Topic: Special character code in RSS Feed

[Bluesy Chris]

Hi, there is a special character code showing up in the RSS feed messages: Example: "I think it'#039s bought instead of brought". See also attached Screenshot. I use Thunderbird 102.13.0 (64 bits). Bluesy regards, Bluesy Chris

[Stuart]

Looks like the release you are using is dated July 5, 2023. It is probably a bug that has not been fixed yet. Try Firefox or Chrome and see what you get. It looks like it happens when the underlying code for an apostrophe is not correctly converted to the proper screen font. There are a few message boards that address this problem, although not with Thunderbird 102.13.0. Submit a bug report at the site. Be specific.

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/102.13.0/releasenotes/

Three apostrophes: ' ' '

[Bluesy Chris]

Hi Stuart,
Since several weeks I don't receive any posts anymore from your feed. In my settings and on your webpage I don't find the address of your feed anymore.
Could you please put the link to the feed in your answer ?
Thanks in advance and kind regards,
Bluesy Chris

[Stuart]

Hi Bluesy Chris:

I'm somewhat puzzled by your message. I do not have a website and I do not have a feed. I suggest you re-read my original response and contact Thunderbird technical support. Hopefully they can resolve the problem you have been having with their product.

[Bluesy Chris]

Sorry I got confused, I thought I had subscribed to an RSS feed.
It might be useful to provide a guideline on how to subscribe to notifications from the forums on weeniecampbell.com.
Kind regards, Bluesy Chris

[Stuart]

Hi Bluesy Chris:

This is something the behind the scenes tech people here might be able to help you with. I was focusing on the conversion problem and suggesting you try the browsers I use to try to establish a baseline in which there are no conversion problems.

This kind of thing can be maddening. With so many steps in the transfer and/or conversion processes all it takes is one step where something doesn't work quite right for a problem to emerge downstream. Here at WC there are a few that show up in older posts from time to time owing to the differences between the outfits that have hosted the Weenie Campbell site over the years.

It can be enough to drive an already crazy person insane, but for the IT crowd, it's job security. 

[banjochris]

Sorry I got confused, I thought I had subscribed to an RSS feed.
It might be useful to provide a guideline on how to subscribe to notifications from the forums on weeniecampbell.com.
Kind regards, Bluesy Chris

Bluesy Chris –
This should be the link to the RSS feed – you can change the "limit" number at the end if you want more:
https://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?action=.xml;type=atom;limit=10;

I think there might still be some screwy characters in there however; I haven't researched that yet. It took me a while to find the link to the feed!
Chris

[Stuart]

[I think there might still be some screwy characters in there however; I haven't researched that yet. It took me a while to find the link to the feed!
Chris

banjochris: When Blusey Chris first posted this I did some searching and ran across a few posts on a couple of tech boards where the authors said they had narrowed the identical problem down to a html conversion (I don't remember which one) where there was a glitch with converting the code for the apostrophe and it resulted in the on-screen characters (#039) Bluesy Chris posted. I don't know if this is of any help, but I thought I should at least mention it.

Google " #039; html " and see if you get any leads.

Here's an example I just found--I don't recall seeing this one the first time:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29928717/my-webpage-display-039-and-not

Stuart

[Blues Vintage]

Sorry I got confused, I thought I had subscribed to an RSS feed.
It might be useful to provide a guideline on how to subscribe to notifications from the forums on weeniecampbell.com.
Kind regards, Bluesy Chris

Any Weenie Campbell member can also get a e-mail notification on a topic or specific board you're interested in.
You can also set it to automatically activated when you reply to any topic.
There's a notify button next to "reply" on every thread. It might go straight to your spam box though so you have to set Weenie Campbell on "safe" in your e-mail set up.

[banjochris]

[I think there might still be some screwy characters in there however; I haven't researched that yet. It took me a while to find the link to the feed!
Chris

banjochris: When Blusey Chris first posted this I did some searching and ran across a few posts on a couple of tech boards where the authors said they had narrowed the identical problem down to a html conversion (I don't remember which one) where there was a glitch with converting the code for the apostrophe and it resulted in the on-screen characters (#039) Bluesy Chris posted. I don't know if this is of any help, but I thought I should at least mention it.

Google " #039; html " and see if you get any leads.

Here's an example I just found--I don't recall seeing this one the first time:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29928717/my-webpage-display-039-and-not

Stuart

Thanks Stuart, at some point soon I'll see if I can track it down!

[banjochris]

Just FYI it has been explained to me that the RSS feed was originally switched off because it caused a lot of bandwidth overage issues, so it is again switched off. On the plus side, no one will have to worry about special characters in the feed not being formatted properly!
Chris

[Bluesy Chris]

Thank you for this info. Kind regards, Bluesy Chris

[Stuart]

Thanks Banjochris. Since the time of the initial post and exchange, I've run across the same problem in different articles at different sites. Usually it appears in older articles I access via an embedded link in a current article. So it's out there and will probably be with us for quite some time. But at least we know it's systemic and not something unique to our individual devices and software.

[banjochris]

I see it in forum software all the time, too, Stuart – not just here. Something happens in an upgrade and suddenly quotes and apostrophes go wonky. Probably as the WWW folks get more inclusive with things included in character sets over the years it can mess things up!

[Stuart]

Hi Chris:

There's a technical term for it that I can't recall at the moment--It's a cross between legacy code conversion and backward compatability. But anyway, you get the picture. It's probably the case that the real time coversion  software can't cover all the bases, so a few items slip through and at times are converted to something other than the original.