Bug Reporting

[Nimz]

Would it be possible to make the forum insert a space after 51 characters of textwithoutspaces instead of after 50 characters? The reason I ask is because there are threads where nonstandard characters are used - characters whose encoding is equivalent to three standard characters - and when 17 or more of those characters are placed back to back (17x3=51), everything after that point in a post disappears in the normal thread view. My guess is that it is due to the character being split in the middle, which would not happen (as frequently) if the space was inserted after a multiple of 3 spaceless characters. I realise this suggestion is just a workaround, and ideally the forum would properly recognise characters that look like three characters, but it's a workaround that should fix the majority of instances where the problem occurs (and would presumably be much easier to implement). Anyway, a demonstration of the bug:

aa———————————————— ——————————————
If I am not mistaken, this should be visible, but unless this post is quoted,
————————————————� �———————————————
this is not visible. And anything else I put down here will not be visible.
————————————————� �———————————————
————————————————� �———————————————
I doubt this will appear, but it seems like a good test to see if the broken post can be fixed by adding an appropriate amount of more brokenness.

[Isoraqathedh]

You'd have trouble with other things then. UTF-8 uses a variable 1 to 4 bytes to encode character data, so you'd have to use a common multiple of 1, 2, 3, and 4, which will be any multiple of 12. 51 is not a multiple of 12, but 60 is, so we can use that.

[Wacom Guy]

60 is a nice number, but what about 48?

[Nimz]

You'd have trouble with other things then. UTF-8 uses a variable 1 to 4 bytes to encode character data, so you'd have to use a common multiple of 1, 2, 3, and 4, which will be any multiple of 12. 51 is not a multiple of 12, but 60 is, so we can use that.

Wow. Learn something new every day. I was unaware UTF-8 uses any integer from 1 to 4 bytes - I don't typically look at how characters are encoded, and the only instances I have looked at either use 1 or 3 bytes. Inserting the space at 48 bytes without a word break was the other choice I was leaning toward suggesting, due to its proximity to the current 50. I still think any multiples of 3 will weed out most instances of bad breaks, but 48 would probably be the best. The first place I encountered this bug is in the Japanese translation of Homestuck thread. The combination of no native spaces and 3-byte characters... the bug appears on the first page of that thread (and links to a post made in March 2011 that mentions the problem). So this particular problem has been around longer than I have been around the forum.

[Wacom Guy]

On the topic if vanishing bottomblog posts, am I missing a new one? I just logged onto the bandcamp, and there is a new album. Is andrew not posting yet, or is it just not there for me?

[SkaianRedeemer]

It's not up yet. It happens a lot, sometimes I wonder if he's doing it intentionally to avoid overwhelming servers, but then the servers break anyways and I doubt it a little.

[Wacom Guy]

He did that with HS book one.

[AmberIce]

I always thought he used his tumblr to release news before he posted it to MSPA as a sort of thank you to people who followed him there. XP

[Fayd]

Well, MiRaClE of MiRaClEs, the new posts (both of them) now appear for me. I ... have no idea why. Nothing changed. Weird.

[Nimz]

I just tried replying to a post in the Jterniabound thread, and now my reply seems to be stuck in some kind of limbo - it appears when I preview a post, but it does not appear on the main view for the thread. The last post I can see in the main view is #150, or the bottom of page 6, so mine should appear on the top of page 7, but I get redirected to page 6 when I manually try going to page 7. Maybe I forgot to tag with a trigger warning?

e: seems to have fixed itself with someone else posting?

[Kraft]

The webcomic page looks odd to me, here The links that connected to the forums, logs everything; are gone. I'm left with the one ad on top, the webcomic, and the postings from Andrew below it.

Is anyone else having this issue, did something change recently because it was not this way yesterday.

[Wacom Guy]

Wait, what ad? I'm using both Mac and iPhone, but I never see any ads on this forum whatsoever.

[Blueberry]

wacom guy: the ads are on the main site, if you'd read the actual post or looked at the screenshot.

Kraft, the site looks fine to me, and I don't know enough about browsers or stuff to help you. hopefully someone else can!

[SkaianRedeemer]

I have seen the main page do that but it's always fixed by a simple reload...

[Wacom Guy]

http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?49657-Nix/page25

This link should bring me to page 25, right?

[ashdenej]

http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?49657-Nix/page25

This link should bring me to page 25, right?

And this should bring you to page 99, but it doesn't, because page 99 doesn't exist! Same deal with page 25.

If you're seeing a phantom page link at the top and bottom of the page, it's because there were a couple of deleted posts on page 24. I'm not seeing any, which might be relevant!

In other bug reportingly related news, when I click reply to a post it isn't giving me the three rows of shortcut buttons on top. I have to go advanced (or remember the code)!

[Nimz]

I was just noticing the same thing as Wacom Guy - the thread says there are 601 posts on it, which is enough for there to be a p25. The last post I see when I click on Go Advanced is the last post on p24. Reminds me much of the bug I reported a couple of days ago. This, too, will probably be fixed as soon as a new post is made in that thread. :P

[forkinyoureye]

I dunno if this should go here, but I'm not getting email notifications from the forum. My subscribed threads are still set to instant notification, and they're showing they've updated when I go to view my subscriptions. It might be a problem with me switching browsers on my laptop and preventing the forum from registering that I've viewed the thread due to not being logged in, but I had the browser set to automatically log me in fairly quickly, and not having viewed the threads usually doesn't have anything to do with whether I get email notifications anyway.

Edit: Nevermind, they all showed up just now.

[Wesley Foxx]

Sometimes the mail tubes get clogged up and Rincebrain has to bang on them with a rock until they all pour out at once.

[Wacom Guy]

That's why they call him a server monkey. Ahhhhhhhh.

[Ryuu]

Something to do with the comic pages: I always start off on the first page of homestuck. The autoload feature just doesn't work anymore. The load feature works sometimes, not all the time, and it seems like nothing works. Clearing cache, cookies, etc. doesn't help, I haven't added anything to my browser, nothing seems to help.

[kwinse]

Official word is that "the autosave feature kinda sucks."

[Wacom Guy]

since GoDaddy went down today, a lot of websites went down too, because they were hosted by it. I'll just assume that mspaintadventures.com was, too.

[ashdenej]

MSPA is not down for me and has not been all day! Maybe it's hosted by different people in different countries???

Edit:

The site isn't down, but it looks like the DNS changed and it hasn't expired everywhere yet. Compare and contrast URL by name, and URL by IP. IP works for me (sort of, a lot of resources internally link by name and don't come up), but DNS doesn't.

Edit: Flushing your DNS cache might help. Don't ask me how to do that, google works and it's different by OS.

[Blueberry]

Yeah, MSPA moved away from GoDaddy a long time ago but they've held onto the DNS. What ash said, basically.