[EXPLANATION]
If there is a space before the closing [/URL] or a bracket - e.g. a ( or a ) - within the URL tags it renders the post invisible for some reason.
[/EXPLANATION]
Several posters have had trouble with posts that show nothing -- not even vertical empty space. When I've looked at the post text, it always seems to include a link enclosed in [url]...[/url] tags. When I edit the post and remove the tags, leaving just the URL text itself, the board software interprets the URL, formats it as a link, and the whole post suddenly appears.
I'm going to try a few links here and see what works, what doesn't. I think this is the URL as it appeared originally -- should've copied the non-working text before correcting it:
http://www.box.net/shared/xe7kke7dbf
Hm, that looks fine. I'll have to keep an eye out for similar posts and next time try to remember to grab the exact tags that do it.
I don't know whether this is a bug in the board software or just one of those things that's gonna happen, but since it's come up several times I figured I'd look into it.
[edit] If anyone else notices this happening, please post to this thread. If possible, quote the original post and paste the quoted text here. Thanks.
P.S.: Firefox 3.0.10 on Vista 64.
She seems to have an Invisible Post, yeah
-
- Skunk Mod
- Topic Starter
- 21249 posts since 10 Jun, 2004 from Pony Pasture
Okay, it looks to me as if one or more parentheses ( ) in a URL in combination with the ... tags, anywhere in a post, makes the entire post invisible. This happens only with a plain begin tag, having no "=http//blah.blah ... od (music)
(the rendered version looks exactly like the text above; the BBCode shows up uninterpreted, just as you see.)
________________
With full link in opening tag and parentheses URL-encoded (by hand) in link. Gets interpreted as a URL.
Classical period (music)
(looks like this when rendered by the forum software; this is correct)
Classical period (music)
________________
Bare tags enclosing link containing unencoded parentheses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music)
(no rendered view -- this is the one that makes the whole post invisible!)
________________
Bare tags enclosing link with URL-encoded parentheses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_ ... 27music%28
(also correctly rendered by the forum software as)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_ ... 27music%28
________________
Lots of Wikipedia URLs include parentheses, and they show up elsewhere too. They're valid characters for use unencoded in URLs (RFC 1738, Uniform Resource Locators, page 3, & RFC 2396, URI Generic Syntax, page 8). However, the presence of a parenthesis also ends the board software's interpretation of a string as a URL. There might be some reason the board software treats parentheses specially, or maybe this is just an out-and-out bug. I don't know. But for what it's worth, there's what I've been able to figure out about the Mysterious Invisible Posts.
(the rendered version looks exactly like the text above; the BBCode shows up uninterpreted, just as you see.)
________________
With full link in opening tag and parentheses URL-encoded (by hand) in link. Gets interpreted as a URL.
Classical period (music)
(looks like this when rendered by the forum software; this is correct)
Classical period (music)
________________
Bare tags enclosing link containing unencoded parentheses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music)
(no rendered view -- this is the one that makes the whole post invisible!)
________________
Bare tags enclosing link with URL-encoded parentheses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_ ... 27music%28
(also correctly rendered by the forum software as)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_ ... 27music%28
________________
Lots of Wikipedia URLs include parentheses, and they show up elsewhere too. They're valid characters for use unencoded in URLs (RFC 1738, Uniform Resource Locators, page 3, & RFC 2396, URI Generic Syntax, page 8). However, the presence of a parenthesis also ends the board software's interpretation of a string as a URL. There might be some reason the board software treats parentheses specially, or maybe this is just an out-and-out bug. I don't know. But for what it's worth, there's what I've been able to figure out about the Mysterious Invisible Posts.
-
- Skunk Mod
- Topic Starter
- 21249 posts since 10 Jun, 2004 from Pony Pasture
As per tomg, the apostrophe character ' in a URL will cause the same problem as parentheses. There could well be other chars that do this.
[edit] Quintosardo has provided another case, this one involving a URL with spaces in the filename. I tried replacing them with the "+" that's supposed to be used in URLs, but that didn't bring up the linked file.
[edit] Quintosardo has provided another case, this one involving a URL with spaces in the filename. I tried replacing them with the "+" that's supposed to be used in URLs, but that didn't bring up the linked file.
