I wasn't entirely sure if this would go on the beta site or here, so I'm starting off here.

RPoL's a bit picky with special characters in character names, so ç, ø or å, ä and ö all give an invalid character error message. Thanks to a very international cast of characters in at least one of my games, this has applied to Lefrançois and Sørensen, whose names aren't exactly too unusual.

Would it be possible to add a few commonly seen special characters to the "allowed" in a character's name and bio lines?
This message was last edited by a moderator at 15:00, Sun 18 Oct 2009.

+1

I've had to modify several character names a well.

+1. I would also vote for quotation marks. As it is, if you have a nickname in your name you have to settle for the British single quote style, which drives my grammar OCD off the wall.

In reply to jazzman831 (msg #3):

If you put two single quotes next to each other, they make a double quote: '' (two single quotes) compared to " (double quote).

+1!

I've actually wanted to do this myself, before; it'd be really nice.

What is ISO encoding, btw? O_o

The coding for special characters.  Instead of simply typing an å, for example, you type å, which forces browsers to use the correct character, no matter what fonts or preferences the user may have.

Without it, you run the risk that the special characters might simply appear as nonsense or empty spaces on somebody else's system.

The follow-up question is, is there an actual list of these big-codes (iso translates to "big" in Finnish) and does the character name line accept them?

There are a number of sites which feature lists of ISO codes.

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/help/guides/latin1.html is one, Google will find you more.

And no, the character name line does not accept them, but you should use them in posts, to avoid the problems mentioned above (there were also occasions in the past when typing in certain special characters directly could break a game database - another reason why ISO codes are recommended).

Basically, if you're having to use some arcane key combination to type a character, then the ISO code should be used instead.

"Arcane key combination" really makes close to no sense to me. The umlaut ones are just sitting there on my keyboard. Is there no way of making a site recognise a character input and automate the coding process?

Doing HTML snippets to format a post since whatever the bug/virus/Microsoft conspiracy that messes up javascript (such as the format buttons or drop down menu for text style on RPoL) on my laptop is hard enough, learning an entirely new set of codes just isn't very high on my priority list.

There are plenty of us blondes out there who just want a computer to work without making us have to think about what goes on under the surface. I know, it's a foolish approach, but I'm just that kind of a girl, computers should just work without me having to wonder how they work... *Ahems*

You can type the characters directly, but you'll have to accept that other users might not see the same thing that you typed.

RPoL does 'work' -  actually it works very, very well indeed -    However RPoL is  an English language website designed for use on  'proper' computers.  Those of us who work outside those parameters have to put up with it.

Unfortunately for you, Os with slashes through, Cs with squiggly bits underneath them, umlauts, upside-down-?s etc  etc  are NOT part of the English language. To a lesser extent I have a similar problem,  in that sometimes I  use a few words of different language and I even use non-standard characters occasionally (at least they are non-standard as far as the English character set goes).  -  normally just for flavour in  my case.

However, Jase DOES permit us to use languages other than English in our games and has even made some compromises which help, such as allowing many special characters in the body of posts ....

To some extent it is the same with people who use mobile phones to access the site.  The site is designed for a 'proper' PC with a reasonable amount of memory, a full sized screen, a full browser and a half-decent download speed.  On my PC I have a small screen, a limited browser and a restricted download speed.  I can still use RPoL -  but it isn't  quite as easy ....


Same is true for those guys who are restricted to dial up access ....


I guess I am saying that there are a number of us with different issues with using the site  -  BUT  we are all outside the mainstream user group that the site is designed for  ...  English language games on PCs with a decent download speed ...

We (as not in the mainstream)  have  work around those issues as best we can  :)

In reply to JohnB (msg #12):

Except my mobile phone has a decent sized screen, decent speed broadband and supports almost every Western letter I can think of, and I have on a few occasions spent a long bus ride to post, or at the very least read threads. What I was sad about not finding on the phone would be the ™ ...

...so generalising doesn't help *that* much.

And since games in different languages are allowed, wouldn't it be natural to allow a few extra characters to be added to a character's name?

You missed my point.  I was trying to be subtle but here goes  :)

You are in  a minority wanting to use non-standard characters  - Jase has made some allowances and tweaks that help you out when entering text into posts  -  Why should he spend time tweaking another part do the site that doesn't help his mainstream users?

Subtlety is not my forte when I've just woken up and am low on caffeine. :)

The reason that prompted me to even start this was that an American player with English as their first language would have wanted to use an umlaut in a Scandinavian character's name.

There are plenty of names out there that speak of the ethnic or cultural origin of characters, and I thought it would be one thing to consider, since every now and then, a player feels limited by the available text input.

I know I may be a "minority" here, but sometimes even minorities try to voice their opinions in hopes of being heard. If that weren't the case, my minority would have been forcibly assimilated to the Finnish main population by now. Or they'd have at least tried...

Let's look at it another way:

The sites supports special characters:

₧

That's using the "archaic key combos" you so desribed. However, characters get stored into a database and databases may or may not support special characters. The issue being where if a database can't display a special character it makes it very hard to do comparisons as you have to include special cases for when they have characters that are unprintable.

We'd need someone with more RPoL DB knowledge to weigh in but my money's on that it's a DB issue more then an rpol issue.
This message was last edited by a moderator at 13:38, Mon 19 Oct 2009.

The other point I was trying to make - is that there are lots of people with  'not too important'  (in the grand scheme of things) issues surrounding the way that RPoL deals with some elements of their game.  For some guys it is down load speed, for others it is mobile access - for others it is image use, fancy formatting, different colour schemes or different character sets ....

In each case -  people can play their games -  just not as perfectly as they want.

I suspect I was a bit harsher than I should have been -  but that is the effect people have when I see them  ask someone else to do more work on their behalf, but can't be bothered to google or wikipedia something like 'ISO' ...   :)

-------------

It won't be a simple DB storage issue, however it will most likely have to do with implementing a routine that parses the data going into the name field and 'cleaning it up'  so that it doesn't mean something else when it is pulled back out of the DB again.  I would guess that the filtering routine that allows a wider range of characters to be put into the body of a text message might work - However, it might also take quite a bit of work to make it work alongside any other routines that are already operation on that data.

FYI: You guys are getting ASCII, UTF, ISO, and Markup all mixed up.  For this example, consider the "less than" symbol.

< = &lt; = HTML Markup
< = Character 60 in ISO 8859-1
< = Character 62 in UFF-8 (unicode)

None of these are language specific and all contain the codes that are discussed.



ASCII is character encoding for the english language.  I expect more that there is a application/database level parser that only accepts ascii alphanumeric characters.  Probably to prevent database parsing problems due to character recognition.

just FYI.

FYI -  No I am not  :)

No, you are not.  Your last paragraph above my post is more or less what I ended my post with... I more was trying to lay it for everyone who normally doesnt think of such things.

I would love to be able to put special characters in names as well as the body of posts!

+1

Some reading this thread might find this page useful and/or informative: http://webtips.dan.info/char.html

In reply to Alhaja (msg #21):

I agree completely.  Even just the basic ones would be nice if it wouldn't be too much trouble for jase or mess things up too badly.

I would like ampersand (aka '&') to be used in game titles. So for example I want to abbreivate my game as C&C, it wont let me currently.

+1 to this change.

Actually, it will let you use an "&" in the title.

It just has to have a space on each side of it.  So "C & C" instead of "C&C".

Requiring it to be surrounded by spaces makes it harder for people to use it for anything "antisocial", so I suspect it's unlikely to change.
This message was last edited by a moderator at 12:05, Tue 27 Oct 2009.

Thanks for the info ron. And yeah, its just not the same by it requiring spaces. Heres to hoping this is something that will change, and some other method devised to prevent antisocial uses. :)

Is there a reason that it rejects &whatever, (such as C&C) instead of changing it internal to C&C or similar?

I suspect it is because & can be interpreted as a control character within a number of different code regimes. Look at the URL at the top of many RPoL pages and you will see ? & and % in  many of then defining instructions and parameters.  These same characters often have other meanings in  other programming languages as well.

I suspect that Jase either suspects that text of the game title will appear some where where if might 'possibly'  be seen as a coding parameter.  Or perhaps jase  has developed one parsing routine that checks code for special characters and uses it every time he needs to check text for special characters .....  That  would mean  a few extra limits imposed in some fields, but could save an awful lot of development time.

In reply to burlingk (msg #27):

If was a while ago, but if memory serves me correctly; because of Netscape.  It was doing funky things with ampersands, even if I took the normal precautions (e.g. turning C&C to C&amp;C).

But who uses netscape anymore :D

+1.

Cedilla. I have actually used the word façade in a character name. I like my cedillas.

*bump*

Now four years on - are we at a point where all the relevant browsers and server-side infrastructure can handle the upgrade to allow special characters in character names?

Or at least &#192; to &#255;?

Reference of Special Character in HTML: http://www.degraeve.com/refere...pecialcharacters.php

If it can be done, I give a definite +1  :)

In reply to PrettyBirdie1 (msg # 33):

Likewise +1

As others have theorised here and in other places, it's no longer about databases (as MySQL can handle the Latin character set).  It's about rendering on end user devices.

Getting À to come out as À here (in a message) is very easy, you type in "&Agrave;".  The problem is when, as in a character name, you're trying to get À to come out by typing in "À" (which, if you quote me, will see is not an ampersand code, I've just held down alt while pressing 0192 on the keypad).

Computers in different regions can have different character sets.  While RPoL says to use ISO-8859-1 (which is Latin alphabet part 1) I can't guarantee that someone somewhere will have that.  If, for example, they have ISO-8859-R (Latin alphabet part 2) then that special À will actually come out as a capital R with a acute accent over the top.  Google on the "Western (Macintosh)" shows it as ¿.  I just don't know enough about how all the different character sets works to know how different regions will see it!

So then it's not possible to make it where you can type &Agrave; into a name? Is it because there's something different about that text field as opposed to the message?

(Sorry if the answer is an obvious one, I don't know very much about computer code. ^^)

In reply to jase (msg # 35):

Jase, thanks for the nice clear description of the problem.  Clearly too hard and  difficult.

I retract my +1

In reply to jase (msg # 35):

1. Sorry if I missed something in your explanation... I get why alt-key codes wont work in char names - but why won't ampersand codes work in the char name?

2. Can any analysis be done to get ideas of what percentage of active users ("logged in over last 12 months") use which charsset / region?

It would be a shame for a simple fix to be discounted because of the impact on the "1%".
This message was last edited by the user at 21:36, Mon 09 Dec 2013.

Even if you are in that "1%"?  :)

Ampersand codes don't work currently because both the ampersand and semicolon that they require produce an error message about invalid letters in character names.  Changing the names to allow them will also require changes to other parts of the code - recognising them when addressing private lines or quoting people, for example - so that those items don't break when they run across them.

Also note that any analysis of how many users use any particular character set will only be good for the day that the analysis is done.  RPoL gets quite a few new users every day - which character sets are used the most could change over time.  Adjusting the allowed character sets to take account of changes in which sets are commonly used in future might suddenly render some names invalid.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:46, Mon 09 Dec 2013.

Would it be possible to just set UTF-8 for all pages (and text input fields)? it wouldn't get the ampersand codes, but it would catch nearly all special characters regardless of the local charset.
Granted, it would mean changing all input validation codes to allow this.

In reply to PrettyBirdie1 (msg # 36):

Possibly, but you've got 1 displayed letter taking up 8 stored letters.  Seven of them and you've run out of space in your 60 letter length PC names, and I'm actually trying to reduce the length of that.

Why reduce?  60 is just too long when trying to plan the layout of the site.  40 might be a starting point to reduce it to, but 101 PCs have more than 40 letters in their name (which is 0.0866% of PCs, so yes I do care about 1%!).  I'd want to enforce that reduction before allowing ampersand codes otherwise I'll never get to reduce the limit, which will leave you with up to 5 non-English letters done via ampersand codes.



It'd actually require changing the SQL databases.  I think it'd blow out some of the storage requirements as well.

It is something that needs to be done, eventually, but it's something that needs to be planned and extensively tested.

Thank you for the explanation! :) Makes sense, now.

On a related note - I generally find it easier to type in my own codes, rather than using the dropdowns and stuff at the bottom of the compose screen.  So when I do, say, a Private Line to someone, it makes a big difference if they have a really long name.  If I have to look up the character code just to do a Private To for someone... that would be... very inconvenient.

I know they can be significant for replicating names in other languages accurately, and that's definitely valid, but for me, I'd be a -1 on including special characters in names anyway.

And a +1 to cutting their maximum length back to 40.  Nothing against the 101 Dalmat-- er, PC's with Longer Names Than That, of course, but I have to scroll down a bit to get to the Private Line dropdown and it's easier to just stay on the keyboard and... I hates them.  Hatesses them!!!

   ...Er, in a `would find them inconvenient, if I ever actually had to write a private line to one, which I don't think has actually happened, but I've run into some less-long-but-still-long names and do notice when it comes up' kind of way.  Down, Smèagol!

In other words - I know the dropdown exists and is a reasonable solution to this problem, but being able to just type it in is also part of the system and I use that, so I would be averse to seeing it impinged.

In reply to Utsukushi (msg # 43):

Good points!

How old are those extra-long-name characters? what about adding a restriction to the character name/rename entry so it doesn't accept more than 40 characters?
No character is affected, yet you don't get new characters with too long names, hopefully you could wait until the existing ones die out or get renamed.

Considering that there are some games on here several years old that have long ceased to be active games, I don't think waiting for them to 'die out' would be a viable option for any kind of design/planning purposes.  :)

In reply to tsukoyomi (msg # 45):

I've thought about trying to limit the length of new character names, but the problem with that is name validations are done through a common routine.  Common routines have to be used as writing validation code for every time a character name can be added or edited is a recipe for disaster -- lots of duplicate coding, introduction of errors and inconsistency, and whenever a change is made you have to update it everywhere it's used (and I'll never remember everywhere).  This exact thread is example of why common validation routines have to be used.

So the current routine allows up to 60 letters in length.  If I edit it to 40 then current PCs won't be able to be updated at all if their length is over 60.  So now I've got to try to write detection routines to figure if it's a new character (limit it to 40), an existing character with a length of 40 or under (limit it to 40), or a character with a length of over 40 (in which case limit it to its current length).

I'm probably going to do exactly that, but oh boy what a pain!  (c;

In reply to Utsukushi (msg # 43):

That raises a good point -- if we use ampersand codes how do you address a PL to "Àdam"?  Is it "private to Àdam" or "private to &Agrave;dam"?

What a silly question, the second one is ridiculous!

The answer is "the second one".  )c;

This is only tangentially related, but I'd like to see the option for non-standard characters on the Biography lines. In most of the games I'm in, those two lines are best used as a sort of status marker (for things like Hit Points or, in the case of my Edge of the Empire game, the Destiny pool).

Being able to use special characters would make those lines a little more flexible.

[/tangent]

I suspect that bio lines would run into the same problem as described by jase above - an ampersand code is eight characters long, and the bio lines are quite short.