Unicode? What, is that like a unisex haircut? November 13, 2008 8:33 PM   Subscribe

Punctuation simplification for URLs: ’ (closing quote used as apostrophe) becomes Unicode hex triplet 0xE2 0x80 0x99 in FF3 et al.

I realize the necessity for Unicode characters (my last MeTa was on Unicode as well) in URI. However, there's a point where honoring typographic conventions just gets ugly: http://www.metafilter.com/76522/The-Internet-in-Canada%E2%80%99s-far-nortth. Note: I only tested this in FF3 on Linux.


Pro

Correcting doesn't cost that many cycles

Long URIs are for prettyprinting purposes anyway

Poster won't notice

Con

Not complete Unicode representation (dataloss)

Niche: (likely) only happens in this-gen browsers

Only copy-and-paste permalinkers bothered by this will notice



Just a nitpick (also: the default formatting for dl elements is kinda silly on here!)
posted by electronslave to Bugs at 8:33 PM (18 comments total)

Was it the double tt in north?
posted by tellurian at 9:30 PM on November 13, 2008 [1 favorite]


what
posted by chinston at 9:47 PM on November 13, 2008 [1 favorite]


Besides, you should all be using U+0027 for apostrophe in the first place anyway. /pedant
posted by hattifattener at 10:31 PM on November 13, 2008


And the apostrophe was all like, "Bitch, you crazy. I ain't never touched your skanky ass," and Unicode was like, "Why are you saying this? We were together, and YOU LOVE ME. ME. NOT HER. Those are OUR HEX TRIPLETS. HOW CAN YOU LOOK AT THIS PICTURE AND SAY THEY AREN'T YOURS?" and then some URIs booed and Apostrophe got all up in everybody's face all, "SHUT THE *bleep* *bleeeeeeeeep* UP! Y'ALL DON'T KNOW ME! Y'ALL DON'T KNOW ME!" and then, oh. Bam. The typographic conventions came out and it went DOWN. Linux had to hold them off of each other.
posted by katillathehun at 10:58 PM on November 13, 2008 [7 favorites]


Firefox users ought to be used to ugly text by now.
posted by ryanrs at 12:17 AM on November 14, 2008


MetaFilter: We put the apostrophe in it's place.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 2:23 AM on November 14, 2008 [1 favorite]


Looks like something on the Firefox end to me. In Opera on WinXP the URL looks like: http://www.metafilter.com/76522/The-Internet-in-Canada’s-far-nortth
posted by bjrn at 2:53 AM on November 14, 2008


MetaFilter: We put the apostrophe in it's place.

I hope that was an ironic usage.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:21 AM on November 14, 2008


Safari auto-converts that hex into the appropriate character. I expect over time all browsers will start doing that.
posted by scottreynen at 6:18 AM on November 14, 2008


Would it be possible for the normal apostrophe to be percent-escaped in URL slugs too?
posted by blasdelf at 6:24 AM on November 14, 2008


URL slugs aren't intended to be a work of art. It's just meant to avoid Mystery Meat URL Syndrome like YouTube links. I think that smart crap quotes should be stripped like most other punctuation is.
posted by Plutor at 6:53 AM on November 14, 2008 [1 favorite]


Looks fine on FF3 on XP. I think it's just you.
posted by desjardins at 6:54 AM on November 14, 2008


like omg spaces turn into dashes wtf
posted by Sys Rq at 9:17 AM on November 14, 2008


chinston: chicken butt

Plutor: Thanks for paraphrasing. That's what I was going for.

Sys Rq: what, no, really? n hyphens r like plus signs! oh noes!
posted by electronslave at 11:06 AM on November 14, 2008


why
posted by chinston at 12:18 PM on November 14, 2008


Yeah, I agree that it'd be good to strip the higher characters from link stubs going forward. Though the curly apostrophe wasn't hexed for me in latest version of Firefox/Mac.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:40 PM on November 14, 2008


I do see http://www.metafilter.com/76522/The-Internet-in-Canada%E2%80%99s-far-nortth using FF3 in Mandriva, but ... I have to say this is the first time I've seen a bunch of unicode appear out of nowhere before. I can't say it's an especially pressing issue.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:27 PM on November 15, 2008


I see the %E2%80%99 as well (FF2.0.0.16, Ubuntu) but it doesn't bother me even slightly. The meat is sufficiently demystified, and that is enough.
posted by flabdablet at 3:18 PM on November 16, 2008


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