15 May
2009
15 May
'09
7:27 p.m.
Hello to all,
I'm involved in a project which uses the Pier wiki. We hope that this
project will have mass appeal and involve many users. Unfortunately,
we've seen a problem with the edit box. If one pastes something from a
non-UTF-8 compatible world processor, it is rejected with an error
message reading, "Input is Invalid." Unfortunately, this is not a very
helpful error message, and it will make using the Pier wiki impossible
for those of us who aren't at least mid-level geeks. Would it be
possible to make some changes which would allow a more user-friendly
error message?
I see two possible ways to handle this.
1.) Replace the current message with a message that reads, "Your input
cannot be read because it is not UTF-8 compatible. Please set your
word-processor to produce UTF-8 compatible text and try pasting your
input again." Such an error message could even connect to Pier's help
system which could explain how to set various word-processors for UTF-8.
I'm not a Squeak programmer, but I'd be happy to write help text for the
word processing programs I own.
2.) The second is to devise a more forgiving edit window. Instead of
giving an error message and rejecting the input, it could accept the
input and replace characters it can't read with a question mark, or one
of those square boxes, then output an error message, something like:
"There was a problem reading your input because your word processor is
not set to UTF-8. Characters which could not be read have been replaced
with a "?". Please click here to continue." I think this is the better
of the two alternatives, though obviously it involves more programming time.
A more sophisticated version of the second solution could present users
with a small, pop-up edit box containing the text that is causing
problems. The users could then use their keyboards to make the
appropriate changes.
As things stand now, the edit box is very "user-unfriendly." I don't, of
course, insist that my solutions be used - it's entirely possible that a
better way exists than I imagine above - but the present situation will
make things very difficult for users who don't have serious computing
skills.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Alex