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Groups > comp.sys.acorn.misc > #6634

Re: Local browsing

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In message <na.4090d252d1.a806e0tennant@orpheusmail.co.uk>
 on 19 Sep 2012 Tennant Stuart  wrote:

> In article <a06a01d152.Matthew@sinenomine.freeserve.co.uk>,
> Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > In message <na.e8974852cd.a806e0tennant@orpheusmail.co.uk>
> >  on 11 Sep 2012 Tennant Stuart  wrote:
> 
> >> In article <17p*Z04eu@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
> >> Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> >>> I suspect not. &EF,&BF,&BD is the UTF-8 representation of U+FFFD
> >>> REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an incoming character whose
> >>> value is unknown or unrepresentable in Unicode
> 
> >>> So looks like something has replaced a character with that Unicode
> >>> code point, and then that's got escaped into %-entities.
> 
> >> Thanks Theo, I think you've found the bug in Netsurf. Yes, the directory
> >> name begins with a bullet (for very good reasons) which is ASCII 143.
> 
> >> This means that ADFS::HardDisc5/$/WEBZ/JRWEB/lynx/index.htm should be
> >> read as file:///ADFS::HardDisc5/$/WEBZ/%8FJRWEB/lynx/index.htm etc.
> 
> >> However, Netsurf inappropriately converts the bullet to a Unicode error
> >> value even though the character itself is not displayed, so cannot fetch
> >> the file. I'm guessing this bug applies to many different characters.
> 
> > I should think it will only apply to characters in the range 128 to 159,
> > which are undefined in ISO Latin 1 but which were used by Acorn for
> > various things like the bullet, directional quotation marks, etc. Having
> > these characters in filenames is asking for trouble, to be honest.
> 
> No, it's the full range 128 to 255 that can't be handled by Netsurf.

That's not true with NetSurf 2.9 -- are you on a different version.  As a
quick test, I created a directory on the RAM disk called "test" and a text
file within called "Text2" with an e-grave appended to the end of the
filename.

By going to file:///RAM::RamDisc0/%24/ I was show the view of the root
directory.  When hovering over the directory "test" I could see the URL was
file:///RAM%3A%3ARamDisc0.%24/test and I was rather disconcerted by the full
stop before the %24, but clicking took me through OK.  The file name  was
shown correctly with the e-grave, and hovering the URL is
file:///RAM%3A%3ARamDisc0.%24/test/Text2%EA which is the correct encoding. 
Clicking on it loaded and displayed the file.

When I put a bullet at the start of the file name, it still worked. The
bullet was displayed as a diamond with a question mark in, meaning that
NetSurf did not know how to render it, but the URL was shown as %8FTest2%EA
and it worked fine.

Another explanation for this difference in what we are seeing might be if you
have your desktop alphabet set to UTF-8.  Goodness knows what that would do
to NetSurf's handling of filenames.

> > It's true that NetSurf could be made to handle these better, by using
> > different mapping tables to convert them to UTF-8 representation.
> 
> No, Netsurf should not be using mapping tables for hypertext links; it
> merely has to represent actual byte values from the link in accordance
> with HTML standards, using a "%" hexadecimal code when required.

NetSurf copes better than any other RISC OS browser with the issue of
character sets, owing to its use of the iconv module and the RUfl rendering
library.  It does not have complete mapping tables for all the Acorn
extensions to character sets, however, but I thought Acorn Latin 1 was
covered.

> > I should think this will be a low priority for the developers.
> 
> No, a browser's ability to browse should be a high priority.

We are talking about the browser's ability to browse the local RISC OS
filesystem, not to browse the web.  You have not given any examples of where
NetSurf is unable to follow real hyperlinks off real web pages.  Theo's
examples of non-ASCII domain names look like an area that NetSurf maybe
cannot cope with, which would need to be addressed, but this is a separate
and distinct problem from that of browsing the filesystem, where the browser
is given no clues as to the character set in force.

This problem is likely to manifest itself differently on different operating
systems, and RISC OS is only one of those supported by NetSurf.  It was this
(coupled with my assumption that it would only apply to characters which
you would be ill-advised to use in filenames anyway) that made me suggest it
might be taken as a low priority.

But try reporting it to the developers and see what happens.  It sounds as
though a problem has crept in at some stage.

(Except looking back to the start of the thread, I see you were using NetSurf
2.9 anyway.  And incidentally, I have no problem with triple-slashes here on
2.9, which is the correct syntax.)

-- 
Matthew Phillips
Durham

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  Re: Local browsing Graham Pickles <graham@durain.demon.co.uk> - 2012-09-03 18:50 +0100
    Re: Local browsing John Rickman Iyonix <rickman@argonet.co.uk> - 2012-09-03 20:18 +0100
    Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-04 18:01 +0100
      Re: Local browsing Chris Johnson <chrisjohnson+news@spamcop.net> - 2012-09-04 20:25 +0100
        Re: Local browsing Dave Symes <dave@triffid.co.uk> - 2012-09-04 22:00 +0100
          Re: Local browsing Dave Symes <dave@triffid.co.uk> - 2012-09-04 22:09 +0100
            Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-05 18:08 +0100
              Re: Local browsing "Felicity S." <Flcty@rdsqurrl.com> - 2012-09-10 18:52 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2012-09-10 19:43 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-11 18:01 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-17 18:02 +0100
                Re: Local browsing "Felicity S." <Flcty@rdsqurrl.com> - 2012-09-18 00:15 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-18 18:02 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-18 07:28 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-19 18:00 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Russell Hafter News <see.sig@walkingingermany.invalid> - 2012-09-19 21:06 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2012-09-20 13:40 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-21 07:17 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-22 18:01 +0100
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                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-22 18:00 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-24 07:38 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-09-25 18:01 +0100
                Re: Local browsing Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-25 23:04 +0100
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                Re: Local browsing Tennant Stuart <tennant@orpheus.co.uk> - 2012-10-01 18:03 +0100
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