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Unrelated ... >0< ... PM problem --- technical difficulty

grant

13:22 / 02.06.03

I got a PM from ... >0< ... and tried to reply. The board wouldn't accept my reply because it couldn't find the user... it thought the ellipses were funky codes. … is the code for an ellipsis. I have no idea whether you'll read that as three dots or as "…", but there it is.

Sometimes, the symbols don't translate. Is there a fix for this?

Tezcatlipoca

13:43 / 02.06.03

Can you not find one of his/her posts, click the name, and send something that way? Failing that, try punching the elipses into Word. It changes them to an actual elipse symbol, as opposed to three dots. You could copy/paste that and see if it works...

grant

16:16 / 02.06.03

I did - it doesn't. Neither trick worked. Which is odd.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

10:46 / 03.06.03

Possibly >0< has withdrawn from the board - or the suit has become corrupted and needs re-jigging.

grant

12:46 / 03.06.03

No, I actually got another PM from >0< saying it was peculiar because ze was obviously getting PMs from other people. Of course, I tried to reply to that one, too, and couldn't.

grant

12:49 / 03.06.03

The code for ellipsis (which turns up twice in the "user can't be found" message) is:

& # 8 2 3 0 ;

Without the spaces. I tried to use pre /pre tags in my first message, but they don't work.

cusm

22:33 / 04.06.03

Properly encoded, the URL should look like this:

http://www.barbelith.com/underground/msg_send.php?msg_to=%85+%3E0%3C+%85

So, if nothing else Grant, you can click on that to PM.

Tom Coates

10:27 / 07.06.03

More reasonably, they should change their bloody user name to something more practical...

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:26 / 07.06.03

Incidentally, I've also modded a post or two where punctuation has interacted with the brackets around ...>0<...'s name to convince my browser (Mozilla) that it is reading HTML, so parts of the text are not represented as text.

—| x |—

22:47 / 21.06.03

It also only now occurred to me that if you are simply hitting "send message" and then typing in my name, then you need to type '...[space]>0<[space]...'. And note also that '0' is the number zero and not the letter 'O'.

w1rebaby

01:14 / 22.06.03

I don't understand why PMs don't work on user number, given that profile editing does, and users all have a unique number.

That would seem to be much more sensible, and it would also give people the ability to check whether a certain poster was the same as someone with a previous (but radically different) name.

grant

15:29 / 23.06.03

Yeah, it's true - I remember trying to reply to Flux while he was fluxing his name, and having to cut&paste my reply into a new window a couple times until the name settled down for long enough for it to get through.

grant

13:30 / 01.07.03

By the way, cusm, that link does the same thing for me. Can't reach the user. Hmph.

cusm

22:36 / 01.07.03

*grumbles*

if ($newusername =~/[\W]/) {
error_BadUsername($username);
}
else {
change_username($username);
}

That's what I'd have put into the board software, at any rate, or something like it. Filter the input for any non-word character right off the bat and skip the whole problem. Its just a good idea anyway, to avoid any possible script exploits for people setting their usernames to "Hacker;rm *" or anything fun like that.

—| x |—

06:40 / 02.07.03

I apologize for my current incarnation's "name" causing some trouble for some people. However, I imagine a transformation will occur soon enough...

Thank-you for your patience.

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