Extraneous Backslashes in Cat-eLog updates.

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 04 Aug 2007, 14:49

Text with single-quotes(') get quoted with backslashes in the Cat-eLog datasheet - this messes up the datasheets text, but worse is the links to external web-sites get completely messed up, because the parser thinks it's a local site, making the link http://www.planetcatfish.com/\'http://w ... epage.html\', which (naturally) leads to a 404-page-not-found error.

I think this is added by your Cat-eLog update routine, as I just submitted a change that REMOVED those extra backslashes, and they appear again on this page:
- there are no extra backslashes in the info emailed to me.

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Mats

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 04 Aug 2007, 15:08

Thinking more about it, it's obviously not the addition of the slashes that is the problem, but rather the "lack of removal", if you see what I mean.

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Mats

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 06 Aug 2007, 15:59

Mats,
More stuff is happening! Please check your e-mail.
Thanks,
Amanda

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 06 Aug 2007, 16:25

Mats,
When I input data, I get more than I bargained for. I'm adding data to etymology, but changes come up to type locality, literature, etc. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Amanda

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 06 Aug 2007, 16:29

Ah, I've seen that too. I beleive that is for two possible reasons (either and both can apply):
1. There are some clean-up functions in the submission, that cleans up stuff (such as extra empty lines). When a piece of un-updated text is cleaned up, the "detect what's changed" still shows it as changed.
2. The "detect what's changed" doesn't compare the same thing on both sides - some strings (appear to me) get quoted [1] on the one side but not the other (I complained about this to Jools before, but he didn't think it was a big deal).

[1] Quoting or "escaping" in this case means prefixing special character such as single-quotes with another special character to indicate that "this is indeed a
special character inside the string". The problem is the same as when you are quoting text with quotes in it in a document - it can get confusing to keep track of which quotes are what.
Something like this:

The text in the book says "He said "I don't like chese." "

Humans can work around this (unless it's VERY complicated), but computers are VERY particular about what they accept and don't accept, so there are a number of "special" characters that need to be handled especially because otherwise the computer gets (possibly VERY) confused.

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Mats

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 06 Aug 2007, 16:32

Should I continue?
Amanda

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 06 Aug 2007, 17:37

I think it's safe to contiue. I beleive the change needed is in the Cat-eLog display part, rather than the data that enters the database.

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Mats

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 06 Aug 2007, 17:42

Thanks!

Amanda

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 08 Oct 2007, 12:20

I did some work on this at the weekend. I'm not saying it's fixed entirely, but it does appear to work better now according to some test data I put thought it.

Jools

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 10 Feb 2008, 09:29

I beleive I have got to the bottom of this now and quotes, special characters like degree symbols and so forth and slashes are now catered for. If you are editing a sheet with errors in it, please clean them up and they will be reflected in the submission once I have vetted it.

Jools

Extraneous Backslashes in Cat-eLog updates.

Extraneous Backslashes in Cat-eLog updates.

Re: Extraneous Backslashes in Cat-eLog updates.