Message Munge

[Harv]

Muhammad -

Congratulations on a superb message board. I do this sort of thing for a living myself and I have to tell you this is one of the cleanest, friendliest sites on the entire internet.

/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Having said that (and it needed saying), I have occassionaly noticed my messages getting slightly munged, sometimes after I preview them. What puzzles me is that it's usually just a half-dozen characters or so, and the munge is still ascii characters, sometimes resembling valid text from somewhere else.

Being able to edit a message even after it's been posted is a terrific feature (sometimes the mistakes are truly mine /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif), so the damage is still fixable, but I was wondering if you or anyone else has had the same experience? I'd hate to think you're running a "Harv" filter which automatically takes pot shots at just me. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Thanks for a really excellent site.

 

[Muhammad]

Harv,

Thanks for the kind words!

About the messages getting munged... hmm, what browser are you using? Also, could you give a specific example of exactly what happens? Maybe you could leave the next message you post that gets munged as it is, so I can take a look and try to figure it out. I haven't had this happen... any bug that is reported or that I get and can duplicate, gets fixed up asap. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[PaulB]

Har$%#v - All o%^&^$f my possssssts come thr(*&()^%gh clear aaaaaas a b)_(eLL, so it MMMMMMust be s()%^%#$#methING WRON^*%$G WITH yOOOOOOU

 

[Bird]

Gosh, Muhammad, PaulB's a lot of help, isn't he?/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif And where'd that word "munge" come from? I never heard it before and it ain't in my antique Webster's; closest thing is "mungo" defined as "reclaimed wool of poor quality and very short staple." Is there a relationship there somewhere?/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

 

[Harv]

Muhammad -

I run various versions of Netscape and IE on both Macs and PC's, specifically to test my own sutff. I was running Netscape 4.7 for Mac when I last saw the problem (no wise-cracks about Macs, please). The problem is very intermittent, but I"ll try to capture some meaningful data next time it happens.

If nobody else is experiencing this problem, then it's clearly that Harv filter you installed.

PaulB's message came through just fine -- go figure. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Here's an easier one, Muhammad -- whenever I'm reading posts the "<<Back To..." link near the top of the page is missing a semicolon after the non-breaking space:

<font color=red><<Back to the Feedback & More&nbspForum</font color=red>

Bird -- I guess "munge" is a computer geek term. It's been in my vocabulary so long I didn't realize it wasn't in the dictionary. /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif I guess the important thing is that Muhammad knows the word. Then again, I bet Muhammad knows a lot of words we never heard of. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Muhammad]

Bird...

Yeah I was going to tell Paul to get his cat or dog off the keyboard... or something. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Munge is used in the coding world a bit. To munge data or munge a program would be best described as jumbling it up or rewriting it... but not in a good way. Maybe harv has another meaning... he used it first! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Harv]

Hey, Muhammad!!!

It just did it again! This time it grabbed part of an image. Here's a snapshot:

Now, after I took the snapshot the problem cleared itself up without refreshing the page! That tells me that it is my problem, not yours. /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif

Now I'm suspicious that it has to do with the fact that my computer is on 24 hours a day, I never reboot unless I have to, and I typically have 10 or more applications running simultaneously. Netscape is always running (don't want to miss a second of Tractorbynet) and it might very well have memory leaks. I'll try rebooting to clear out any cobwebs and see how long it takes for the problem to return.

Maybe this is too much geek talk for an open forum. Shall I take it private?

 

[Muhammad]

Oh, right... netscape.

IE5 seems to read the code despite the missing semicolon... probably why it is missing. But I'll get that fixed.

 

[Muhammad]

Now that is way off! I've been testing in netscape, and the only thing that I see munged is... well nothing, just the missing semicolon there, as you mentioned.

You could have something going on there... I try to reboot every couple of days since I, too, am a multi-tasker (9 applications open now /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif)

BTW, I have an update that will clear up a couple of minor layout differences in netscape that don't show in IE. Should be soon now.

This is what the feedback forum is for... and I know that Bird likes to read the tech-talk messages more than those 'tractor' messages in the Kubota category! /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Let me know if restarting does anything...

 

[glennmac]

Harv, this discussion is somewhat solipsistic as between you and Muhammad and rather mungey to the rest of us, but I dont mind watching it. But, then again, I seem to be becoming afflicted with hypermaniacaltractorbynetianmasochism.

Glenn