Absolute Chaos Discussion Boards
Welcome => Rules and News => Topic started by: RokofAges75 on June 21, 2017, 12:17:59 AM
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I just noticed that some stories on the site suddenly have a symbol between every sentence or in place of certain punctuation marks. On Chrome, the symbol is a black diamond with a question mark in it, and on Internet Explorer, it's just a rectangle. Here's an example: http://absolutechaos.net/viewstory.php?sid=11250&chapter=1
A lot of my chapters have this symbol between every sentence, but not all. For example, three of the five chapters I posted last week have it, and two don't. I didn't do anything differently in how I wrote and posted those chapters, and I know the symbol wasn't there last week when I posted them because I always click on chapters after I post to make sure they look okay.
I found that re-posting the chapter takes care of the issue, but I'm hoping there's an easier fix than re-posting hundreds of chapters LOL. Just wanted to post and see if anyone knew anything about what's causing this.
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It seems it's after every period. I did a quick scan if first chapters on the most recent page and it looks like it's just you and Cinzia. Kyrie had one where there should have been an (') no idea why it's happening or what to do about it.
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Has anything been updated with the site in the last few days? I wonder why it started doing that all of a sudden.
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I know I didn't, not sure if Julilly did.
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Nope, I didn't.
Those are called gremlins. That happens when the font inserted doesn't match the available font in the code. Likely because the editor that used to function on the site is now obsolete and no longer works. Unfortunately, there's nothing that can really be done to fix them all en masse.
They just need to update efiction already because it's falling apart.
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Well at least it has a cute name for a very annoying problem lol
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They just need to update efiction already because it's falling apart.
omg this. And looking at their website/support is really no help at all.
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Thanks for the info! I wish efiction would update; that sucks!
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Just wanted to pop in and say I was experiencing this too with the – character and I had to go replace them all with the smaller one -
It also brought to light that maybe I use too many dashes in my writing LOL.
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Yes - I've noticed that too, as well as with ellipses (...), and I think it's because Microsoft Word does something with the formatting of those. Like when you make an ellipse, it doesn't leave it as three periods; it formats the dots so they are closer together or something so it's like one punctuation mark instead of three separate ones. And apparently AC doesn't like that! The other place I've noticed it in my stories is between sentences, and I bet it has something to do with the fact that I use two spaces instead of one between sentences. I know you don't have to use two spaces between sentences anymore, but I was taught to type the traditional way, and it's a habit I can't seem to break (plus, I think it's easier on the eyes to have two spaces between sentences). I'm not sure why that is suddenly causing a problem for AC, but it does.
Ever since I moved my site to Wordpress, I have started copying my chapters from there instead of Word to paste into AC when I go to update because they already have the HTML formatting that way, whereas when I used to copy/paste directly from Word, I would have to add in all the formatting myself to center text or make it bold or italicized, etc. But those are the chapters that now suddenly have these symbols all over the place, whereas my older stuff does not. I'm not sure why that would make a difference - I actually thought it would be better to get rid of the weird formatting stuff that Word sometimes does - but yikes, I guess I'll have to go back to my old way of posting.
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So I googled this because it's still bugging me that basically everything I've posted on AC in the last four years is almost unreadable due to these black diamonds, and I wondered if there was an easier fix than editing or re-posting every single chapter. I found this thread on the forum at efiction.org: http://efiction.org/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=0u9rllkmsqtonobl2s019m4t23&topic=8903.0
If you read to the bottom, the problem was eventually solved on the original poster's site by changing something in the code. I'm not sure if that's something only Ash can do, or if the mods have access to it, or how easy it is to edit, but just thought I'd share.
They also have a note at the top of that forum about working on a new version (EFiction 5), so it sounds like there's the potential for updating the script sometime in the future.
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Oh thanks for finding that! Not sure how often Julia comes in here but I'll send her a text today and maybe we can take a look at the code! I hope they get that version of eFiction going soon.
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Awesome, thanks!