible to write a text linked to a website so that pressing leads directly there, but although I have tried in various ways, can not find the trick.

4) How to link a post that belongs to a different thread?

Any help on any of the issues will be greatly appreciated!

To which I'll add what wpegg's post illustrates: if you use three or more nesting levels, it breaks formatting, adding the quote line to the rest of the post. That's a known issue.

Actually there's only 2 nesting levels there. I think the issue arose because I was quoting a post which was in fact quoting itself. I was curious to see what happened.

Oh, I see. But this is going to break too, right?

EDIT: Hey, the forum deleted the innermost quote by itself. How long has that been happening?

As far as I can remember.

The issue with reply happening inside quotes happens (I believe) when there are more than one (multilevel? may or may not matter) quote in the post.

Thank you all for your prompt replies, especially wpegg, which is nominated for the solution (I forgive you the bogus example you used because my well known magnanimous character ^ _ ^). Although I will leave the thread open until next week if someone else can help with some other trick.

I added rep's to all who have participated so far, of course ;-)

1 y 2) It seems that I will not be able to get rid of the manual system, but I'll end up getting used to (I have always been adept at using the keyboard shortcuts anyway)

3) I can not wait to try it...

4) I was hovering over the link icon to verify I quoted the right post, but I did not realize that pointed to a url! * sigh *

EDIT: By the way, I had to write the whole message again. Had made quotes to the proper lines but when I sended the post it said that there was a error in post formatting. I have reviewed it, I added a quote closing/end (?) that seemed to be missing and resubmit. It has agreed... but not added to the thread. The message is lost in limbo forever. And then nothing I tried worked until I gave up and deleted all quotes.

Not the first time and it is very frustrating. Well, that'll teach me to save long messages like this in notepad before attempting to send...

Someone else?

Regarding the use of underline: Don't use it.

The common practice for the past 15 years of underlining hyperlinks means that most people associate an underline with a hyperlink. Hence, if you underline something that is not a hyperlink, some people will automatically try to click it and be confused and/or disappointed.

On these forums, I'd also advise against using italics for highlighting. The reason being that all quotes are in italics, so if someone quotes what you wrote, your highlight will disappear, or at least be invisible.

The only form of highlighting I'd recommend using here is bold.

Kind enough to let me know as well as providing the reason behind each point. Thanks!

Also, from a typographic point of view underlining in computer-written texts (for non-links) is nothing but a holdover from the typewriter era (because it was the only kind of emphasis typewriters could do), and should not be used at all.

I prefer italics myself (bold jumps at me a bit too much), but the point about quotes is very valid.

Positive thinking, bold use only simplifies things by two thirds!

I'm still struggling with the quote system. While something like...
<quote_number1>
text quoted
</ quote>
-my answer -
... runs smoothly,

the following...
<quote_number1>
part of the quoted text
</ quote>
-my answer-

<quote_number1>
part of the quoted text
</ quote>
-my answer-
... sometimes works and sometimes not.

And to quote several people in one post is automatic formatting error...

Yes, the forum software doesn't handle multiple quotes very well, I'm afraid it's something we have to live with until GOG's web dev team manages to fix it.

You can quote several people, but you have to be very careful to use the exact same number of </quote>s as <quote>s, and preferably not nest them.

Thanks for the advice, I was beginning to feel completely useless after much trial / error, while seemingly everyone quoted without problem. -_-

Usually, when I need to quote and reply to multiple people, I press reply on one post, write my reply, press ctrl + a, ctrl + x, cancel the post, hit reply on another post, insert my previous post under / above it and so on until I have quoted everyone I wanted to, then I just send it either using new post or when quoting the last person.