stupid "smartquotes" in this thread are breaking Metafilter's RSS feed

February 6, 2003 10:46 AM

It looks like the stupid "smartquotes" in this thread are breaking Metafilter's RSS feed (or at least Syndirella's ability to parse it).
posted by waxpancake to Bugs at 10:46 AM (11 comments total)

I put a high-ascii filter on front page posts, so that making a post in icelandic won't error out the RSS feed. For some reason though, the smart quotes and emdashes still go through and screw up the feed (they must be from lower ascii character sets).

The strangest thing is that there are only errors when making a flat file. If I put an active script that grabs the data in realtime in my RSS reader, it works because I send utf-8 encoding in the header, but when writing it as a flat file, it must be getting written as ISO-8859-1. I'll check the coldfusion docs to see if it's possible to write utf-8 encoded flat files.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:04 AM on February 6, 2003

Easier perhaps to replace the smart quotes with ASCII 34 straight quotes and em dashes with two hyphens?
posted by vraxoin at 12:04 PM on February 6, 2003

Make sure to check out that oscillating flange pin while you are in there. It's all ball bearings these days.
posted by machaus at 12:10 PM on February 6, 2003

I replace character 147 and 148 with 34. Maybe I have the numbers wrong though.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:12 PM on February 6, 2003

Ah, I found out how to force utf-8 encoding, even though that is supposed to be the default. It seems to work now, smart quotes and all. (the Iran post has a couple)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:20 PM on February 6, 2003

I always read these tech-y threads, despite the fact that while I know all the words in the posts, I do not understand them in the order in which they are used.

It keeps me humble.
posted by padraigin at 2:37 PM on February 6, 2003

I know what you mean padraigin :-) I have found that, if you re-order the words in each sentence, you can sometimes make English out of them.
posted by dg at 2:40 PM on February 6, 2003

I say, "What chu doin' up there, you doing some stunt flying?"
posted by yerfatma at 2:43 PM on February 6, 2003

I still think a better solution would be to deconfigure the Flan-h0 timer. You would experience less turn-around but the full efficiency of your At+ would be dramatic.
posted by dgaicun at 2:57 PM on February 6, 2003

this site uses an oscillating flange pin and you people have the balls to dump on SUV's??!?!?!?
[storms angrily out of the room]
posted by quonsar at 3:48 PM on February 6, 2003

I put a high-ascii filter on front page posts, so that making a post in icelandic won't error out the RSS feed

Wooo-hooooo, my next FPP is going to be in Icelandic!

How about an Iraq or SUV post written in Icelandic. That should spark some fresh discussions.
posted by einarorn at 4:34 PM on February 6, 2003