Ben XO's dashboard

lencioni started following the problem "ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Ping.fm.

bface replied on August 28, 2008 10:04 to the idea "AIM status update" in Ping.fm:

i'm using Digsby for PC IM use.. but when im not at home, i'm signed onto AIM from my phone -- where 3rd party apps will not help me..

i'd also like to see support for AIM status updates through ping!

Ben XO replied on August 02, 2008 12:09 to the idea "AIM status update" in Ping.fm:

i currently use Twitter.pl for Pidgin to update my status from Twitter (which i update from ping.fm) but it would be nice to do it all with one site.

Ben XO started following the idea "AIM status update" in Ping.fm.

mindy started following the problem "ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Ping.fm.

Ben XO replied on July 03, 2008 00:57 to the problem "ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Ping.fm:

i posted the same problem against getsatisfaction.com in another ticket, and the guy from there (here?) said it would involve wrapping or modifying something in Rails.

Not sure if ping.fm is Rails based, but if it is, you might want to collab with him on it. :)

Sean replied on July 02, 2008 18:57 to the problem "ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Ping.fm:

I'll modify the formula. Thanks for the catch.

Ben XO replied on July 02, 2008 14:51 to the problem "getsatisfaction incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Get Satisfaction:

Sounds good to me. If it's a problem with Rails auto-linking, I guess I should take my bug report upstream (or perhaps you could take your fix upstream..!)

Presumably this is exactly the same bug as Twitter and Ping.fm exhibit as they're rails-based too.

Scott Fleckenstein replied on July 02, 2008 14:46 to the problem "getsatisfaction incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Get Satisfaction:

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the report! As a stop-gap, you can always from the anchor tag manually with the proper url; we won't mess with your URLs then.

I'll add this into our bug database and try to get to it next week: Changing the auto-linking functionality built into rails is not easy, and I've got a lot of things on my plate before the holiday weekend. I'll post back here when the issue is no longer exhibited.

BTW, I'll most likely solve this by only allowing internal parentheses. I don't have to worry about things on the left side because I have the scheme and domain to protect me, and excluding the 3 urls out there that end in a parenthesis seems an acceptable usability to correctness compromise.

-Scott

evands replied on July 02, 2008 13:26 to the problem "ICQ CONNECTION PROBLEMS" in Adium:

Adium 1.2.6 is now available and fixes this problem. :)

A comment on the problem "ICQ CONNECTION PROBLEMS" in Adium:

1.2.6 was released last night. Just update! :) – evands, on July 02, 2008 13:15

Ben XO replied on July 02, 2008 11:08 to the problem "ICQ CONNECTION PROBLEMS" in Adium:

A version of pidgin that fixes the problem is already out, so I'd expect a version of Adium to be imminent...

Ben XO reported a problem in Get Satisfaction on July 02, 2008 11:01:

getsatisfaction incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)

Same problem as with this ticket i posted for ping.fm:

http://getsatisfaction.com/pingfm/top...

http://bassdrivearchive.com/archives/...(2008-07-04).mp3

is shortened wrong, as you can see.

Note: many implementations of e.g. BBCode (such as the implementation in vBulletin) have the same problem. But the URL I pasted is straight from Firefox "right click, copy location", and I should not have to manually substitute %28 and %29 for the brackets.

According to RFC1738 (http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt , section 2.2) the following characters are allowed unescaped in a URL:

$-_.+!*'(),

Of course if you automatically include ) in a URL without you will probably have complaints from people who enclose their entire URLs in brackets (http://www.example.com/). I would suggest only excluding a final ) or , (and possibly !) if the following character is a disallowed character (e.g. a space) and always including all the others. Also definitely include a ) if the URL ends with it if the URL previously contained a matching number of (s.

See, look, i've done all your work for you. ;)

Ben XO replied on July 02, 2008 10:54 to the question "Ping.fm shortened URL returns HTTP 404" in Ping.fm:

I have a similar problem: http://getsatisfaction.com/pingfm/top...

Ben XO replied on July 02, 2008 10:37 to the problem "ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Ping.fm:

According to RFC1738 (http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt , section 2.2) the following characters are allowed unescaped in a URL:

$-_.+!*'(),

Of course if you automatically include ) in a URL without you will probably have complaints from people who enclose their entire URLs in brackets (http://www.example.com/). I would suggest only excluding a final ) or , (and possibly !) if the following character is a disallowed character (e.g. a space) and always including all the others. Also definitely include a ) if the URL ends with it if the URL previously contained a matching number of (s.

See, look, i've done all your work for you.

Ben XO replied on July 02, 2008 10:31 to the problem "ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)" in Ping.fm:

heh looks like getsatisfaction.com has the same problem :)

Ben XO reported a problem in Ping.fm on July 02, 2008 10:31:

ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets (parentheses)

ping.fm incorrectly shortens a URL with brackets, for example:

http://bassdrivearchive.com/archives/...(2008-07-04).mp3

is shortened to

http://ping.fm/dqoL0(2008-07-04).mp3

Note: many implementations of e.g. BBCode (such as the implementation in vBulletin) have the same problem. But the URL I pasted is straight from Firefox "right click, copy location", and I should not have to manually substitute %28 and %29 for the brackets.