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Misc
Test kiss smiley bug, description, workarounds and possible need for a Wiki engine change
English example
| verbatim |
result |
*Test string in bold in English with colon punctuation mark:* that's it |
Test string in bold in English with colon punctuation mark: that's it |
French translation of the example
| verbatim |
result |
*Chaîne de test en gras avec le signe de ponctuation deux points :* c'est tout |
*Chaîne de test en gras avec le signe de ponctuation deux points  c'est tout |
This bug is due to the fact that French typography rules require that a colon punctuation mark ":" shall be preceded (and followed as well) by a space, and the fact that Foswiki interprets a colon followed by an asterisk as a kiss smiley if there are one or more blank characters immediately to the left of the colon and immediately to the right of the asterisk.
It results in:
- the string intended to be in bold, not being displayed in bold
- the colon not being displayed
- the colon and the asterisk being displayed as a kiss smiley
Possible workarounds
Use the "nop" tag
| verbatim |
result |
*Chaîne de test en gras avec le signe de ponctuation deux points <nop>:* c'est tout |
Chaîne de test en gras avec le signe de ponctuation deux points : c'est tout |
Use the non-breaking space html entity
| verbatim |
result |
*Chaîne de test en gras avec le signe de ponctuation deux points :* c'est tout |
Chaîne de test en gras avec le signe de ponctuation deux points : c'est tout |
Difficulties and need for a possible change of behavior of the Foswiki engine
In both cases, the workaround is very unnatural and legibility is very poor.
This problem affects French users of Foswiki who want to set in bold something ending with a colon. It also affects translations of strings shipped with Foswiki, such as the ones displayed by the Foswiki engine at the bottom of certain pages concerning "Related topics:" if the translator has not used any of these workarounds in the proposed translation. It affects possibly users and translations in any other language having similar typographic rules. It affects possibly other cases where the Wiki markup syntax collides with the smiley expansion syntax.
The workarounds are not satisfactory, and the problem manifests itself even in the versions shipped by Foswiki if the translator is not aware of this problem. This may seem trivial, but this is really a problem in a corporate environment where seeing a kissing smiley for no reason in the system pages can be give a poor image of the wiki and it affects in general the credibility of the wiki system.
I would like to explore the possibilities of the Foswiki project addressing the kiss problem.
The Foswiki engine currently understands the two smiley forms using 2 or 3 characters (in the 3 characters versions, the smiley has a "nose", i.e. a dash between the colon and the asterisk).
This problem would not be happening, and no workaround would be necessary, if the Foswiki engine would be interpreting the kiss smiley only in its 3 characters form, thus if the smiley has a "nose", i.e. a dash between the colon and the asterisk
| verbatim |
result |
Wiki markup engine |
:-* |
|
no change needed (already existing behavior) |
:* |
:* |
change needed |
This would require a change in the way Foswiki interprets the Wiki markup.
The drawback is that this may affect users already using the 2 character form of the kiss smiley.
Another possible change proposal for solving this problem would be that the parsing of the Wiki markup gives priority to interpreting the asterisk as the end of the bold text, before its checks in the string in bold if there are 2 or 3 character form of the kiss smiley (or another smiley) to be displayed as the kiss smiley.
This last type of change would probably not affect existing behaviors and would probably be a better solution.
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