[Closed] An unexpected hyphen

You are special. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

You are not the only one.

There was an email from STW about it. Spaces in usernames cause issues so we get a hyphen to get around the problem.

You’re the replacement. Nobody knows what happened to the real Tom B.

some say he asked too many questions

There was an email from STW about it. Spaces in usernames cause issues so we get a hyphen to get around the problem.

thats not something the real Mister P would have said

Definitely a Mister Dash Pee thing though

Spaces in usernames cause issues

Is the forum running on MS-DOS?

I didn't think Mistress DOS allowed discussions about her?

Some of us always had a hyphen!

What a mad bit of coding to require that.

Underscores are neater.

Could be an issue with the name alerting function. @Tom B obviously doesn't work. @Tom-B does (I guess?)

Edit: obviously not  🙂

Oh well - that's broken too.

haha!

Spaces in usernames cause issues

Is the forum running on MS-DOS?

Not allowing spaces in usernames is hardly an unusual occurrence.

Say we had a user called 'dave' and another named 'dave mate'. If I were to write "(at)dave mate what do you think?" how do you propose to programmatically tell which user to message? Strings containing spaces generally have to be either "quoted" or /escaped, it's an implicit delimiter.

It's not just notifications and PMs though. It's a common problem with a lot of current - and more importantly, future - modules on the forum. There's some cool stuff in the pipeline. So tech could spend weeks rewriting other people's code, assuming that's even possible, or they could make this simple change and the problem goes away forever.

Underscores are neater.

You could always email tech and asked for it to be changed.

If it affected you.

Which, y'know, it doesn't.

@Tom-B does (I guess?)

Edit: obviously not 🙂

That's weird actually. It might be because it's just changed and needs some caching somewhere to catch up maybe? Though can't you write @anyoldbollocks and it'll render it as a username? [EDIT: seemingly not]

I'll flag it up.

I quite fancy one between the e and the z

I hate underscores, they’re the comedy tie of the internet .

That’s weird actually. It might be because it’s just changed and needs some caching somewhere to catch up maybe? Though can’t you write @anyoldbollocks and it’ll render it as a username? [EDIT: seemingly not]

I’ll flag it up.

Cheers!

I hate underscores, they’re the comedy tie of the internet .

Likewise. In my head I read them as that weird whistly sniff noise that trump makes.

There’s some cool stuff in the pipeline.

Haven't we suffered enough.

Haven’t we suffered enough.

Other forums are available.

Other forums are available.

I know that why I don't post much now.

Haven’t we suffered enough?

You are special. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

We are all special. In our own way.

Haven’t we suffered enough?

I Haven't started yet.

so we get a hyphen to get around the problem.

Nope, it just all gets smushed together ☹️

I hate underscores, they’re the comedy tie comedy-tie of the internet .

FTFY.

Ha! I scanned that as 'an unexpected hymen' - not seen one of those for a few years...

Were you flying in your Jesuit at the time?

In defence of the underscore as placeholder for "space"... if you use a hyphen instead, you can't convert back... as a hyphen then may mean "space" or it might be part of a real hyphenated word. Replacing spaces with hyphens in user names, as STW have here, makes perfect sense... but the underscore has its place.

This is exactly the kind of issue that "fixing properly" to handle spaces would cause many unforeseen knock on issues all over the place, and it would be a load of work for little benefit. They probably sat in a room and said "ok we can fix this in N dev weeks or we can just change our policy, stop allowing spaces and rename the 5 users it affects so we can spend those N weeks on features". Which seems a pretty obvious decision when you weigh it up.

P.s. hyphens forever

how do you propose to programmatically tell which user to message?

You need better coders.

Precisely Chambord a very small team could spend hours changing the code and making sure there’s no adverse effects or they can just adjust usernames.

Of course they could also hire oldtennisshoes who would have this all done before breakfast.

rename the 5 users it affects

It's more than five but surprisingly few. Less than 60 IIRC.

You need better coders.

How would you solve the example I gave in that same sentence? It's not even remotely a coding issue, you'd need to employ mind readers.

Honestly, STW could give away free solid gold houses to every subscriber and there'd still be half a dozen people complaining that they'd prefer silver.

ok we can fix this in N dev weeks

Plus, it's a problem which never truly goes away. They somehow frig it so that it all works perfectly, then two months later a whizzy new plugin comes along which they really want to use but it doesn't support spaces in usernames and here we go again.

Fine. But can we have RaNdoMcaPItALS back again?

But can we have RaNdoMcaPItALS back again?

our accounts must be of the similar vintages. I created an account using capitals - it displays on my profile page with capitals but on forum posts it’s all lower case. Drac and Cougar amongst others seem to have access to the secret stash of forum capitals that are off limits to some of us.

is there a correlation be between forum logo colours and capital access rights?

I'm looking forward to the automated winky smiley insert plugin as people always take me seriously when I assume it's obvious what I've said isn't serious. I could use better judgement perhaps.

our accounts must be of the similar vintages. I created an account using capitals – it displays on my profile page with capitals but on forum posts it’s all lower case. Drac and Cougar amongst others seem to have access to the secret stash of forum capitals that are off limits to some of us.

I didn't do, or have access to, anything special other than using a capital letter when I created my account. Your account is only like six months newer than mine so if something has been changed it was in the latter half of 2010 (and I'm not aware of it if so).

Everyone has an account name and a display name. It differs on your profile because it's showing your display name which is user-editable, rather than the fixed account name you see next to posts. No, me neither.

people always take me seriously when I assume it’s obvious what I’ve said isn’t serious.

TBF, I get that a lot also.

Other forums are available.

We all know that. Why type it?

Actually, forget it.

people always take me seriously when I assume it’s obvious what I’ve said isn’t serious.

I get the opposite.

A lot.

I don't know why.

We all know that. Why type it?

He didn't. The swear filter uses it as a substitute for other forums are available

I didn’t do, or have access to, anything special other than using a capital letter when I created my account. Your account is only like six months newer than mine so if something has been changed it was in the latter half of 2010 (and I’m not aware of it if so).

Yeah, there was some tightening up of user names. Might have been around the time we were stopped from using other folks. That was amusing (briefly).

@tom-b does this work now?

No.

How about @Tom-B

@tom-b-2 Testing...

We're getting somewhere. Well, by 'we' I mean Andy in Tech.

It's seemingly not a problem with usernames or spaces or hyphens or anything like that. It's a problem, specifically and possibly uniquely, with Tom's account. Current thinking is that there may have been a previous (deleted?) tom-b before the current incarnation and it's bolleauxed it. They're picking this back up tomorrow.

There's me....then there's also a TomB

Not sure if that is what is causing the issue?!

I'm not overly (at all) fussed about whether or not people can '@' me. Understand that you folks may want to iron out tech issues though.

There's a logic to that. I've passed on the information, thank you.

Are they aware that attempts to escape html tags fail to stay escaped?

If I type ampersand lt;strong ampersand rt; it unescapes it.

I know pretty niche use case 😀

I've seen it the other way around. Not sure as it's causing a problem though?

(Your rt should be a gt, hth.)

Test 1: `<strong><code>
Test 2: <code><strong>`

Oooh that's weird! All sorts of rearrangement!

Double wierd!
test 1:
test 2: <strong>