Info not posting to a post

[reddog801]

Hi all,

So I've encountered this problem and don't know how to correct it. I have a political forum (exposingamerica.info/forum1). When I copy a story and post it and then preview it it shows. When I click on the post button and then view it nothing is there. Sometimes is one word, or sometimes it's a complete sentence but never the full story.

I am posting a subject, and my forums are set up to allow sufficient characters. I'm using Simple Machines 2.0.2 and Simple Portal 2.3.5. Does not matter what the story is it never fully posts. Any help would be appreciated!


Thanks


Eric

[emanuele]

Hello reddog801 and welcome to sm.org!

Sorry for any kind of non-polite answer, but today I'm pretty pissed off.

How are you pasting the story?
Are you using some Microsoft crappy software to write it?
If so: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=481444.0
And there are several other topics about the argument.

[MrPhil]

Sounds like you're a victim of MS Smart Quotes. They are being interpreted as control characters by your browser. If you insist on composing in Word or Outlook and cut-and-pasting to SMF, you'll have this problem. Not guaranteed to work, but converting to UTF-8 will let some browsers translate the Smart Quotes to proper UTF-8 characters upon input. Otherwise, you need to edit the characters (especially single and double quotes) to standard ASCII before posting.

[reddog801]

To copy and paste, I'm just going to a website, choosing the text by highlighting it and then right clicking and choosing copy. Then going to my forum, to my new topic and posting the info. Like I said, it pastes just fine and even when I click on "preview" it shows it correctly. However, after pressing "post" it does not post all of it. It most of the time will post one word or other times it will show like an entire line but never the full story.

It's just a simple copy and past. I even copied the text(story/article) into microsoft word and then copied it again from there into my topic on my simple machines forum and everything looked good until I hit the post button.

I'm stumped on this one. I'm the admin and everything is set for that so I should not have any restrictions although I did change the number of characters allowed to like 100,000,000 or something like that....

[reddog801]

I'm attaching a post for and example. As you can see I always copy and paste the link to the story at the top. Then I return down a couple of lines and then I go to the story and I highlight all of the story and then hit copy. Then back to the forum and paste the story below the link.

This allows my readers to read the content of the link on my site without having to leave but to verify a story the link is at the top. As you can see in the attachment the entire pasted content did not make it......

[MrPhil]

Was the cut-off word "service's"? Word turned that ' into a curved, typographically correct apostrophe (closing single quote). Look very closely and you'll see it's not a straight ' but is curved like a "9".

SMF does not tolerate Smart Quotes like that very well (also other special punctuation like em-dashes and opening and closing "). It might work for you to convert to UTF-8 (if you're using a browser that converts Smart Quotes upon input). You might also manually replace Smart Quotes with ASCII characters, or just turn off Smart Quotes usage in Word.

[reddog801]

I only used word one time to see if the story was locked down or something.

I just went to the internet and chose a story. I highlighted some text and then pasted it into a test topic. After pasting it I gave the topic a title and then previewed it. It was all there. So I hit the post button. Then clicked on the thread and opened it up and again all the highlighted portion of the copied text did not post. Only some of it.

I don't have any funny characters or anything like that so I'm afraid this is not that issue. I do have a section in the maintenance that allows me to convert the database to UTF-8 but I'm not so sure that this is the problem. I use to be able to post stories from anywhere with no issues. I'm not sure why all the sudden I cannot post copied text to my forum now...

Looking at firefox, I see that it's set on the default WESTERN (ISO 8859-1). There are a few more choices to include UNICODE (UTF-8) However, changing this coding and trying to copy a story to my forum is still not working, at least once the post button is pressed. Everything is working as it should to include the preview until the post button is pressed and then for whatever reason Simple Machines is taking over and only posting a word or two of the story that was highlighted, copied and pasted into a thread.

I'm sorry for being so difficult but one would not think that a task of copying a story from anywhere on the internet and posting into their simple machines forum topic would do this. I'm really baffled at this one!

*ADDED* The website (forum.prisonplanet.com) also uses simple machines and there are thousands upon thousands of stories posted there. Many of those guy's do the same as myself, post the link either at the top or bottom of the topic and then copy and paste the story in and it's working fine there. I looked at the source code and they are using the western default as am I so I don't think the character setting's have anything to do with it. Is there something else not set right on my forums possibly???

[reddog801]

**SOLVED** 

After following the advice on this thread http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=476538.60 and converting the database to UTF-8 and adding the UTF-8 English language package everything seems to be working properly. I will post a few more threads to confirm and if I have any other issues I will report back here..

Many thanks to those that tried to help....


Eric

[MrPhil]

I assure you that if you look VERY closely at the original source (perhaps with a magnifying glass), you will see that it is not using an ASCII straight ' but is using a curved "9" shape close quote for the apostrophe. That is the source of your trouble.

[Arantor]

Closing this. For non 2.1 setups, moving to UTF-8 will fix the issue for future posts. For 2.1+, UTF-8 is default and additionally just for fun, there is extra safety with MS Smart Quotes *just in case*.