After an evaluation, GNOME has moved from Bugzilla to GitLab. Learn more about GitLab.
No new issues can be reported in GNOME Bugzilla anymore.
To report an issue in a GNOME project, go to GNOME GitLab.
Do not go to GNOME Gitlab for: Bluefish, Doxygen, GnuCash, GStreamer, java-gnome, LDTP, NetworkManager, Tomboy.
Bug 119686 - Obscure error message when "Curly quote" characters are pasted into a message.
Obscure error message when "Curly quote" characters are pasted into a message.
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: Pan
Classification: Other
Component: general
pre-0.14.1 betas
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: 0.14.1
Assigned To: Charles Kerr
Pan QA Team
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2003-08-12 04:20 UTC by Lenroc
Modified: 2006-06-18 05:04 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Lenroc 2003-08-12 04:20:18 UTC
I often copy and paste from Mozilla into Pan (because I'm a smartass and I
like to use the dictionary to prove my points, but that's not the issue).
Dictionary.com, the dictionary used to look up works on Google, uses "Curly
Quote" characters (ASCII 147 and 148, apparently, though I'm not 100% sure)
to delimit quotations. When I copy and paste a definition from there into a
followup in Pan, and subsequently go to post the message, I get a cryptic
message stating "ERROR: message uses characters not specified in charset
'ISO-8859-1' - possibly use 'iso-8859-13' instead?". OK, so this is not too
cryptic, but it does not indicate which characters were found, and when I
went to switch to iso-8859-13, I found that it was the Baltic character
set, which confused me. I didn't know it was the curly quotes that were
causing the problem, so I had to spend a bit of time figuring that out.

More concisely, my problem is this: When a character which is not part of
the character set in use for creating the message is inserted into that
message, the error message (that the user does not see until trying to post
the message) is too vague.

Steps to reproduce: 
1. Create a new message in Pan, and ensure that the characterset is
'ISO-8859-1'.
2. Copy any text including curly quotation marks from Mozilla (likely all
other programs as well). For example, the 3rd definition listed for Motor
at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=motor&r=67
3. Paste the text into Mozilla.
4. Post the message.

Actual results: "ERROR: message uses characters not specified in charset
'ISO-8859-1' - possibly use 'iso-8859-13' instead?"

Expected results: Any of the following:
1. When inserting the illegal character, a warning that the character is
not a part of the characterset being used, with the error dialog box
revealing specifically which character is in question.
-or-
2. When attempting to post the message containing the character that is not
a part of the characterset, the error message displayed should inform the
user which character was found to be in error.
-or-
3. Very shortsighted, but if the characterset is set to 'ISO-8859-1', and
the user inserts a curly quote, simply replace this with a straight quote.