An oddity about quoting links, and its work-around

[Gengulphus]

A short while ago, I happened to notice that viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 contains a long link in proper 'linkified' clickable form, i.e. in the usual blue, underlined and shortened form. But viewtopic.php?p=371314#p371314 which starts with a quote of that post has the same link in unclickable straightforward text form - i.e. the phpBB software has failed to recognise and 'linkify' the link. A bit of investigation shows that if I press the “ button to start a reply quoting the first of those posts and then immediately preview that reply, the same thing happens - i.e. this is not somehow caused by a misedit, but by an infelicity in the board software.

My reason for posting about it is that I've found a work-around that makes the link become properly 'linkified': if one starts a reply by pressing the “ button, and then inserts a space between the [quote="<username>"] tag and the link, previewing the reply then works properly. Not a work-around that's likely to be wanted at all frequently, I imagine, but it might very occasionally be useful.

Gengulphus

[Mike4]

A rec for not only the workaround, but use of that wonderful word "infelicity".

[kiloran]

this is not somehow caused by a misedit, but by an infelicity in the board software.

Gengulphus

Oooh, I love that. In future, I shall not say (my code has a bug", but "there is an infelicity in my code"

Thanks, Gengulphus, made my day!

--kiloran

[Mike4]

this is not somehow caused by a misedit, but by an infelicity in the board software.

Gengulphus

Oooh, I love that. In future, I shall not say (my code has a bug", but "there is an infelicity in my code"

Thanks, Gengulphus, made my day!

--kiloran

Yes this has the makings of one of those irregular verbs.

Their code is a right mess
Your code contains a bug
My code contains an infelicity

[PinkDalek]

A short while ago, I happened to notice that viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 contains a long link in proper 'linkified' clickable form, i.e. in the usual blue, underlined and shortened form. ...

I'd imagine the first link was copied from elsewhere on TLF, where it was already in truncated form, thus causing the (known) issue.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27065

Thus the preference for using the [url]WrapArounds[/url] when practical.

Not a work-around that's likely to be wanted at all frequently, I imagine, but it might very occasionally be useful.

Yes, a number of us have been doing that for a while. I would guess that those who don't notice will not frequent this board, although your link to here from there might assist.

[Gengulphus]

A short while ago, I happened to notice that viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 contains a long link in proper 'linkified' clickable form, i.e. in the usual blue, underlined and shortened form. ...

I'd imagine the first link was copied from elsewhere on TLF, where it was already in truncated form, thus causing the (known) issue.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27065

Thus the preference for using the [url]WrapArounds[/url] when practical.

I'm not entirely certain what you're suggesting, but if it's that someone posted the link https://www.investegate.co.uk/admiral-g ... 0000H8066/ elsewhere on TLF and dealtn copy-and-pasted that displayed form of the link in that other post into viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305, it's easily visible that that's not the case. Specifically, what's visible in viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 is the first line below, while what would be visible if the displayed form of that link had been cut-and-pasted is the second:

https://www.investegate.co.uk/admiral-g ... 0000H8066/
https://www.investegate.co.uk/admiral-g ... 0000H8066/

The second link doesn't work as a result of the displayed form of the first being cut-and-pasted inclusive of its truncation, and yes, that's a known issue. But it's not what is going on here: as I said, the link in dealtn's post viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 works, but if one starts a reply to it by clicking the “ button and then immediately previews it, the link in the quote of that post doesn't. No cut-and-pasting involved, only quoting.

You're right though that enclosing the link in [url]...[/url] tags is also a work-around for the problem, but it does require a bit more understanding of what to do than my work-around, and it results in the link appearing in untruncated form in the quote (that second issue could be fixed by enclosing the link in [url=...]<cut-and-pasted truncated form of link>[/url], though only at the expense of requiring quite a lot more understanding of what to do!). Both my work-around and yours don't cause problems in any further quoting - I've done some experiments to illustrate this and some of my other points above as replies to your link, though as with anything on Testing 123..., it's unknown how long they will survive.

Gengulphus

[PinkDalek]

A short while ago, I happened to notice that viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 contains a long link in proper 'linkified' clickable form, i.e. in the usual blue, underlined and shortened form. ...

I'd imagine the first link was copied from elsewhere on TLF, where it was already in truncated form, thus causing the (known) issue.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27065

Thus the preference for using the [url]WrapArounds[/url] when practical.

I'm not entirely certain what you're suggesting, but if it's that someone posted the link https://www.investegate.co.uk/admiral-g ... 0000H8066/ elsewhere on TLF and dealtn copy-and-pasted that displayed form of the link in that other post into ...

Me neither and, as usual, I'm not explaining too well.

No time to get my head round your tests elsewhere (one of which had an interesting result but I looked using a small screen & haven't got back there yet) but I was really referring to the OP in the topic in question.

Here you should see the original (not dealtn's) C&P'd already truncated link:

viewtopic.php?p=371291#p371291

What happened next emanated from there. If the original link elsewhere had been URL bracket enclosed, the C&P'd version wouldn't have been wrong.

[dealtn]

I'd imagine the first link was copied from elsewhere on TLF, where it was already in truncated form, thus causing the (known) issue.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27065

Thus the preference for using the [url]WrapArounds[/url] when practical.

I'm not entirely certain what you're suggesting, but if it's that someone posted the link https://www.investegate.co.uk/admiral-g ... 0000H8066/ elsewhere on TLF and dealtn copy-and-pasted that displayed form of the link in that other post into ...

Me neither and, as usual, I'm not explaining too well.

No time to get my head round your tests elsewhere (one of which had an interesting result but I looked using a small screen & haven't got back there yet) but I was really referring to the OP in the topic in question.

Here you should see the original (not dealtn's) C&P'd already truncated link:

viewtopic.php?p=371291#p371291

What happened next emanated from there. If the original link elsewhere had been URL bracket enclosed, the C&P'd version wouldn't have been wrong.

I'm not following the discussion.

But if it is useful, I saw the thread as usual and noticed the link wasn't clickable (I didn't click but could see from the break in colours that some was link some was text). Knowing where the link came from, my usual source of RNSs, I replied to the thread and copy/paste the url from the source into that reply, I didn't attempt to copy/paste/correct the original link that wasn't working.

I hope that's useful.

[swill453]

I don't think this thread is anything to do with copy&pasted truncated links. It's about "raw" links appearing as the first characters inside a quote, and them not being clickable.

As Gengulphus points out, a workaround would be to put a space before the link. As later pointed out, another workaround would be to bracket it in url tags.

Scott.

[PinkDalek]

I don't think this thread is anything to do with copy&pasted truncated links. ...

Yes, agreed, it wasn’t but I introduced that element to explain where the original mistake was in the OP over there.

The remainder followed on from the original broken link, thus G mentioning a workaround to the later issue. It seems from the recs he received quite a few were not aware of the solution.

That was all.

[Gengulphus]

No time to get my head round your tests elsewhere (one of which had an interesting result but I looked using a small screen & haven't got back there yet) but I was really referring to the OP in the topic in question.

Here you should see the original (not dealtn's) C&P'd already truncated link:

viewtopic.php?p=371291#p371291

Thanks for explaining what happened - but it's a bit hard for me to do anything about you looking at monabri's OP viewtopic.php?p=371291#p371291, rather than dealtn's post viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 later in that thread that I said had the properly 'linkified' version of the link in question and monabri's later reply viewtopic.php?p=371314#p371314 quoting dealtn's post in which I said the phpBB software had failed to recognise the link. That failure to recognise the link is exactly what happened in the post of mine in your Testing 123... thread that you've said there surprised you. As swill453 says, it appears to be triggered by a link that is not surrounded by [url]...[/url] tags appearing at the very start of a quote; even a single space before the link prevents the problem from being triggered.

What happened next emanated from there. If the original link elsewhere had been URL bracket enclosed, the C&P'd version wouldn't have been wrong.

Yes, that's doubtless what went wrong with monabri's OP. But as dealtn has said, he dealt with that by going to Investegate to pick up a correct version of the link. This problem emerged from the fact that he made it the very first thing he put into his post - and it's not something he could reasonably have been expected to avoid, since AFAIAA it wasn't a known problem and it won't have been apparent in his post, either on a preview or after submission. It only became apparent when his post was later quoted in a reply.

So what we have here is an instance of the known problem that copy-and-pasting a truncated link causes the resulting link not to work triggering a post that ran into a different (and AFAIAA previously unknown) problem with quoting.

As an aside, by the way, the known problem with copy-and-pasting truncated links doesn't just happen with long links that have their middles replaced with " ... ". Another common case is links to TLF posts and other pages, which have the initial https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/ chopped out - e.g. if I copy-and-paste my first paragraph above, I get the following:

Thanks for explaining what happened - but it's a bit hard for me to do anything about you looking at monabri's OP viewtopic.php?p=371291#p371291, rather than dealtn's post viewtopic.php?p=371305#p371305 later in that thread that I said had the properly 'linkified' version of the link in question and monabri's later reply viewtopic.php?p=371314#p371314 quoting dealtn's post in which I said the phpBB software had failed to recognise the link. That failure to recognise the link is exactly what happened in the post of mine in your Testing 123... thread that you've said there surprised you. As swill453 says, it appears to be triggered by a link that is not surrounded by [url]...[/url] tags appearing at the very start of a quote; even a single space before the link prevents the problem from being triggered.

in which none of the links work. There are various strategies to avoid such problems with copy-and-pasting links, but I'm afraid none of them is entirely satisfactory...

Gengulphus

[Gengulphus]

Yes this has the makings of one of those irregular verbs.

Their code is a right mess
Your code contains a bug
My code contains an infelicity

I like it! But about my use of the word "infelicity", I should perhaps clarify that I am not one of phpBB's authors and so this comes into the "Their code" category rather than the "My code" category... :-)

And the reason why I used the word is that I am aware that there are some problems with recognising where a link starts and ends that are basically impossible to solve fully without human assistance, short of using a rather unjustified amount of 'artificial intelligence' and hoping it doesn't reveal itself to be remarkably dumb. An example is the sentence "Aviva's dividend history can be found in https://dividenddata.co.uk/dividend-history.py?epic=AV. and Legal & General's in https://dividenddata.co.uk/dividend-his ... ?epic=LGEN. How did the software decide that the first link included the full stop at its end and the second didn't? The answer is that it didn't - I used [url]...[/url] tags around the first link to tell it where the link ended. Left to its own devices, the software would have produced the invalid link https://dividenddata.co.uk/dividend-history.py?epic=AV.

I hadn't managed to think of any reason why a link at the start of a quote would present the software with a similar essentially unsolvable problem, and still haven't, but at least last night I wasn't confident that there isn't one and so chose to use a less judgemental word than "bug".

Gengulphus

[csearle]

Holy mackerel! If I put that much thought into each word I used I'd never say anything. (Might be the wisest thing I can almost hear.). C.

[Gengulphus]

Holy mackerel! If I put that much thought into each word I used I'd never say anything. (Might be the wisest thing I can almost hear.). C.

;-)

But no, the thinking has gone into puzzling out what problems the software needs to solve, what approaches there might be to try to solve them and what obstacles those approaches might encounter. That's something I do almost automatically, having been involved in the technical side of the computing industry until I retired, and still using computers a fair amount in my mathematical investigations. Picking good words to describe the conclusions of that thinking is something I've had a lot of experience of and do quite quickly by drawing on that experience - it took far less time to choose "infelicity" than to explain why I'd chosen it!

Gengulphus

[csearle]

But no, the thinking has gone into puzzling out what problems the software needs to solve, what approaches there might be to try to solve them and what obstacles those approaches might encounter. That's something I do almost automatically, having been involved in the technical side of the computing industry until I retired, and still using computers a fair amount in my mathematical investigations. Picking good words to describe the conclusions of that thinking is something I've had a lot of experience of and do quite quickly by drawing on that experience - it took far less time to choose "infelicity" than to explain why I'd chosen it!

"infelicity" was just joyous to read (educate, amuse & enrich spring to mind). It provided a very good opportunity to reconnect with a young lady called "Felicity" I know. I cited you to her and have struck up a conversation, so your choice of that word was also quite felicitous. Ta very much!

[Gengulphus]

Oh, dear... I doubt I'll ever be able to use the word 'infelicity' with a straight face again! ;-)

Gengulphus

[AJC5001]

I've just found another one. viewtopic.php?p=372691#p372691

Adrian