Pressing enter adds a space instead of a line break when adding cards

[Danika_Dakika]

[I’m repeating some of what others have posted, because I already wrote it yesterday, when I didn’t have time to finish editing my reply, but it doesn’t seem worth deleting.]

@Cia

So the code for the screenshotted card in my original post shows as follows:

<span style="color: rgb(170, 85, 0);">Incubation&nbsp;period&nbsp; ...

Those  's are definitely causing your mid-word-line-break issue. That is the HTML code for a “non-breaking space”. When every space in the sentence is one of those, the HTML treats the sentence as one continuous word. Since it’s got to break somewhere, and it can’t break at the spaces, it breaks wherever else it needs to keep the word in the space allowed.

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@Cia

I then found that the problem of the enter button adding a space instead of a line break tends to occur when   is put between each of my words, but stays there when typing further words, as opposed to leaving an empty space. I also found that when I pressed the enter button while this was happening, it would insert a   as well, instead of a line break …

So we’ve got the “what is happening” – but the “why it’s happening” might have to remain a bit of a mystery for now. Let’s jump over that to “what to do about it.”

How to fix existing notes – Try using Find and Replace to replace   with a regular space. (Unless you think you have  's that you need to keep somewhere?)

How to stop it while it’s happening (without closing the Add window) – Cut the contents of the field, and then use Shift-Ctrl-V to paste it back into the field without formatting. I don’t know if that will cause the issue to go away for a while, or just fix that one field.

@Cia

[1.] I have found when the problem begins the affected box will have the formatting settings of the previously added card, and the “Remove formatting” tool will not apply to any text I add (e.g. if I start typing with pink text, and use the “Remove formatting” tool to revert the text to black, if I were to continue typing in that same box, any new added text will be pink)

I would be interested to know what is happening in the HTML view when you’re doing that too, but it sounds similar to another issue where it’s hard to remove formatting from an empty field – Bold/italic/underline sticks at start of note.

@Cia

It did take longer for the problem to keep happening, but it did happen eventually. Interestingly while using ANKI in safe mode, the problem tended to occur with the Front field when adding cards, when previously the problem occured with the Back field. This switch-up in the problematic fields has continued even after I stopped using ANKI in safe mode

“Did take longer” and “tended to occur” are hard to quantify – especially when we’re already talking about an intermittent issue. There might be too many variables and too much chance of observation/confirmation bias to get a good read on that. Unless it’s overwhelmingly longer, like 3 days instead of 10 minutes?

That the issue is switching between fields hints that it might be the toolkit to blame – as does the fact that closing/reopening the Add window fixes it – but this is probably good background information for anyone looking for a fix.

@Anon_0000

Steps to reproduce

If you’ve been able to reproduce it, is that on version 25.02? Linux, not Windows, right?

Any patterns anyone can find in when it is happening will certainly help get it fixed! [That is, if it’s possible to fix from Anki’s end, and not a toolkit bug that we have to tolerate.]