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Technical forums » General technical issues »
The trouble with showing tags in forum messages
Thread poster: Stefan de Boeck (X)
Stefan de Boeck (X)
Stefan de Boeck (X)  Identity Verified
Belgium
Local time: 09:11
English to Dutch
+ ...
Jan 22, 2012

Well, you know… You’ve either experienced it, or seen it happen.*

Instead of using the reliably treacherous &l­t; &g­t; entities,
it may be more advantageous to use &ls­aquo; and &rs­aquo;
to produce these very nice little ‹tags›.

From a keyboard these can be magicked up by alt+0139 (‹) and alt+0155 (›).

* in SDL Trados support, which was the intended forum for this messa... See more
Well, you know… You’ve either experienced it, or seen it happen.*

Instead of using the reliably treacherous &l­t; &g­t; entities,
it may be more advantageous to use &ls­aquo; and &rs­aquo;
to produce these very nice little ‹tags›.

From a keyboard these can be magicked up by alt+0139 (‹) and alt+0155 (›).

* in SDL Trados support, which was the intended forum for this message.


[Edited at 2012-01-23 18:58 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 09:11
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Good to know Jan 22, 2012

as the entities are changed to signs when editing and then truncate the message, if not again replaced by entities.
So with this signs it will be certainly easier.
 
FarkasAndras
FarkasAndras  Identity Verified
Local time: 09:11
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Why? Jan 22, 2012

Apart from the problem with editing a post that contains literal tags, I don't see any advantage to using this oddball character entity.
I can see a disadvantage, though: If you're posting tags that might occur in translatable documents, they won't work when somebody copy-pastes them into a find & replace window e.g. to look for an identical tag in a document they're translating or whatever. If you're posting, say, HTML or other code, it won't work when copy-pasted.
So, you're stuck... See more
Apart from the problem with editing a post that contains literal tags, I don't see any advantage to using this oddball character entity.
I can see a disadvantage, though: If you're posting tags that might occur in translatable documents, they won't work when somebody copy-pastes them into a find & replace window e.g. to look for an identical tag in a document they're translating or whatever. If you're posting, say, HTML or other code, it won't work when copy-pasted.
So, you're stuck with explaining that the characters you're using are just stand-ins and people will have to replace them with the real < > characters. That's no better than using «» IMO. I'd rather just use the proper entities (&lt; and &gt;) and take the risk that I might want to edit my post and have to redo it. ▲ Collapse
 
Stefan de Boeck (X)
Stefan de Boeck (X)  Identity Verified
Belgium
Local time: 09:11
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Why show tags at all? Jan 23, 2012

When quoting a carefully written post
FarkasAndras wrote:
I'd rather just use the proper entities (< and >) and take the risk that I might want to edit my post and have to redo it.

the entities will go live.
Stuff happens, then.

FarkasAndras wrote:
… this oddball character entity

As suggested above, the alt-combinations will do nicely.
(Some languages use these single guillemets quite commonly.
No oddballs in there.)

So why have visible tags at all? Maybe in case
FarkasAndras wrote:
… somebody copy-pastes them into a find & replace window e.g. to look for an identical tag in a document they're translating or whatever

?
Not likely, I should hope.
But whatever the motive for including tags (vanity being my best guess) I’ve seen it* backfire enough times to make me wonder.

FarkasAndras wrote:
So, you're stuck…

No I’m not. Nor should anyone else.


* in SDL Trados support, that is.
 
FarkasAndras
FarkasAndras  Identity Verified
Local time: 09:11
English to Hungarian
+ ...
? Jan 23, 2012

Stefan de Boeck wrote:

the entities will go live.
Stuff happens, then.


What do you mean they go live? What do you think will happen?

Stefan de Boeck wrote:
So why have visible tags at all?

I don't get the question. I often need/want to post tags to explain things like the structure of TMX files to people. If you don't think there is a need to post visible tags in the forum, why did you start this thread?

FarkasAndras wrote:
… somebody copy-pastes them into a find & replace window e.g. to look for an identical tag in a document they're translating or whatever

Stefan de Boeck wrote:
?
Not likely, I should hope.
But whatever the motive for including tags (vanity being my best guess)


Of course it's likely, it happens all the time.
Example: Clueless Joe posts something like "Help, Studio won't accept my TMX. It says the TMX is in Romanian and my TM is in Moldavian. What do I do?" Then I post "Open the TMX and look for something like <tuv xml:lang="RO"> and replace the language code." Then Joe copy-pastes the tag into the find and replace window and fixes his TMX. If I can post real angle brackets, there is one less thing to explain to Clueless Joe, who, being clueless, would have trouble finding angle brackets on his keyboard or telling the difference between < and ‹.
What does the whole thing have to do with vanity? I really have no idea you came up with that idea.
 
Stefan de Boeck (X)
Stefan de Boeck (X)  Identity Verified
Belgium
Local time: 09:11
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Tedium, or the Great Big Empty Jan 24, 2012

FarkasAndras wrote:
… why did you start this thread?

Because, in another forum, I saw a perfectly good, hands-on posting turn horribly bad:
Go to the end of the file where you would expect to see the /para tag, and enter it as LESS-THAN-SIGN/paraGREATER-THAN-SIGN. The be safer, you could look at a good file (one that doesn't cause the problem) and see how that /para tag is entered. There is a chance that it is simply LESS-THAN-SIGN/GREATER-THAN-SIGN in the right place.

Test the file. If this doesn't work, try adding the closing /para tag right after the para tag, and see if that causes errors. For example, LESS-THAN-SIGNparaGREATER-THAN-SIGNsomethingLESS-THAN-SIGN/paraGREATER-THAN-SIGN.

This is pretty quick-and-dirty, but considering the time you put into this it might be worth a shot next time something similar occurs. In my case, one of the tags starting with LESS-THAN-SIGNx- was garbled, and I just changed it to look like its neighbors. Problem solved.[Edited at 2012-01-22 18:51 GMT] - sorry, I'm having problems representing the html tags in this post.[Edited at 2012-01-22 18:55 GMT]

It was meant to look like this:

Test the file. If this doesn't work, try adding the closing /para tag right after the para tag, and see if that causes errors. For example, <para>something</para>.

This is pretty quick-and-dirty,

If you edit this (your own posting) or quote this (someone else’s posting) the LTGT dud tags will go live:

Test the file. If this doesn't work, try adding the closing /para tag right after the para tag, and see if that causes errors. For example, something.

This is pretty quick-and-dirty,

It plunges into the Great Big Empty.
None of this would have happened if, from the beginning, it had looked like this:

Test the file. If this doesn't work, try adding the closing /para tag right after the para tag, and see if that causes errors. For example, ‹para›something‹/para›.

This is pretty quick-and-dirty,


Now, to at final last hereunder draw a tired line:
__________________________________________________________



So you have an Uncle Joe.
And no concept of vanity.

‘what splendour
                          it all
                coheres’
 


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