How to insert regular HTML comments into Confluence HTML?

[Jan]

If I switch to HTML edit mode in confluence and write simple plain old HTML comments.. <!-- test 123 --> they get killed by confluence. This sucks!! 

Is there a way to tell confluence to leave my HTML untouched??

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Embed them in a code or noformat macro.

[Andre Vergison]

My colleague Jack Chen at Quest suggested using span instead of div. And this works GREAT! :)

IOW you can put the string

<span class="hidden">some comment here</span>

about everywhere in the XML text, it will be decently saved and won't alter the page layout.

Thanks Jack!

[Stephen Deutsch]

Hmm... I feel like I remember span tags not working before, but maybe I was confused. Anyways, this would be the preferred method as it does not mess up the spacing. Glad to hear it worked!

[Stephen Deutsch]

It seems like Confluence filters out HTML comments from the XHTML source when saving it.  One possibility is using div with a class of "hidden" (since Confluence doesn't filter out div tags) and insert your comment in that.  Then you will have a comment that doesn't show in the editor but will show in the source editor.

Unfortunately there's no way I know of to customize the XHTML parser to not remove plain HTML comments.

[Andre Vergison]

Div tags generate newlines.

I entered this text:

<p>Today will be a beautiful day</p>
<p>Today is a <div class="hidden">before</div>beautiful day<div class="hidden">after</div></p>
<p>Today was a beautiful day</p>

And here's the result:

Today will be a beautiful day

Today is a

beautiful day

Today was a beautiful day

<p>Today will be a beautiful day</p>
<p>Today is a</p>
<div class="hidden">before</div>
<p>beautiful day</p>
<div class="hidden">after</div>
<p>Today was a beautiful day</p>

:(

Take 2: Using the HTML comment macro:

Getting this:

Today will be a beautiful day

Today is abeautifulday

Today was a beautiful day

<p>Today will be a beautiful day</p>
<p>Today is a </p>
<ac:structured-macro ac:macro-id="4c1b09e8-6bc4-4ca4-a86c-c9e6969f146d" ac:name="htmlcomment" ac:schema-version="1">
<ac:parameter ac:name="atlassian-macro-output-type">INLINE</ac:parameter>
<ac:rich-text-body>
<p>before</p>
</ac:rich-text-body>
</ac:structured-macro>
<p> beautiful </p>
<ac:structured-macro ac:macro-id="ad3f6868-9c20-406f-89c8-e85db358c398" ac:name="htmlcomment" ac:schema-version="1">
<ac:parameter ac:name="hidden">true</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="atlassian-macro-output-type">INLINE</ac:parameter>
<ac:rich-text-body>
<p>after</p>
</ac:rich-text-body>
</ac:structured-macro>
<p> day</p>
<p>Today was a beautiful day</p>

Loosing spaces/ Okay, I add spaces in the xml:

<p>Today is a  </p>
<ac:struct...-macro>
<p>  beautiful  </p>
<ac:struct...-macro>
<p>  day</p>

Result:

Today will be a beautiful day

Today is abeautifulday

Today was a beautiful day

They strip off the leading and trailing text spaces.

:(  :(

So as a solution to replace html comments both div and macro are useless. And macro's add a lot of text bloat.

[Jan]

Yep.

[Doug Swartz]

Or, put the HTML comment inside an HTML macro

[Davin Studer]

Another option would be to get the Content Formatting Macros (free). You get a HTML Comment macro with it.

[Stephen Deutsch]

When you say HTML edit mode, do you mean using the Source Editor to look at the XHTML source?