Fixing Broken Things: ASCII Symbols & More

  • Thread starter Hurkyl
  • Start date
In summary, the codes to create ASCII symbols are no longer working. One can use ASCI code 0177 (Alt 0177, with num lock activated) to get ± .
  • #36
Greg Bernhardt said:
[urlWhat browser are you using?

IE 5.1.7 for the Mac. I'm also still using OS 9.2 for the Mac. I just turned off all my Norton stuff, and lowered my security level as low as possible, but it doesn't seem to help.
 
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  • #37
Les Sleeth said:
IE 5.1.7 for the Mac. I'm also still using OS 9.2 for the Mac. I just turned off all my Norton stuff, and lowered my security level as low as possible, but it doesn't seem to help.

Well I'm afraid we might be out of luck. I got a hold of a developer and he wasn't sure if the new AJAX elements in the forum would work with IE on the Mac. They don't seem to support it. He said they test on OSX with Safari. :frown:
 
  • #38
Sorry Les and Danger, it looks like IE is the problem. I just opened up IE v. 5.2.3 on OS X and saw exactly what you guys are describing. That's bizarre...when you click the edit button, it's like it turns on a turquoise neon light around it. :bugeye: But then nothing happens. Exactly what Danger described.

I'm afraid you're going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade. I started having problems with IE a while ago, while still on OS 10.2, so have just kept it tucked away for the rare website that won't work properly with Safari. You'll have more and more trouble finding things that support OS 9.x. At this point, the longer you wait, the more you risk nothing being compatible when you finally go ahead and do it. If your machine can handle it, you can jump right from 9.2 to 10.4 without needing to install any of the intermediates (if you're using something less than 9.2, you have to upgrade to at least 9.2 before doing the final upgrade to 10.4).
 
  • #39
Moonbear said:
Sorry Les and Danger, it looks like IE is the problem. . . . I'm afraid you're going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade

No freakin' way. You guys are going to have to suffer my rants and raves without benefit of the 24 hour editing grace period to cool down. If you think what made it through that was bad . . . o:)

And I was just thinking about reincarnating the "Dave" thread too.
 
  • #41
I'm with Les here. There is no way in the world that I can afford a new computer. I'm on OS 9. I have 9.1 and 9.2 upgrades, but my machine won't take them. I'll just have to live without being able to edit.
 
  • #43
yomamma said:

Hmmmmm. I am one of those guys who uses software, but doesn't understand its basis all that much. I just want it to work.

Your link seems only for OS X. My problem is how to make OS 9.2 serve my needs. Have a suggestion? If the solution is there but I didn't get it, please advise.
 
  • #44
Les Sleeth said:
Hmmmmm. I am one of those guys who uses software, but doesn't understand its basis all that much. I just want it to work.

Your link seems only for OS X. My problem is how to make OS 9.2 serve my needs. Have a suggestion? If the solution is there but I didn't get it, please advise.

Here you go, this is Opera 6 that works on OS9

http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=mac&ver=6.03
 
  • #45
Greg Bernhardt said:
Here you go, this is Opera 6 that works on OS9
http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=mac&ver=6.03
First, thanks for the help. :!) Second, this is embarrassing, but which US version on the download list is applicable? There are five choices, none of which I recognize.

This is a test . . .
 
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  • #46
Les Sleeth said:
First, thanks for the help. :!) Second, this is embarrassing, but which US version on the download list is applicable? There are five choices, none of which I recognize.

Any of them, those are just places where the file exists. Any of them will download quickly.
 
  • #47
Greg Bernhardt said:
Any of them, those are just places where the file exists. Any of them will download quickly.

FYI, Opera works for editing; but color, or fonts, or smiley's nor anything else works in the composition area.

Testing . . .
 
  • #48
Les Sleeth said:
FYI, Opera works for editing; but color, or fonts, or smiley's nor anything else works in the composition area.

Oh well, atleast its an improvement :smile: Opera is better than IE anyway.
 
  • #49
Greg Bernhardt said:
Oh well, atleast its an improvement :smile: Opera is better than IE anyway.

Thanks for the help.
 
  • #50
Greg Bernhardt said:
Fundraiser time! Bake Sale! :biggrin:
I'm with you on this 1. You can also ban those of us(included myself) who have problems after upgrading. :rolleyes: Just announce what I said and you can see how everyone's problems would be tackled very soon. :-p
 
  • #51
Greg Bernhardt said:
Fundraiser time! Bake Sale! :biggrin:

Bout' time you started talking that way. Tell you what Greg, I tried contributing on two occasions and PM'ed both you and Chroot that I was unable to successfully carry out the transaction. After about 3 days or so when neither of your replied to my message, I thought what every other guy including you would think: "well fu*k um' if they don't want my money".
 
  • #52
The links don't seem to be working. Everytime I click on one of the texts it takes me to a page that says I don't have permission.
 
  • #53
I can't see thumbnails (in any forums I've tried) nor does anything happen when I click around where they should be.
The 'quick' edit worked fine before, but now when I'm in quick edit, the save button doesn't do anything. I can go to advanced mode, and that works. Using Firefox 1.0.7

Eh, quick edit works fine now.
 
  • #54
Jeff Ford said:
The links don't seem to be working. Everytime I click on one of the texts it takes me to a page that says I don't have permission.
Oh, by the way, your mom called and told us to do that. :-p :smile:

Seriously now...what links do you mean? In the "links" directory, or links to outside websites posted in someone's reply, or something else? As much detail as possible on these things really helps speed up the trouble-shooting process.

Speaking of the links directory though...Greg, have you noticed that in both the links directory and journals, if you use the ampersand symbol (&) or quote marks, it changes them to what looks like html code or some such thing? For example, in the Astronomy & Cosmology links, it now reads Astronomy & Cosmology. Greg, so you can see what it's doing in journals, I created a private journal entry and gave you permission to view it (I don't want to clutter up my journal with a test page).
 
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  • #55
I'm talking about the links directory. Whenever I click on any of the online texts I get a permission error.
 
  • #56
Jeff Ford said:
I'm talking about the links directory. Whenever I click on any of the online texts I get a permission error.

ok check now
 
  • #57
What have you done, Greg? Now everything's ok! Thank you very much.:smile: II used to hate upgrading but now I'm not!
 
  • #58
honestrosewater said:
I can't see thumbnails (in any forums I've tried) nor does anything happen when I click around where they should be.
Ah, I can just copy them from the source, but is no one else having this problem?
 
  • #59
Greg Bernhardt said:
ok check now

Still get no love. Here's the message that's coming up

Jeff Ford, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.
 
  • #60
Regarding Journals: quotation marks aren't working there.

When I type:

"stuff"

I see:

"stuff"
 
  • #61
Tom Mattson said:
Regarding Journals: quotation marks aren't working there.
I brought that up in one of the "things to fix" threads around here. The same thing happened to me, and I see the same thing in the Links directory. It's ampersands as well as quote marks.

Edit: Oh yeah, it's right there, just a few replies before yours. :biggrin: :redface:
 
  • #62
I suspect that the parser is escaping the special HTML symbols too many times. In fact, looking at the source of my original post, I'm convinced of it.
 
  • #63
Quotation marks work for me in the journal. I have them in my journal entry and just did a test entry and they worked. Are you guys all using the same browser?
 
  • #64
Hurkyl said:
I suspect that the parser is escaping the special HTML symbols too many times. In fact, looking at the source of my original post, I'm convinced of it.
What does that mean in English? :rolleyes:

I did a test entry before. At first, nothing happened, then I went into edit to enter the same phrase where it happened before, in case it was related to that phrase in some way, and then all of my quote marks got turned to HTML after the edit, even the ones that were okay the first time.
 
  • #65
Hurkyl said:
I suspect that the parser is escaping the special HTML symbols too many times. In fact, looking at the source of my original post, I'm convinced of it.

Confirmed, it happens when you edit a post with quotes. I'll look into this.
 
  • #66
I just discovered that the toolbar item in the advanced reply box that used to let you insert text to display when providing a link no longer prompts for text. I had to go to another thread and click quote to remind myself how to format it without the "cheater" button. That's the one tool I actually use in the toolbar.
 
  • #67
What does that mean in English?
There are characters your browser gives special meaning. The ampersand is a particular example, as are the less than and greater than signs. There are special command sequences that will display a special character without invoking its special meaning.

"Escaping" a character means to replace it with its command sequence. It's used so that a piece of text written in ordinary English doesn't accidentally invoke one of these sequences and get messed up.

One example of this, a problem I think this site had, is if you wrote a parenthetical ending in the number 8 (like this: the number 8), the "8)" would get drawn as a smiley! Of course, this bit is something the site parser would do, whereas I'm talking about the replacements your browser does.

So what's happening is that the site software is escaping things it's not supposed to. (or at least once more than it's supposed to) When I type "& mu ;", I really do want that command sequence to give me a Greek character, but the parser is dutifully escaping the ampersand so that it will display exactly what I type.
 
  • #68
Things are still weird with the links section. I can access them if I'm not logged in, but once I log in I get the permission denied message I posted earlier.
 
  • #69
Jeff Ford said:
Things are still weird with the links section. I can access them if I'm not logged in, but once I log in I get the permission denied message I posted earlier.
Same here.
 
  • #70
Must be a contributor "perk." :biggrin: Is anyone who is not a contributor having this problem? Please speak up! I think the journal access issue was unique to contributors as well, so there may be some permissions that still need to be set for contributors.
 
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