Picasa upload bug in caption.

SV4Kids_Forum

When uploading from my Picasa album, the link to a file (in the text of the caption) did not include the entire URL. For example:

blah blah blah http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heidelberg_Castle_in_1620.jpg blah blah blah

converts to a link and leftover text:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File
:Heidelberg_Castle_in_1620.jpg

Evidently the colon is seen as a break, but is a valid part of a URL. I will have thousands of these, so I have to stop until the bug is fixed.

See:

http://sv4kids.smugmug.com/Vacation/492-153-8414-Heidelberg-Castle/13651660_w2yFj#996561094_bMMtw

for a live example.

Jon

jfriend

Except in the "http://", you cannot have a : in a URL. Your URL is an illegal URL.

You can encode that colon to make it a legal URL like this and try that:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHeidelberg_Castle_in_1620.jpg

SV4Kids_Forum

Legal characters in URL
I know that the URL is 'legal' because wiki uses it and I use it, although some people would consider it bad coding. And I can modify the URL in picasa or smugmug manually with no problem, if I have an extra year to do the effort. But that is not the point. An automated system must allow special characters that ARE legal, except for sp/cr/lf (space, carriage return and line feed) which all terminate a URL in most text systems.

Space is used in many URLs, and is not a problem when you enclose the URL in quotes, like:

href="http//www.sv4kids.com/This is a test.jpg"

I use spaces in nearly all of my file names which I upload to Picasa, and most systems automatically translate special characters. For example, when I create a search in YouTube using special characters, like this:

gillian"s island

it gets translated to this:

gillian%22s+island

when I copy the URL into MS Access.

The problem for SmugMug is to determine when a URL ends in a text file, like the caption in Picasa. I would set the rule that the URL must end with one of the characters: sp/cr/lf

So you are thinking that I just said that space is OK in a URL. Yikes! Dont panic. Both Wiki and Picasa translate spaces when uploading photos. Wiki does this:

File:WKFL FOTW 001 Krishna Venta Painting.jpg

becomes:

/wiki/File:WKFL_FOTW_001_Krishna_Venta_Painting.jpg

and Picasa translates spaces to %20, like this:

/s800/Dorney%20Amusement%20Park%20and%20Wildwater%20Kingdom%20Waterpark%20070.jpg

So Smugmug can require that a URL terminate with sp/cr/lf, and this will allow ALL special characters, like ' and ".

jon

docwalker

Jon,

I did some checking and we do not currently support the colon like you want. Please feel free to add it as a feature request here: http://smugmug.uservoice.com/

--Doc

jfriend

SV4Kids_Forum wrote: »

I know that the URL is 'legal' because wiki uses it and I use it, although some people would consider it bad coding. And I can modify the URL in picasa or smugmug manually with no problem, if I have an extra year to do the effort. But that is not the point. An automated system must allow special characters that ARE legal, except for sp/cr/lf (space, carriage return and line feed) which all terminate a URL in most text systems.

Space is used in many URLs, and is not a problem when you enclose the URL in quotes, like:

href="http//www.sv4kids.com/This is a test.jpg"

I use spaces in nearly all of my file names which I upload to Picasa, and most systems automatically translate special characters. For example, when I create a search in YouTube using special characters, like this:

gillian"s island

it gets translated to this:

gillian%22s+island

when I copy the URL into MS Access.

The problem for SmugMug is to determine when a URL ends in a text file, like the caption in Picasa. I would set the rule that the URL must end with one of the characters: sp/cr/lf

So you are thinking that I just said that space is OK in a URL. Yikes! Dont panic. Both Wiki and Picasa translate spaces when uploading photos. Wiki does this:

File:WKFL FOTW 001 Krishna Venta Painting.jpg

becomes:

/wiki/File:WKFL_FOTW_001_Krishna_Venta_Painting.jpg

and Picasa translates spaces to %20, like this:

/s800/Dorney%20Amusement%20Park%20and%20Wildwater%20Kingdom%20Waterpark%20070.jpg

So Smugmug can require that a URL terminate with sp/cr/lf, and this will allow ALL special characters, like ' and ".

jon

If you stick to legal URL characters as described in the relevant internet specifications, you would not have this problem. The fact that a colon or a space work in some situations does not make them legal characters in a URL - they are not. It does not surprise me that Smugmug looks for the first character that is not allowed in a URL as the end of the URL. Lots and lots of programs that are trying to auto-find URLs do that. You can make it work fine if you encode the illegal characters as I showed you.

devbobo

Jon,

I think that you could actually achieve a more readable caption by using some basic html, rather than just throwing a caption at SmugMug and expecting it to be rendered as you intended it.

I've mocked up a sample here...

http://devbobo.smugmug.com/Other/Heidelberg-Castle/13680722_z3tJd#999220792_yCgz5

Cheers,

David

jfriend

devbobo wrote: »

Jon,

I think that you could actually achieve a more readable caption by using some basic html, rather than just throwing a caption at SmugMug and expecting it to be rendered as you intended it.

I've mocked up a sample here...

http://devbobo.smugmug.com/Other/Heidelberg-Castle/13680722_z3tJd#999220792_yCgz5

Cheers,

David

Excellent idea!

SV4Kids_Forum

Fixing Bugs
When coding a URL in the address field of Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, ANY character is 'legal' since it is processed by the browser. When coding a URL in HTML text nearly every character is legal except characters that prematurely terminate the URL. I know how to code HTML, and you must remember that this function bug is a conversion from Picasa text to SmugMug text. Hence, we are limited to what Picasa will and will not allow. So if SmugMug wishes to import everything from Picasa then SmugMug must accept anything Picasa can accept, and correctly translate the text. But then again, programmers these days are lazy and tend to make excuses for everything. Microsoft has made a fortune telling people to work around the bugs in Microsoft products.

Obviously the work-around is to recode the link in Picasa. But I will make a note of the fact that SmugMug refuses to fix a bug, and that Picasa is free and SmugMug is not. Makes me re-evaluate why I have a SmugMug account. I also have free accounts at Webshots, YouTube and Flickr; and each has good and bad features. But each seeks to improve their service, and they know that you never tell a customer to spend a tremendous amount of time doing manual work when a simple bug fix is possible.

END-OF-THREAD
Jon

Andy

SV4Kids_Forum wrote: »

When coding a URL in the address field of Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, ANY character is 'legal' since it is processed by the browser. When coding a URL in HTML text nearly every character is legal except characters that prematurely terminate the URL. I know how to code HTML, and you must remember that this function bug is a conversion from Picasa text to SmugMug text. Hence, we are limited to what Picasa will and will not allow. So if SmugMug wishes to import everything from Picasa then SmugMug must accept anything Picasa can accept, and correctly translate the text. But then again, programmers these days are lazy and tend to make excuses for everything. Microsoft has made a fortune telling people to work around the bugs in Microsoft products.

Obviously the work-around is to recode the link in Picasa. But I will make a note of the fact that SmugMug refuses to fix a bug, and that Picasa is free and SmugMug is not. Makes me re-evaluate why I have a SmugMug account. I also have free accounts at Webshots, YouTube and Flickr; and each has good and bad features. But each seeks to improve their service, and they know that you never tell a customer to spend a tremendous amount of time doing manual work when a simple bug fix is possible.

END-OF-THREAD
Jon

I don't see where we (SmugMug) have refused to do anything... or am I missing something?

SV4Kids

Bug Fix

Andy wrote: »

I don't see where we (SmugMug) have refused to do anything... or am I missing something?

Doc said 'I did some checking and we do not currently support the colon like you want.'

Anyway, I was taking a nap and I suddenly started laughing, which is very disturbing to my dog and grandkids. I suddenly remembered that nearly EVERY URL has a colon, as in http://



So what we have here is a bug, which Doc refuses to fix. Now, if anyone opens up the code and starts fixing the problem, then they should consider characters other than the colon as 'legal', or just comply with the Picasa specs. I wrote computer programs for 25 years, so if it were me I would just look for a space or CR/LF after finding http://. The caption is a text file and not HTML, so the rules are a little different. A simple solution to a simple problem.



Jon

PS. Please let me know when this is fixed so that I can begin migrating my 2,000 albums.

Summer Vacation 4 Kids
www.sv4kids.com
sv4kids@gmail.com

SV4Kids

devbobo wrote: »

Jon,

I think that you could actually achieve a more readable caption by using some basic html, rather than just throwing a caption at SmugMug and expecting it to be rendered as you intended it.

I've mocked up a sample here...

http://devbobo.smugmug.com/Other/Heidelberg-Castle/13680722_z3tJd#999220792_yCgz5

Cheers,

David

Good idea, and I do this all the time on my website. BUT. I forgot to mention that Picasa does not allow HTML coding in the caption, even though Panoramio does. They just convert a URL (as MS Word does) to a link. The other reason for not hiding the URL behind text is the virus issue. Thanks to Google Chrome I found 5 amusement parks that have a virus in their websites. People would rather see where they are jumping prior to making the leap. I would never jump to a Russian, Chinese, India or Egypt website without using GC (or a dam good virus firewall). So the Picasa format is perfect, and is able to handle all URLs. Plus the fact that SmugMug has to comply with the Picasa specs, just as Picasa would have to comply with SmugMug specs if they wanted to encourage conversion from SmugMug to Picasa. This is also known as 'wearing the other pair of shoes'.

Jon

docwalker

Doc never refused to fix anything. I am not a programmer. I investigate bugs and report them to the programmers. The site is working as designed so it is not a bug. It would be a feature request as I suggested. I will ask our upload programmer to take a look at the Picasa Specs to see if we need to adjust the plugin to handle these better from that end.

docwalker

I heard back from the plugin developer that the plugin is not involved here. Sorry.