YAAB (Yet Another Actinic Bug). Hash character in filenames fail.

[NormanRouxel]

Present in all V9 including 9.0.4.

Images in sub-folders of your site folder whose filenames contain a hash "#" character are not being parsed properly by Actinic at upload page generation time. Previewing also fails.

Demo of problem: Use standard demo site. Make sub-folder Images. Copy x-book1.jpg into Images. Rename to be x-book#1.jpg. Use this image for a product image. Preview or Update and note that no image displays.

Explanation of problem: A filename like Images/x-book#1.jpg is being detected as a file and is being uploaded into the acatalog directory. So far so good. However Actinic isn't stripping the images/ part from the filename when building the page's HTML. We end up with something like <img src="Images/x-book#1.jpg" /> and the file certainly isn't there on the server.

Simple fix is to not use "#" characters in filenames for the moment.

[chris ashdown]

Very nice to see you back norman, have you been somewhere good, we have missed your words of wisdom

[Mike Hughes]

WHS

It took me a while to work out what this one was - "What He Said".

The first things that came to mind were:

- WH Smiths?
- Welcome Home Son?
- Windows Home Server?

It's hard work keeping up with these acronyms.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

That's Mole for:
Well Hey Sugar!

[Krithika]

Hello all

Checked this with the development team, the '#' is a reserved character in URLs, hence cannot be included in the acceptable list. I have reported the issue of a warning not being displayed to this effect though.

[brucet]

I can confirm (experimentally) that if you include a hash character in an image filename, it won't display on the page anyway. At least not on our web server, which is a bog standard Linux box running Plesk.

AFAICS the browser expects everything after the hash to be an anchor. So eg if the URL is www.domain.co.uk/image#1.jpg, the browser tries to find an anchor called '1.jpg' on the index page of the directory www.domain.co.uk/image.

If you type the image URL into a browser, you will get the default error page if there is one, or a 404 error.

I'm guessing you may know of a server configuration that allows the hash character in filenames - but I don't see how the Actinic application could know if the server it was uploading to had that configuration.

So I think the best we can do is present a warning if an invalid character is used in a filename.

[Steve G Griggs]

Has in image filenames.

Hi all.
As I understand it the # symbol is reserved and not for use in filenames.

[NormanRouxel]

The "#" symbol isn't a reserved character for filenames in most O/S's.

Try it. Windows (XP / Vista / Windows 7) will quite happily let you use a "#" character in your filenames.

Unfortunately using such a filename breaks Actinic.

A warning or error message might be best as most filenames the user enters end up on the web and thus become part of URL's where the "#" does becomes a problem.

[gabrielcrowe]

~ dialog box ~
Actinic detected a # in your filez,
replace with underscorez?
[fail] [win]

[brucet]

It's not reserved in filenames AFAIK, but it is reserved in URLs. Anything after the hash is treated as an anchor.

Try it outside Actinic. On a Linux server, upload an image file with a hash in the file name, and an HTML page containing that image. The image won't show on the page. Then type the url of the image itself into the browser. You will either get a 404 error; or an error page, with the hash and the text after it positioned in the address as an anchor.

Maybe it's OK on Windows servers, I don't have one to test it on, but it doesn't work on a bog standard Linux box.

So even if Actinic parsed the image path correctly, it would make no difference - the image still wouldn't appear on the page.

[NormanRouxel]

We're back to my first post.

Simple fix is to not use "#" characters in filenames for the moment.

However, while we might know that, there may be many who assume that if the Actinic dialogue boxes let them type in or browse for such troublesome filenames, and then Actinic accepts such filenames without error, that all should be OK.

And, as you say, it won't be.

The warning message you suggest (like the one about filenames containing spaces) would be ideal.

[brucet]

We will definitely investigate adding a warning message. Barring any significant complications in doing that, it will be added in v9.0.5.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[pinbrook]

Bruce

Maybe it's OK on Windows servers, I don't have one to test it on, but it doesn't work on a bog standard Linux box.

I gave Ben Pops an account on our windows server for test purposes, maybe you could utilise that since actinic dont have their own windows server.

[NormanRouxel]

We will definitely investigate adding a warning message. Barring any significant complications in doing that, it will be added in v9.0.5.

Super.

Also on the entry of user defined filename type variables please.

And on imports if possible.